Mother's Day book

Yes, it's time to start thinking of your Mom...or your Grandma. I'm putting together about 4 books right now...I won't tell you about all of them just yet (you'll have to check back later), but with Mother's Day right around the corner, there is NOTHING that will knock your Mom over more than a complete book of all her family members, each one getting their own page. I just have each of my 6 siblings send me one email per child (with that child's name in the subject line). They are allowed to attach between 4-8 photos, and then send one paragraph about what the child did during the year. I save them all into their own folder on my computer. Then I just drag n' drop the photos and the text into the predesigned templates...no uploading or anything. Believe me, the only way I can even think about finishing 4 books in the next few weeks (doing a few minutes here and there), is because of My Memories Suite..no kidding. Now I'm using a very simple, basic photo layout here...very clean look. But you can choose incredibly detailed and intricate templates if you like.



And since we're talking about Moms...one of my favorite memories of my Mom is when I was 14 and I had just overheard a bunch of people saying that I was a bad singer. I was crushed, and my Mom spent the weekend building my confidence back up. She's always seen her role as my encourager...not the one who has to tell me that you might as well not dream big since most people fail anyway. It was a great "pay back" day when I actually got to record and publish a couple of CDs...years later of course. So how about you? I'd love to hear about your Mom!


Before I go into detail on really getting started with digital scrapbooking on my next posting, why don't you first make sure you have a good organizational system for all the great memories you're capturing with your camera(s). Here's what I do:

1. Download the stuff off your memory card! (Yup, very basic here)

2. Have a main "My Pictures" folder, and within that, have folders by YEAR, and within those, folders by MONTH, and inside those, folders by EVENT (ie Halloween, trip to Yellowstone, etc.)


That's probably enough work for now :). Really, the biggest job for memory preservation is just making sure that you keep your content organized for easy, fast retrieval.



As I sign off, here's a sample page of a book I'm finishing for some dear friends back East that we don't get to visit near often enough but love them to pieces...Pres and Helen Blake from beautiful Connecticut!