Scrapbooking - Week 4

Day 22 – Scrapbooking split up into two 30-minute sessions again. It seems I will never get to actually scrapbooking . . . maybe next year ;)

Day 23 – I think I’m having problems focusing on this project. I find it easy to go through a large folder and delete the thumbnails because they are actually smaller, but when it comes to dragging a ton of pictures around trying to find their match when sometimes there isn’t one (modified versus originals) to try and pick the better of the two and delete the extra, I can’t focus. I get most of the way through the folder and then I get bored and move onto a new folder . . . I’m guessing I’m not going to have them all perfect, but hopefully they will be close and then they can all get backed up on my external hard drive. I can’t believe this month is almost over and I’m still working on this part. Whew.

Day 24 – I can’t believe I’ve been working on this for a full day (24 hours this month, and I’m still not done). I did discover Picassa’s “Sort folder by date” feature today though and that is sure helpful. I have a feeling things will go much faster from now on. I’m working from oldest to newest and I finished 2004 – 2006 pictures today. 2007 has a ton of pictures, so we’ll see how tomorrow goes, but more progress was made J

Day 25 – Things are going faster now, but I’m still stuck in 2007. Many more photos to go . . . as usual.

Day 26 – I scrapbooked in the car to and from the farm where we went to pick blackberries tonight. I finished all of my 2007 pictures, I think the end will go faster now. The end is near?

Day 27 – Today was the opening ceremonies for the London Olympics, so I worked on my scrapbooking during that. I finished 2008, but it was a long week and I don’t think I got as much does as I should.

Day 28 – I scrapbooked in the car again today. We made the trip up to the EAA airshow in Oshkosh today . . . that was pretty fun. I’m blazing through the last sets of pictures because they don’t have so many duplicates or edits to do, but I’m rather confused as some of my pictures are much smaller/lower quality than the rest. I hope I have the full-sized versions somewhere (but that means finding more sets of pictures to organize L).

Day 29 – More of the same today, still not done, still didn’t look for the larger versions of the pictures. Too much to do around here.

Day 30 – I’m making more progress . . . think I can finish my picture organization by tomorrow?

Day 31 – Well, unfortunately, I didn’t finish my pictures, but I can’t imagine how I could have gotten this far without setting aside all of this time every day to work on this. I am very close to being done, so just a few more hours of working on this, then I think all of my picture organization will be done. Then maybe I can get to actual scrapbooking ;) Well, enough of this laziness . . . can you guess what I’m going to be doing next month? 

Scrapbooking - Week 3

Day 15 – I think I am almost done with all of my organization J I should be finishing that up tomorrow and then it’s on to the duplicate picture removal stage . . . hooray.

Day 16 – So I was almost done with my organization, and then I found a folder with a random 2,500 pictures in it . . . ugh. They are so scrambled, I have no idea why they are all grouped together, so I guess I’m not done sorting yet. But you know what? It’s 11 pm again and I am still awake and very tired, so these can wait until tomorrow.

Day 17 – I tackled more of that gigantic folder today. It’s still not done, but it’s down to about 200 pictures now. Here I thought I was almost done with my organizing . . . not so. So much for this being “scrapbooking month”, it is definitely more “picture organizing” month. Oh well, life happens right?

Day 18 – So, this month’s blog may be even more boring than the novel reading month, I’m very sorry about that guys. I was really hoping to have pictures of completed scrapbook pages up by now, but alas, I’m still organizing pictures, who knew that would take so long! I’m still plugging away at it though, so progress is good. In other, non-challenge related news, it rained today!!!! J After being in a severe draught, I think we saw more rain in an hour today than we have in the last two months combined . . . thank you God J

Day 19 – Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 19 days already and I’m still just organizing. This is taking way longer than I thought . . . sorry about that. It might have something to do with the fact that I feel like my heart is just not into this challenge so I’m not working as hard at it as I have some of the other ones. I really wanted to be creative and get to use my fun supplies and see lots of old pictures, but here I am still looking at folder upon folder of duplicate and unedited photos. Oh well, I needed to do this in the worst way, so it’s good it’s finally getting done.

Day 20 – I got up early this morning and did a half an hour of scrapbooking before work because I have music practice tonight and I didn’t know if I would have time later. I did end up having a half an hour later to finish out my time. I worked on cleaning up two of the larger folders . . . unfortunately, I didn’t get either one done, but again, progress was made.

Day 21 – Just more organization . . . I will never be done with this. I did get two big folders almost done though. I’m excited about next month and ready for this month to be done, although I was definitely hoping to make much more progress this month than I have. 

Scrapbooking - Week 2

Day 8 – Today I worked on a lot of my study abroad pictures. It was fun to look back and since I’ve already done the scrapbook for those I could see some of the organization and transformation and how it would pay off. I still have a very long way to go though.

