Air Assault Graduation!

I am very proud to announce that my second son has graduated from Air Assault. He is the one that is a Cav Scout, stationed at Fort Campbell with the 101st Airborne, home of the Screaming Eagles. He leaves for a Warrior Leadership course at Fort Knox in a few days. It will be his second anniversary in the Army tomorrow.

Organizing Family Photos

In another chapter of my ongoing organizational efforts, I am trying to get my family photos organized.

I am also an avid scrapbooker, so have some photos that are in scrapbooks. Most of the other photos have long since been removed from those destructive magnetic photo albums that were so popular in the 1970s. They absolutely will destroy your photos. These photos are stored in 3 photo boxes made specifically for photo storage. Originally I had divided the photos in the boxes, placing all of my dh's family pictures in one box, all my family's pictures in a second box; and then all of us and our children and grandchildren in the third box. This has gotten a little unorganized over time; since when the kids look through the boxes they see no need to return them to the proper box. I have also made an effort to label each photograph on its back. I include who is in the picture, where it was taken, when it was taken, any occasion that it may be of, etc. Again this is not 100% completed, as I occasionally find unlabeled photos in the boxes.

The biggest problem for organizing photos is trying to organize all the digital photos as they number into the 1000s. With digital cameras, no requiring any expensive developing, to see our images, we shoot infinitely more pictures. A birthday party now can have 200 photos; instead of the 24 that the roll of film limited us to.

Also being a genealogist, I have scanned 100s of family photographs from near and far family members.

The problem comes in labeling, organizing, and ultimately being able to easily and quickly locate a picture when I want it. And I admit that I am probably only doing a C- job of digital photo organization.

I have made many stabs at getting them organized. Some of my efforts have been:

1. I created a folder on my desktop that I named Pictures; and I drag all pictures on my computer into it. So that they are at least all in one place.
2. I have created subfolders in the Pictures folders in the following categories:

• Crafts - pictures of crafts I have done, or pictures of crafts I have seen that I would like to do or use for inspiration. There are sub-folders within this sub-folder for the various types of crafts I do; such as: Quilting, Crocheting, etc.
• I have a subfolder for each family surname that I research, and place all photos of that family in each folder. Within the Talbert folder I have a subfolder for each of my children, one for pets, one for places we go (trips, vacations, etc), one for reunions, etc.
• Scrapbooking - I am hugely obsessed with scrapbooking and have a massive folder with numerous subfolders about scrapbooking, such as: Sizzix, Cricut, Titles, Tags, Page Layouts, Pages I Have Done, Alphabets, Fonts, Borders, etc.

Now this may seem very organized but not really so much so. As there are 1000s of photos in there and there are many, many folders which are only labeled by the date that the computer imported them from the digital camera. Also when one of the kids stops by they pull their memory card out of their cameras and download a copy of all their photos onto my computer. Which is good because I have all the pictures and also good because they have a backup else where of their pictures. However, if they don't delete the photos from their camera after downloading to my computer; the next time they download it will download not only the new pictures they have taken since then, but they will redownload additional copies of the photos that were downloaded last time. This makes for tedious matching up to find the duplicates and delete them.

I guess, to put it into perspective. Yes, organizing is a necessary but tedious part of this; but that is only because we are blessed with the technology to save our littlest memories so easily. Our ancestors, would have priced as a priceless heirloom even one photo of that dear baby or of mother and father. So we are blessed, just overwhelmed. Like anything else, working on it bit by bit and having an organizational plan can help us get organized and remain organized.

Good luck with preserving those visual memories.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to everyone.

All four of my sons are here and one of my daughters. So five of seven is pretty good. Thankfully none of the kids are currently deployed; although my third son is here on leave.
He has to report to Fort Hood, Texas next week and is probably going to deploy to Afghanistan for a year soon.
My oldest daughter is still stationed at Langley, so she is in Virginia today.
Second daughter is currently at her Annual Training with the Florida National Guard.

