the pictures are conquered...

I am so relieved to have this job finished. I am a bit anal about my photos. Being a scrapbooker, photos are extremely important to me. I take lots and lots of pictures. It's amazing how many more I take each year (for instance, my first year, 2003, with a digital camera, all of my photos fit on one CD. This last year, 2008, it took 6 CD's to hold them all! Anyway, I am also very paranoid about my computer crashing and losing my precious photos. So here's the process to ensure their safekeeping. I upload from my camera fairly regularly. I do not delete them from the memory card at that time. About every 3 or 4 months I upload everything to Shutterfly. They have on -line storage for free, so I know my photos will be safe there. Then at the end of each year, I burn all of my photos onto CD's (2 copies-one to keep at the in-laws in case of fire)and clear them off of my hard drive so that isn't so bogged down. Then I will clear them off of my camera memory card when I am sure they are backed up in at least two spots.Whew! It's a full time job keeping up with this process. But it's worth it! Anyway, all of these CD's were just piling up by the computer and whenever I wanted to find a certain picture, I would have to root through the stack to find the right disk. So here is the final product. I used a pretty binder I already had and bought a packet of CD sleeves to fill it with. I went through all the CD's and labeled what was on each one. Some of the later years have more than one CD per year so I labeled which folders were on each one so I'd know exactly where to go to find the picture I wanted.

I cut out circle labels with my scrapping tool and just inserted them into the sleeve in front of the CD. They are not attached to the CD. Then I put them all in order chronologically. I keep the binder right next to the computer so they are handy and available whenever I need to have access to an old picture. And the fact that the binder is pink with a flower on it just makes me happy. The presentation of it is just as important as the contents, in my opinion!

I am glad to have this project completed. It was something I wanted to get done for quite awhile. I am also trying to do a better job keeping all of my current year's pictures organized on my hard drive. I always put them in folders so that system is figured out. I just need to downsize and delete bad ones on a regular basis so I don't keep multiplying the number of pics I have each year. I think 6 CD's from one year is plenty!

That's enough yacking for now. Kids will be home soon.

Toodles!