Day 9 – I organized more pictures today, surprise surprise. I’m going to have to work on this stuff for more than one hour a day if I ever want to get it done this month L

Day 10 – Unfortunately, I added even more pictures today, some recent ones. Luckily, they were pretty easy to organize. It’s crazy how pictures can be manipulated using computers and that these aren’t even pictures, just files of numbers. I hope I can get these all organized and backed up before anything goes wrong with my computer.

Day 11 – Late night scrapbooking again . . . can you guess why? Yep, that’s right, I was up way too late baking again. I made these: Scooter Pies. They were pretty amazing J Scooter pie! I need to learn to get started earlier, and not be quite so ambitious . . . I don’t think I’ll ever learn.

Day 12 – So the TV was on while I was working on my scrapbooking tonight, so I was probably not as productive as I should have been, but to counteract that, I worked on it for a little bit longer. I think I need to lock myself in a study room at the library or something until I get these all organized . . . it’s just so tedious, I wish I could get to the creative part already.

Day 13 – I was bad today and only worked on my scrapbooking for about a half an hour, but it was a good half an hour (and I really didn’t have any other time unless I would have gotten up even earlier in the morning, and I just didn’t think about it then), so a half an hour is going to have to do. I made quite a bit more progress on my study abroad pictures and I think those are the majority of what I have, so that’s good. Tomorrow is Saturday so hopefully I’ll be able to make up for a little bit of lost time (provided I’m not baking all day ;)).

Day 14 – I scrapbooked for about an hour and half today to make up for my short day yesterday. I think I almost have all of my 2007-2010 pictures organized . . . yay J That is a big job. I still have to go through and delete all the duplicates, etc. but at least they are organized. I finally feel like I’m making progress. 

Scrapbooking - Week 1

Day 1 – Well, today I got all of my pictures on CDs loaded onto my computer…about 5000 in all. This is going to be a big project.

Day 2 – And so it begins . . . wading through all of those pictures. I got quite a few duplicates deleted and some organized into folders.

Day 3 – Lots more organization accomplished today, mostly in pictures from 2006, yes, I have lots of pictures to go through since then. This is why I think this organization step is going to take me half the month . . . so much to do yet.

Day 4 – Almost all of my 2004-2006 pictures are categorized . . . now to go through each folder and delete the duplicates. Switching from Mac to PC format is not fun. PC decides that all of the Mac files (originals, edits, and thumbnails) are different pictures so I have three copies of most of them and they are all scattered around . . . how annoying.

Day 5 – So. Tired. Again. I had to get up at 5:15 this morning, and now it’s almost 11:00 and I’m still working on this. I need to stop planning so many things to do. Still going through and deleting duplicates and organizing things into chronological order. This is rather boring.

Day 6 – This project is so huge. I really wish I had all of the picture organizing done already. They are all mixed up. I did get a chance to look through my previous scrapbook today though . . . I needed to remember where I took some of the pictures. Maybe by the end of this month I’ll finally get to real scrapbooking.

Day7 – I took my computer along in the car while we were driving and worked on my pictures then . . . that worked out pretty well. I’m still amazed by how crazily mixed up these pictures are, but every hour I put into this is one hour closer to having it all done, so I’m grateful for that. 

July Reveal

As you can probably imagine, all of these crazy challenges have resulted in plenty of pictures and other memorabilia, and that’s just this one portion of my life. I love to travel and go to concerts, etc. so I have plenty of “scraps” lying around. I have the habit of putting them in my bedside drawer until the day that I finally have time to start scrapbooking. Well, I feel like that time is now. I mostly have that feeling because I can’t close my bedside drawer anymore . . . oops! I have made one scrapbook in my life, a whole book to document three wonderful months I spent studying abroad in England during college. Everything before and after that got skipped. Therefore, I have tasked myself this month with working on my scrapbooking project for about an hour every day. If I don’t do quite an hour, it’s not the end of the world, but if I get wrapped up in it and spend more than an hour on it, that’s okay too.

If any of you out there are “scrapbookers”, you’ll understand that it’s not a fun and games. This is an arduous process. I’m guessing there won’t be too many days of exciting things to blog about, but I’ll try and record a few blurbs every day, just to keep you updated. The first step in my scrapbooking process is to wade through the thousands of pictures I have stored on CDs and on my computer. They need to be labeled, categorized, and then backed up onto my external hard-drive (something that I probably should have done a long time ago, but I’m glad I’m finally taking the time to work on it now). After that, I will go through all of the pictures and scraps that I have and decide what should be documented and what can be skipped. Throughout that process I’ll probably make some sort of outline, and then spend way too much money at Walgreens or Snapfish or someplace getting lots of prints made. After that, the fun starts and I actually get to make some scrapbook pages (my husband already let me buy some awesome supplies to get me started). So, here we go, here’s to a creative and productive month of scrapbooking J