A Baker's Dozen: Daily Life in a Large Family

Digital Scrapbooking and Photobooks

Mordecai circa 2009...Photo by Tilly

The sun is beginning to show itself here in my neck of the woods. Despite the groundhog's prediction of an early spring, we are just now seeing and hearing the signs....birds singing, frogs croaking...the sun actually feeling a bit warm.

I don't do well in the winter. I feel tired and sluggish and unmotivated. I've always felt solar powered-like I'm coming out of hibernation every spring. In the past it was probably in large part due to vitamin D deficiency. When I had my levels checked (for the first time ever) during Apollo's pregnancy I was at a 7- the lowest level my midiwife had ever seen in a patient. I now take vitamin D daily, as do my children. 

All that to say, I am now in the midst of several projects- decluttering and preparing for Adalia's garage sale (a fund raiser for her trip), sorting homeschool supplies...and catching up on my digital photos. 

For years I scrapbooked traditionally and it was a great outlet for my creativity...then I began to spend my free time improving my photography and that left less time for scrapbooking. For a while digital scrapbooking seemed like the perfect solution: no clutter, no mess, no waiting for photos to be developed. Now however I am very seriously considering moving primarily to photo books. I have made a couple in the past. I have the first four months of my blog in print, through Blurb.

So, in an effort to clear photos off of my computer, I've been uploading them to Blurb and starting photos books. I store my photos on an external  hard drive, but keep on my computer the ones I intend to print or scrapbook - but these add up quickly until I have hundreds of photos waiting to be "dealt with". It's these photos I've been sorting through. In one evening I completed Solid Rock Family Camp 2010. Last night I made a 7x7 album Thanksgiving 2010- this isn't something I normally even scrapbook, but this year we had a large snowfall and I have great photos of my children playing in the snow that I wanted to display. Last night I also made Apollo Comes Home, a photo book with photos my friend Bridget took when we brought Apollo home from the hospital. I had so many photos (Apollo with each sibling) that I didn't want them "buried" in his scrapbook. I am currently working on School 2010-2011...as soon as we complete our last day of school I will order that one. 

I will post photos when my books arrive in the mail. I can hardly wait!

Another reason for my switch to photo books is space- they take up so much less room than a traditional scrapbook and can be stored on a standard book shelf. I plan to go this route for family albums and "theme" albums but am not quite sure how I will deal with the children's individual albums-each one treasures their scrapbooks.

And on a side note...my computer is a MacBook Pro. When I "delete" a photo or move it into the trash I later have to actually "empty" it or the photos stay on the computer, but just hidden. The other day I was sorting through photos on iPhoto (where Tilly stores her photos and I used to store mine) and found the "empty trash" button. I'd never seen that before! So I emptied it...and deleted 14,002 photos. Oops, looks like I need to empty the trash a little more often.

Playing Hooky

Yesterday morning, I got this desperate email from a friend:

Ugh.

 I don't want to teach today.

Or clean.

Or break up fights.

Or plan for tomorrow's teaching.

Can I take the day off?

Isn't it time to go to the beach yet?

And I knew as a fellow homeschooling mom, it was my job to uplift and encourage her. So I invited her over, and we all played hooky.

We sipped coffee shakes.

And fixed lunch for sixteen children.

And then, so we didn't feel completely guilty, we got productive and did  some digital scrapbooking.

 

  
 

And today? Today we hit the books.

   

Photographer's Nesting Syndrome

That's what one of my friends called it when I mentioned on Facebook that I had cleared 1,500+ photos off of my computer. I had to agree, it really did make sense. The need to clean, purge, organize.

 I shoot all of my photos in RAW, so the files are huge. And because they are RAW instead of jpeg, I can't just upload them to be printed. It requires, at the very minimum, that every photo be converted to jpeg. And of course there are all the little adjustments I can do in Photoshop. I do not fiddle with every snapshot I take...I take way too many photos to even make that possible. Buy my point is, purging my computer of photos is an involved, lengthy process. And I have been at it again. This time I have converted and filed all of the photos I intend to scrapbook, uploaded my snapshots for print, and put the whole lot of them onto my hard drive. Yay me.

In the process of doing all this (and dare I say- getting caught up) I have been scrapbooking long over due photos- before they disappear into the realm of my hard drive or a shoe box. So, without further ado, more new pages:

 

Happy Weekend!  

 

Photos from Pixel to Page

It's pouring down rain and we're in the middle of a windstorm, so I don't think I'll get to play with my new lens today :( I was cleaning a bunch of images off of my computer yesterday and getting others ready to upload for print, when I was seized by the sudden urge to scrapbook. And so I did.

 

You've seen most, if not all, of these pictures before, but sometimes its fun to see how they look as a finished product.

These were all created in Photoshop CS3, and will be printed at ScrapbookPictures.com as 12x12 photos.

 

On these two pages I put some of my favorite out takes from the photoshoot. I have an 8x10 of my favorite "portrait" one on the wall, but these fun snapshots are just as fun to a mother!

So there you have it, from pixel to page. I love the simplicity of digital scrapbooking. 

ETA: I just noticed the blog  cropped off the right hand edge of each layout, so you'll have to use your imagination....I assure you the complete page does exist.

