everyday life Archives - Page 4 of 7

Enthusiastic about Life

A man I had just met for the first time told me I was “enthusiastic about life”.

He was right. I am, most of the time.

And thankfully, Mya seems to have inherited my enthusiasm for life and put it on steroids. This girl LOVES life. She smiles as though her face may burst. She takes her sweet time in everything she does (which can sometimes be maddening, but usually reminds me to slow the heck down).

She does her own thing and doesn’t need other people to validate her. She takes things as they come. Care-free. Kind. Full of laughter.

She tells stories better than anyone I know.

And she makes the best faces.

Man, I love her. My “enthusiastic about life” buddy!

Picture Display Movement. Step 4. PRINT

{Click the links for Step 1, Step 2, or Step 3 if you missed any of the previous posts}

Ah. The step that seems to give me the most trouble. Well, at least it used to. Cause things are changing around here. And I already have a good start.

I take loads of pictures. I get them on my computer. And now I have them all organized. But what a bummer if it ends there. What’s the point of taking them if no one ever gets to see them? All those memories, emotions, and STORIES of our lives sit on a hard drive and remain untold. And add to my mom-guilt that is already never ending.

So one of my bigger priorities this year is to print and display the pictures I take of our family. In albums, and other forms of display.

When deciding what to print, I start with the END in mind. I do this before I even take some of the pictures I take. What is the point of taking this picture? What story am I trying to tell? And how am I going to share it? Will it be on the wall? The magnet board? In a slideshow? Or a photo album?

Let’s start with just basic prints for a photo album. I have recently discovered a new way for displaying my photos. It’s called Project Life. And I’m kind of obsessed because it is exactly what I’ve been looking for. (You can visit the website here)

But let’s talk printing for just any photo album OR a photo book you can create online through Blurb or Shutterfly or similar companies.

Here’s a quick and easy way (because those are my most important criteria in pretty much everything these days) to pick the pictures you want to print.

Since I’m still playing “catch up”, here’s how I’m doing it right now.

In iPhoto, I clicked on the folder for 2013 ( I’m starting with the most recent and working my way backwards.) All the pictures from 2013 show up in my screen. I started at the top and scrolled through the pictures. I click on the pictures I want to print and “flag” them.

See how some of those pictures have a little orange flag in the top left corner. To “flag” a picture, you select it (you can select multiple pictures by clicking on one, then clicking on another while holding the “command” key) and then click “flag” at the bottom left of the screen.

Once I scrolled through the whole year, I clicked on the “Flagged” tab on the left of the screen so I can see all the pictures I have flagged.

It also tells you how many photos you have flagged. So for 2013 I have 1103 pictures I want to print.

The next step is to select all those pictures that I flagged and put them in a folder on my desktop. Click on the first picture, hold down Shift and click on the last picture to select them all. Then drag and drop them into a folder. My folder is labeled “TO PRINT“.

Once I have them in the folder, I do a quick edit on those pictures. And by quick edit, I mean quick. I don’t spend hours editing photos. Because if I do, they’ll never get printed. I know this about me. It has to be simple. It has to be quick. It’s just the way I work.

Once edited, I upload them for printing. I’ll have to do this in batches so it doesn’t feel as expensive.

My plan is to stay current with the year I’m on, and add in photos from previous years until I have them all printed. But I have to stay current with this year so I don’t just keep falling further and further behind.

So at the end of January, I will print January’s pictures using this process. I will also print a bundle of the photos from last year. Previous years pictures will go into a Project Life album in no particular order. I just want them where we can see them. Just gettin’ it done.

But the current year will go into albums according to month.

I will have a date set to print pictures each month and a date set to put those pictures in the Project Life albums. Scheduling a consistent and regular time to organize and print photos is more important to me than just about anything else I can schedule.

Step 4. Print those pictures!!!

{To see my suggestions on where to Print pictures, both for an album and for display in other ways in the home, go to this post.}

{To learn more about Project Life, check out my post here for the physical products, or here to learn how to use the Project Life APP, or go to the Project Life website here}

On to Step 5. Displaying your photos.

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Project Life

“Cultivate a good life and document it”

That’s the slogan of Project Life. And I can’t believe it has taken me this long to find out about it.

I am NOT a scrapbooker. The thought of designing and even worse, creating a scrapbook page makes me want to cut my fingers off. It does not appeal to me.

Sure, I love the end product. But even then, I always had an “issue” with scrapbooking because it felt like it was more about the “stuff” than it was about the pictures. And I want my displays to be about the pictures. About the people. About the story.

So I’ve tried several different ways of displaying photos. And, unfortunately, I’ve just left a lot of my photos on my computer where no one gets to see them but me.

Until I found Project Life. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. Simple. Affordable. And something I can keep current with. And it supports my intent to display photos that will enrich our family’s life. Project life is about the STORY, not about the STUFF.

I listened to a 3 day conference Becky Higgins (the creator of Project life) did online and decided we should probably be friends. Because our mission is the same. Document your life. Tell a story. CREATE a story/life (cultivate a good life). And in the process of doing that, you become more grateful, more aware, and more intentional.

“The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either.” Donald Miller

Cultivate a good life, and then tell the story by documenting it.

Project Life goes hand-in-hand with the Tell My Story class.

Here’s how it works. You buy a Core Kit, an Album, and Sheet protectors (I use 40% off coupons and get them at Hobby Lobby or Michaels). Select and print your photos. Then it’s simple. You just slide pictures and journaling cards in pockets. And in no time, you have a completed album. (You can watch video demonstrations on the Project Life website)

There are a few reasons I prefer Project Life over an album you design digitally online.