Cardmaking Elements Session

Since my recent organization efforts that I just blogged about, I was able to have a session of cardmaking elements. I yanked my tin of cardmaking rubber stamps and my caddy of inks and turned on a movie I had tivoed.
While I was watching it, I rubber stamped one of almost every rubber stamp in my cardmaking tin.
I used mostly black and a sepia brown color.
I tore around each image for the effect.
I have them all stored in a large 8x10 envelope; and while I am waiting for a webpage to load [I have way slow dial-up]; I will pull one out and color it with markers or colored pencils or chalks. Then I will have these elements all finished and ready to use on a card.

Cardmaking Organization

I have been organizing and decluttering all my crafting items. Giving away any that do not work for me, to make way for what does.
My dh seen how much I was getting rid of and asked if I was getting rid of all my good stuff. But I told him that I wasn't getting rid of my good stuff; I was decluttering so that I could find and use my good stuff.
I went through all my rubber stamps and on the first cut got rid of anything that I didn't like or could not imagine using.
Then after they were pared down some; I went through them a second time and separated the ones that I would use for greeting cards or ATCs or for mail art; from the others that were mostly for scrapbooking or altered art and art journaling.
Then I found a very large decorative tin and I put all my cardmaking rubber stamps in the tin; so even while they are just sitting on the shelf they are decorative looking. Plus when I decide to work on cardmaking I can just grab the tin and move it to wherever I am going to work at.
All my blank envelopes are in a box, standing on edge so I can flip through them to get to the one I want.
I got the majority of them at the local flea market; the lady had a large box about the size of a medium microwave and it was full of envelopes also all were Hallmark greeting card envelopes. She had a sign on it saying $4.00; so I asked her how many do I get for $4.00? She said the whole box and naturally I snatched up that deal.
I have also found at the flea market embossed greeting card blanks; using some of them last Christmas to make my own Christmas cards.
The scrapbooking rubber stamps I have stored in 3 drawer white plastic cabinets that I got rather inexpensively from Wal-mart. I have them organized by theme; like frames, Christmas, doodles, etc.
My idea is that the easier it is to grab my things and get working on a craft project when I have a few minutes, the more I can accomplish.

Ongoing Genealogy Organization

Since the dial-up internet at my house is as fast as an arthritic turtle on crutches; I am at my oldest son's and he has dsl; so I can actually post.
On the other hand, not being able to get online has helped with real life. My house is clean all the time.
I have been doing some major genealogy organizing lately. I have discovered that some of my old files haven't been touched since 1996-1999. Doesn't seem possible that it has been that long.
What I Have Accomplished
1. Have located all genealogy papers and notebooks.
2. Cleaned off 2 rows on the bookshelf and have all the genealogy research notebooks arranged on there.
3. Gathered all genealogy files on my computer and moved them all to a folder named "Genealogy".
4. Gathered all loose genealogy papers and sorted them by family name.
5. Took all sorted genealogy papers and placed them in plastic page protectors and stuck them in proper surname binder. At this point I simply want them in the right binder; I am not trying to deal with them another further than that. So I stick multiple papers in each page protector.
6. On the computer I opened the Genealogy folder and made a subfolder for each surname that I am researching plus a subfolder titled "Organization". Then I moved each file into the appropriate subfolder. On a side note, some of these files have not been accessed since 1996-1999.
7. Now that the files are organized and the notebooks in place; when I have a few minutes to work on the genealogy; I either open a file and work on entering the information from the file into my genealogy database program or pick a paper and enter that information.
Ongoing Plans for my Genealogy
1. Eventually, all the random papers in the page protectors in the genealogy research binders need to be entered into the genealogy database program.
2. All the information in the random genealogy files in the Genealogy folder and subfolders needs to be entered into the genealogy database program.
3. Once all this hard, boring, and tedious paperwork and files are organized and entered into the genealogy database program then I can get back to the fun part which is the research and actually finding the missing pieces.
Inspiration and Guidance
Dear Myrt genealogy column has a monthly genealogical organizational advice post that is most helpful to getting your genealogical life / business in order. Just google Dear Myrt + genealogy; and I am sure that you will find her most helpful.

Expecting a Grandson

Found out that my third son and wife are expecting a little boy. We are all excited, and are awaiting his arrival late this summer.