  
 

Ah, That Feels Good...

I finally bit the bullet and had prints made of my latest digital pages. It's been so long since I scrapbooked (digitally) I don't even remember. See that page of Tucker in the pool? I made it in 2008...I was clearing photos off of my computer, uploading them and transferring them to my hard drive. While I did that, I uploaded all of my digital pages to Scrapbookpictures.com and had them printed. Twenty-seven 12x12 pages and 4 8 1/2x11 (for our school binder). What a great feeling to first oooh and ahhh over all these pages pack them into the appropriate binders.

My top 5 reasons for loving digital scrapbooking:

* being able to add huge pictures- then print my text right over top

* never running out of paper or letter stickers

* the sleek visual feel to them- they often strike me as magazine ads instead of scrapbook pages

* it's cheaper- can you imagine if I had to print a photo of Tucker that size, but a 12x12 piece of cardstock, letter stickers and print the smaller photos? It would certainly cost more that the $2.49 I paid for the page

* no supplies needed- just my laptop

And for inquiring minds: I use Photoshop CS3 to make my pages.

The Five Minute Scrapbook Page

I've been on a mission these last couple of days...to get my photos in albums where they belong. I've been crankin' these babies out faster than I can drink a cup of coffee. Grab the photos, cardstock, a piece or two of patterned paper. Stick down and journal (by hand- no doubt full of spelling and grammar errors) and shove it in an album.

Since I've been this photography kick, I take bizillions of beautiful photos of my children...and let them pile up...if I remember to print them that is. 

Back in the film days it was all so easy. I would develop one roll at a time, sort out the keepers from the tossers from the file-away-ers. I would scrapbook the photos right away, file the rest, and wait for my next roll.

Now I take pictures nearly every day. Lots of pictures. I have more children. More albums. I homeschool. I also take pictures for other people. And those photos need to be processed, uploaded, ordered, etc. 

Wish me luck, cause I'm off to scrap some more.

Just a Quickie

I put together this morning. Yup, that's our girl, Princess all the way!

Scrapbooking at the Dentist

My new hobby

Who could have imagined I could be so productive in the waiting room?

I can hardly wait for Enoch's next appointment...

Two Years Ago Today...

I posted my very first blog entry. It was a photo of the three children we were adopting from Liberia. I figured for $4.95 a month, a blog would be a great, inexpensive way to update close  friends and family during our adoption. Immediately I began to write about our daily experiences and found there is almost never a dull day when raising ten or more children. I have always loved writing and loved photography. Those two came together perfectly when I discovered scrapbooking eleven years ago. Now, with a large busy family, I have found blogging meets my need to record our life in words and photos. 

And now digital scrapbooking has entered the picture. 

I created page on of this layout (above) the evening we came home from the aquarium. As you can see, instead of background paper, I added a photo that I took of a diver feeding the fish and lowered the opacity. Then I layered my photos and text on top. I love the crisp, clean look of  this page. No digital scrapbook supplies used, either. Just my photos and Photoshop.

And page two I finished last night. As you see, I used the same method for lowing the opacity of a photo and using it as a background. I typed my journaling right on my photo. I knew I wanted to include the photo of us having a picnic, but I also wanted lots of other photos. If I made the picnic photo a 4X6, you'd need a magnifying glass to see everyone. With this method, you can still see everyone but the photo doesn't visually dominate the page. The only digital scrapbooking element I used on this page was a ribbon, to join the top and bottom. This style of scrapbooking isn't for everyone, but I love the look. I also love that I don't have to wait for my photos to be developed, then buy supplies, then scrapbook. Our trip to the aquarium is now documented. I blogged about it, I scrapbooked it. I will now put these photos on my hard drive and be done.

And now, back to my anniversary. What's a blogging anniversary without a giveaway?  This year I am putting together a package of some of my favorite things:

Chocolate

Coffee

Music

Scrapbooking

And more.

Just leave a comment. Tell us how long you've been reading the blog and how you found it. Or just leave your name. Anyone who leaves a comment will be entered into a drawing to win.

Recent (Digital) Pages

 

How many little boys can say that?

Okay, I don't know why these pages are showing up connected. They aren't connected on my post, but Typepad isn't letting me move them. Sorry.

Oh, and try to imagine those side by side. I didn't want to make them any smaller or you wouldn't be able to see them. I had these printed 12x12 and they are now in Tucker's album. This was my second order from Scrapbookpictures.com and I was once again perfectly happy with the quality. And I'm picky when it comes to photos.

And here's one for our school notebook from our Pioneer Days. I

I was determined at the beginning of last year to keep up with the photos from our school projects. You know, scrapbook or record them as they happened. But alas, here I am in July, frantically trying to finish scrapbooking last year's projects, and plan a new school year. Arg.

And for those newer readers, I keep a regular binder for each school year. In it are lists (incomplete, cause I am not organized enough to find all those strips of paper I scribble on) of books we have read, photos of projects worked on, samples of the children's work, all in page protector. Just a binder, to prove to myself that we did actually accomplish something. Or, to prove that we at least had some fun.

Okay, I'm off. I've got a busy day today.