New project

Journal Your Christmas/December Daily starts tomorrow! I'm looking forward to it. I've decided to use an 8x8 format. I started working on my cover. I used a canvas covered Zutter set of covers. I broke out the Winter Limited Edition distress inks and some glimmer mist as well as chalk spray. I had some fun and am liking the direction this is headed. Here it is in it's beginnings, bad photo and all:

Dealing with Photo Overload

We've been home from California for almost a week--not quite, but almost. We had a blast! I'll share bits of the trip in future posts. Once I got past the jet lag, I jumped into photo overload. We have more than 1000 photos from the trip--I know, big surprise--NOT! I've spent many hours sifting through photos, organizing, and editing. It's a big job--but I managed to save myself some time before I even arrived home.
Tips for managing a ton of vacation/travel photos.
1. If at all possible, upload from your camera card to your laptop each and every day. If you absolutely can't do this, consider having a separate camera card for each day, or look for a photo service or kiosk that will put each day's photos on a thumbdrive or dvd/cd. This builds in a base organization system, and protects against lost photos.  

2. As soon as possible, quickly flip through your photos and delete those blurry, under/over exposed shots that you know you can't do anything with---you know the ones.

3. Make a folder for each event/location from your vacation. Put all of your photos in these categories, but keep them in date sub-folders i.e. We spent several days at Disneyland so my Disneyland folder has a sub-folder for each day. This helps automatically break your photos into chunks to handle. It also helps with story-telling. There are many photos that I might not know exactly what was going on if I didn't know which day it was taken.

4. Tag, tag, tag---use whatever photo organizing software you like, but tag those images. This will really be helpful if you have several people taking photos with different cameras. If you don't know how your software works, find an online tutorial. It might make you a little crazy now, but in the long run, your photos will thank you.  

5. Always keep the original image of any photos that you edit. There are a ton of reasons for doing so--a post on its own---so trust me for now.

Hold on Mickey--We're coming!

Our long planned trip to California is right around the corner. We've been planning, discussing, pre-paying, and researching. One of the highlights of our trip will be the two days spent at DisneyLand and Disney California Adventure. I've been gearing up and reading park tips and photo tips. I've become educated to a small extent about Hidden Mickeys--and then of course there are all of the iPhone apps that are available. This is going to be so much fun and it's only a slice of the entire trip!

Trick or Treat!

My all time favorite photo from last night's trick or treat extravaganza:

We had so much fun! I piled on the makeup and glitter, added some temporary tattoos and a witch hat to join in the costume festivities. A friend of mine saw this pic and said I looked like a prostitute LOL! (Thanks Judy!) This was the first Halloween in a long time that C actually got to go t-o-ting in our neighborhood. Usually, we have a hockey game. We met up with two of his friends and their moms to hit the streets. Along the way, people would ask Chef Christopher to whip them up a treat. He willingly obliged and produced imaginary eggs, cookies, and pizza. Later on, C handed out candy to his fellow t-o-t revelers. I think he had almost as much fun handing out as getting treats.