Merry Christmas!

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

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Yes, you read that correctly. All orders in the US will have a $5 Flat Rate shipping....with one exception - if you spend $50 or more you get FREE SHIPPING!

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Easy Gift - Small Handmade Desk Calendar

Need a quick gift idea? These little desk-top calendars make a great little gift.

Supplies Needed:
One 3.5" x 5" acrylic photo frame (Michaels, AC Moore or similar will carry them)
Three sheets of white 8.5" x 11" cardstock
Excel Calendar Template (send me an e-mail and I will send it to you)
Rubber Stamps (check out the Stampendous Holiday Chick Set)
Markers
Ink Pads
Small Clear Bag
Ribbon

Instructions:

1. Print out the three pages of the calendar on the white 8.5" x 11" cardstock
2. Cut out each month - there are gray lines that guide you to the correct size
3. Stamp, doodle, color and/or decorate each month
4. Insert January 2008 in the acrylic photo holder
   
5. Place the Acrylic photo holder with January and the remaining months in a small clear bag and tie off with a piece of ribbon
   

Campaign for REAL Scrapping

Let's face it. Some scrapbookers get carried away in trying to make the perfect page and they can't see the forest for the trees! The whole purpose of scrapbooking is to create a keepsake that documents your family history. The good and the bad! Although many may not like to journal, (me included!), it is very important to document everything - Who, What, When, Where and Why! You may look back at your Holiday pictures a couple years from now and not remember how excited your kid was when they found that Santa had eaten the cookies and left them their first bike!

So, don't worry about trying to get your layouts like the ones in the magazines. Just go with the flow, do what you like and get your photos and stories documented!

Long Term Photo Care - Part 1

Part 1 - Digital Image Management

How do you store your digital photos? On the camera card? On CD? On your hard drive? Scattered around different cameras, computers and iPods?

There is no time like the present to get your digitial images organized! There are several different options available but the easiest is storing them in file folders on your hard drive. Now how you store them and organize them is up to you. Some people like to organize by years or dates and others like to store them based on events. You can also mix it up - an example would be to have a Christmas Folder with subfolders for each year. If you don't know how to make folders, just shoot me an e-mail and we can walk through it.

Each digital image has EXIF data associated with it. EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File and it stores information such as the date, time and exposure settings for each picture. Some computer programs will also allow you to store tags or keywords on the EXIF file so you can search for and find your photos faster. There are several programs on the market today, such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel PaintShop Pro that will allow the user to edit their photos as well as tag and store them so they are easy to find. Adobe Photoshop will allow you to put tags on your photos so you could have tags for Mom, Dad and Brother. But, if you wanted to find the photos with just Mom and Dad you could search for pictures that had both of them in them. How great is that?!

Another option would be the online storage sites such as WinkFlash, Kodak or Shutterfly. These sites typically allow the user to create albums that can be shared online with family and friends.

So, however you decide to organize your photos. Get them organized because next month we will discuss backing them up! Yes...it needs to be done! :)