I’ve always been obsessed with taking pictures, organizing pictures, and photobooking pictures.  But, with the invention of the digital camera, and well…blogging, I’ve relaxed a little in the organizing part of my picture mania.  I have intended to do a digital photo book for each year, but we always seem to be on a budget for one thing or another, and that gets shoved the bottom of the want list.  In addition, once we moved to Decatur, I stopped printing my digital pictures.  Before that time I’d been very diligent about “developing” them the same way old style film was developed.  As a result of all these new and fancy technologies, my pictures were a mess. And, I just hate messes, especially in the picture department.

Apple TV inspired my organizing marathon.  We’ve had the little Apple TV box for over a  year, and I’m not sure I could explain exactly how it works, but in plain terms, it talks to the computer, plays itunes, and runs a slideshow of our pictures on the TV.  I decided I wanted to see ALL our pictures (since the dawn of our digital camera), instead of just the pictures from the last four years.  So, I loaded all our pictures on the computer (from the CDs I’d made to ensure we’d always have them).  Over 12,000 pictures (yep, you read that right–obsessed, remember?) later, I have a slideshow showing baby pictures, vacation pictures, everyday pictures, and even boring out of focus pictures.  I have more editing to do, but I’m super happy with the results right now.  At least, I feel a little better about my picture organization.

Now, to get to those albums!

People have asked me how I got into this blogging phenomenon, and while I started reading blogs to be entertained by the stories, I really became invested because it appealed to my scrapbook addiction.  Photo albums have always been a passion of mine, and so of course I jumped on the Creative Memories bandwagon as soon as I could.  The problem was, once I had all these kids and other grown-up responsibilities, I lost time for scrapbooking.  So, I decided to start a blog to record my memories until I found the time again to put them into memory books.  My personal blog was born.  I still keep it up to date with pictures of the kids, their activities, and just the mundane details of our daily life.  It literally takes all of ten minutes to upload a picture and write a little note about it, and it makes me feel like I’m not falling so far behind on my favorite past time.

So, that’s how I got started, and everything else just blossomed from there, because then I found myself actually with something to SAY instead of just pictures to post, but that’s another story all together.  Today, we are talking scrapbooking.  Recently, I’ve had a few friends ask me how to get started with their own personal blog, and these are a few resources I would use to guide you in the right direction.

www.blogger.com is a very user-friendly blog home.  Just click through the directions to set up your blog, and adjust it to your needs.

www.cutestblockontheblock.com is a great site to spruce up your blog.  There are also online directions that teach you how to embed the artwork.  It sounds harder than it is, I promise.

www.scrapblog.com is another site for bells and whistles.

www.blurb.com is a website that will convert your blogs into actual scrapbooks.  It seems ideal, and while I haven’t had the chance to try it out yet, I’m very intrigued.  I have a friend working on this, and will keep you posted as to her success.

So, there you go.  Happy Scrapblogging!

I’m a freak when it comes to pictures.  I love taking them, editing them, printing them, and scrapbooking them.  I love looking through my scrapbooks year after year, and reliving all the wonderful (or not so wonderful)  moments.  The kids love looking through their books, too, and honestly now they ask me to scrapbook so they can see how different they look this year from last.  Sadly, this chapter of my life has me too busy to keep up with everything on that front, but it’s there-on my never ending to do list.

But, I’m always on the lookout for websites, products, or anything to feed my obsession.  Most recently, I stumbled across the website www.scancafe.com. The beauty of this website is that you can send in your old “nondigital” photos, and they will scan them, enhance them, and send them back in digitized form (CDs or DVDs).  It’s been a silent stress of mine that my daughter’s newborn and baby pics are only HARD COPIES from film, and this option totally solves that problem for me!  I’m adding it to my picture to-dos, and now her pictures (and maybe some others of us pre-kid) will be forever archived-ready for scrapbooking at any moment.