Hawaii Photobook is Finished!!

I just ordered my Hawaii Photobook! I've been working on it ever since we got back, and I finished it today! I can't wait to see the printed version!

I opted to do a digital photobook this time, rather than a traditional scrapbook like I usually do. There were several reasons, but the biggest one was to save money. To have all of my pictures printed, 900 of them, would have cost a lot of money. Plus the album ($20+), and all of the paper and stickers, it is a big investment. I knew I could go digital for a lot cheaper. I did buy a few digital kits, but the total for all of them was $20. And shutterfly is always having sales, and promotions on their photobooks, so I wasn't sure when I would be able to print it, since I would have to wait for a sale. Well, I got an e-mail yesterday from shutterfly for a free photobook (a value of $23.99)!! And they are having a 50% off photobooks sale too!
 My original price was going to be:
$116.98
+ $11.99 S/H
+ $9.35 tax
Total = 138.32

This is how it broke down after all of the sales:
$58.49 (50% off)
- $23.99 (Free code)
- $11.99 (Free shipping code)
+ $2.76 (tax)
Total = $37.26

Total saved = $101.06!!!!!

I am so proud of my Awesome Deal!!!

You can check out my photobook below...

Click here to view this photo book larger

You'll love Shutterflys award-winning photo books. Try it today.

Michael's Scrapbook - Up To Date!

Over the past few weeks, since I completed my Christmas Scrapbook, I have been working on getting Michael's Scrapbook up to date. The last pages that were done, were from August. So, here are September through the end of December! (I know the pictures are not that great. I just snapped them really quick with my phone, and tried to avoid getting a glare from the overhead light.)

September

Apple Picking

Disney World

Seminole, FL

October

Halloween

November

Riverbanks Zoo

December

Christmas

It is a wonderful feeling knowing that all of my scrapbooks are up to date! Now I can focus on my plan for my Hawaii album! More on that later. 

Christmas Scrapbook - 2013 Done

I completely all if the 2013 Christmas pages today!! And with those, my second christmas scrapbook is full!! 

Here are some pictures of the finished pages.

More scrapbook talk

When I finished with my Disney album, it was time to start catching up on Michael's. He already has one complete album that goes from birth to December 2012. 

Then I started a new one in January and plan to keep all of his albums consistent with the calendar year instead of birthday year. 

I'm not sure if I will be able to fit two or three years in this album, therefore I have left the date blank.  

This album went up to Easter, so I had a lot to catch up on.

These pictures are from April to August. 

 I like to do a page for each month or season, depending on how many pictures I have. I also do a page for each trip we take and for each holiday. His birthday usually gets three or four pages. 

I never liked to add journal boxes to my scrapbooks, but lately I love doing them. It helps me to remember the date and what and where each picture is. 

I hate to get behind on my scrapbooks, and I know some people who are years behind. But for me, and my type A personality, I like to have everything finished as quickly as I can. 

One thing that helps me stay on top of these albums, is having my pictures printed. Every time snapfish or shutterfly offer free or penny prints, I order pictures. Sometimes I don't have any pictures that I need to print, like right now. Snapfish had their penny print sale going on. 

Then other times, I have a ton of pictures that I need to print, so I sometimes have I wait for another sale to get them all printed. 

Either way, I can't scrapbook, if I don't have pictures. 

I don't know if I will always do traditional scrapbooking, or I may switch to digital one day. Either way, I love my scrapbooks and I am so glad that I have them. 

Scrapbooking... I am way behind

So I started scrapbooking all of my pictures from last Christmas. Yeah, I am way behind. But I figure better late than never. I have a Christmas scrapbook that I add to each year. Except it was getting pretty full, so I decided to start a new one beginning with Michael's first Christmas. Hopefully I will be able to get all of last year scrapbooked before this Christmas.

I know it is hard to read in the picture, but it says Michael's first Christmas.

My Latest Project

I'm calling this: Project Picture Organization!

I hadn't had any pictures printed in several months! I know... I know... Not a good idea. Well, a few weeks ago, I set out to print all of my pictures from Michael's first year and get them organized. I had his first month and a half printed, but that means I had 11 more months to print.  

I had gotten an e-mail from snapfish about their print special for .01 cent prints! But before I could order any, I had to upload them all to the website. That took several hours just to load them all on there. I ended up ordering 450 pictures from snapfish! At the same time, the Kodak website was having a special. 200 prints plus shipping, for $1.99! So, I uploaded pictures to that website, and ordered just about 200 pictures. Also, at the same time, I had received a free print credit for a photo book from shutterfly. So I put together my photo book, and just for creating an account, I got 50 free print credits, and then for ordering the photo book, I got another 30 free print credits. So, I ordered another 80 pictures. So, I ended up ordering a total of 730 pictures!!! Then I had to figure out what to do with all of them when I got them.

First, I knew I wanted all of the candid pictures of Michael in a photo album, since that would be way to much to scrapbook. So, I bought these cute photo albums at hobby lobby. They each hold 200 pictures.  

The first album has from his birth through October.

The second album has from Halloween through his first birthday. 

Here are all the pictures I have left.

I have a Christmas scrapbook that I add to each year, so all the Christmas pictures will go in that. I also have a Disney scrapbook that I add to every time we go, so our trips we took in December and in July will both go in that.

I also have a photo album of pictures of me and and my friends through the years. So, all the pictures that we have taken with all of the babies together, and our trip to Charleston that we all took in June went in there.

That just leaves all of the pictures from the different things we did as a family. Charleston, Edisto, Pumpkin Patch, Baseball game, zoo etc...

My plan is to buy some more photo albums, and put all of those pictures together in chronological order.

The whole point of this project is to get the pictures off the computer and organized. I don't want to end up with tons of pictures that never got printed. Or with tons of pictures just sitting in boxes. Pictures are so important to me, and I want to have them in a place I can look at them and cherish them.

Now I am at the point where I have to decide what I want to scrapbook, or what just goes in a regular photo album.  But I have a whole other post about that planned for tomorrow.

So there you have it, my picture organization project. Let's hope it doesn't take another 11 months for me to print pictures!

Scrapbooks and Stamps

Here are my latest scrapbook pages that I've completed in the past few weeks. I have been working on getting my Disney Book up to date, and had to add the pictures from our trip in July..
Also, this past Saturday, I went to a Stampin Up! lunch and I made these cards. I think they turned out really cute. My Sister Kelly went too, and she made some really cute Thank You cards. Check them out HERE.

The next few weeks, I'm going to work on making some more cards to have in my "stock" and also work on Valentine's cards to send out to my family and friends.