First, I sit in front of a computer far longer than I’d like to for my business. Any more hours in front of the computer and my eyeballs might fall out.

Second, I like to be able to do it while I’m doing something else (like catching up on all my DVR shows, or sitting by kids while they do homework).

Third, it’s FAST. And super simple. Both of which are requirements in pretty much anything I do these days.

Fourth, they look AWESOME when they’re done. More visually interesting than a traditional photo album with pictures in pockets.

Fifth, my kids can get involved and help. They become invested in the project.

Sixth, you can also journal in the albums. There are “journaling cards” where you can write small amounts of information to supplement (note I said supplement as the pictures are the main focus of the album for me) the pictures.

Seven, you can make some killer unique gifts with Project Life. I’ll post some things I’ve done with them so far in a separate post.

But the biggest reason I appreciate Project Life is that I’m able to look through my albums and see what we’ve accomplished and what efforts we’ve made at living a good life story, but it also helps me see what we’re missing so we can be more intentional about our future and live the life we want to live.

The boxes also make a great spot for folding paper cranes. Folded 30ish of those (out of 1000) for a friend fighting stage 4 Lymphoma.

Try it out. I’m pretty sure you’ll fall in love like I have.
And your kids will love you!

And for those of you who aren’t really the scrapbooking type (which I’m totally not) check out the Project Life App. It’s a game changer!!

Click here to visit the Project Life website.

And for another idea on displaying photos in your home, click here for a super awesome wall display.

Picture Display Movement. Step 3. Organize

{For Step 2 in the Picture Display Movement, click here}

ORGANIZE YOUR PHOTOS:

For me, this step initially felt the most overwhelming. But once I got started, it turned out to be no big deal and went really fast.

I use iphoto for all my photo organizing. BUT. You don’t have to have iphoto to organize photos like this. You can use the same “folder” system on any computer, Mac or PC.

The problem for me initially was the lack of organization within iPhoto and being able to effectively choose what I wanted to print and keep some sense of order in doing that.

All my pictures were in iPhoto, but that’s it. If you don’t use iPhoto, your pictures are all sitting somewhere on your computer waiting to be organized (probably in a native “Pictures” folder). I started using iPhoto in 2009 so I had 5 years worth of photos in there and was overwhelmed by the prospect of organizing them.

Until I came up with this system.

Keep in mind there are hundreds of different ways you can organize photos. Which is what overwhelms me. So I had to pick something simple. That I know I would do and that I would maintain.

To organize the photos that were already in iPhoto, 5 years worth, I created folders for each year as well as a “vacations” folder. See the photo below, under “albums” where it has folders for each year and one for vacations. If you aren’t using iPhoto, just create these folders right on your desktop or in your “Pictures” folder.

I then created an album for each month in that year as well as an album for Holidays in that year. Then I moved those albums into the folder for that year. If you aren’t using iPhoto, just create another folder for EACH month and put those months in the individual years folder (so each year will have 12 folders–one for each month).

Then I clicked on “Events” in my library so all the pictures in my iPhoto library would come up and went month by month and put the pictures in their corresponding folder. The physical pictures don’t move so they are all still visible in the events part of your library. But then when you click on one of the months folder, only that month shows (which can make it easier to find certain photos). If you aren’t using iPhoto, you can sort the photos on your computer according to the “date created” and then drag and drop the pictures into the correct months.

To do this quickly in iPhoto, you can click on the box with pictures from the first of the month, then hold down the shift key and click on the box with pictures from the last of the month. Then just drag and drop them into the appropriate album. You can also drag and drop if you aren’t using iPhoto. Just look at the date on each photo and drag them into the appropriate folder.

{See how the boxes for July are highlighted in yellow. Then just drag those into the “July” album.}

After each month, I would look through that month for any holidays or vacations, highlight those pictures and drag those into the appropriate albums as well. You can have the same picture in multiple albums without moving the original file. It just makes a “copy” of those pictures which takes up very minimal space on your hard drive.

This entire process of organizing 5 years worth of photos (I have about 30,000 photos in my iPhoto library) took me about one hour. Quick. Easy. And simple.

And I feel So. Much.Better now that it’s done.

When I first tried organizing my photos I was doing it by events and dates and each individual kid and it was taking forever. I chose the month-by-month system because I have a general idea when we did certain things so when I’m trying to find a photo, any photo, I just search in the month folder it would have taken place and there it is.

Now to maintain. At the end of each month (on a SET date) I will move those files into their album for the month and put them in the folder for their year. Should take about 2 minutes.

If you don’t have iPhoto, figure out a photo organizing system that works for your family. Just keep it simple and schedule regular times to maintain it. If you have the right system, it really doesn’t take very long.

You can still set up a Folder for each year, then folders for each month and drag the photos into those folders. This works on a PC or a MAC.

Step 3. Organize those photos

Now don’t stop there! Step 4 is to PRINT THOSE PICTURES!!!!

If you have questions, please feel free to contact me! I’m happy to help where I can.

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Sibling love

I am constantly grateful these two boys have each other. To play with. To love. To wrestle. To terrorize. To just BE together. What a life-long blessing to have a sibling to grow up with and be an integral part of your life story. Though we didn’t plan to have them so close together, I am thankful it worked out the way it did. Caleb adores his older brother and I hope it always stays that way. And Carter refuses to sit by Caleb at meal time because he’s “too messy”.

They keep me oh-so-busy. And I’m already dreading the day they both go to school and I’ll be buddy-less during the day. Boo. Double Boo.