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Stuff I Love: Pinterest

POSTED ON April 22, 2011 IN Stuff I Love

Happy Friday everyone! I originally planned a different post for today but as it’s not quite ready yet, I’ve decided to save it for next week. So instead today I’m going to introduce to you new weekly feature here on the blog called Friday Faves.

As I mentioned in my last post, my Faves layouts are absolutely hands-down one of my favorite scrapbooking projects ever. I LOVE them.

But one disadvantage with the Faves layouts is that in limiting my journaling to only a 10 item bite-sized list, I don’t get a lot of room to expand on the story behind some of my faves.

Enter Friday Faves.

Each Friday here on the ol’ blog, I’ll be sharing all the deets behind one of my current obsessions faves: what it is, why it is oh-so-rockin’ my world right now and why you should love it too. These faves may or may not be scrapbooking related (in fact, I can guarantee they won’t all be) but I can guarantee they will be fun and hey, you might even discover a new fave of your own!

For my first Friday Fave, I have chosen a fave that might be a bit obvious because it has been all over the place lately, but because it has rocked my world and been the cause of many a late night, it only made sense to me to make it my first Friday Fave.

So without further ado, today’s Friday Fave is…

drumroll please…

Pinterest!

Screen shot 2011 04 22 at 4 41 06 PM

Now if you’re a digital scrapbooker you’ve probably already heard about Pinterest but for any of you who have been living under a digi-land rock, hehe, here’s a quick rundown.

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking site that allows you to “pin” images from around the web onto virtual pinboards. Think a bulletin board full of inspiration images for the internet age.

In addition to being able to pin your own images from around the web, you can also see and “repin” images others have pinned, as well as follow the boards of people and friends who’s style you love. The site is full of amazing eye candy in pretty much any category you can think of: photography, crafting, home design, web design, typography, food, humor, you name it.

Why I Love Pinterest

There are so many reasons why I love Pinterest.

The amazing eye candy.

The ease of seeing all my bookmarks in one place.

The millions of new ideas and inspiration I get every time I browse the site.

But what I really really love about Pinterest is this:

It’s given me a much much clearer picture of my own personal style.

 

Pinterest nettio

For me, the magic of Pinterest isn’t just in pinning individual images, it’s in seeing the patterns that emerge across those images. What colors/texture/patterns/styles show up time and time again in my fave images?

When I look at my boards page, it quite literally feels like it’s Me. On a page. Like someone took everything I absolutely love and collected it in one space (which I suppose they did, LOL! ). It’s been a great way to really discover what I truly love when it comes to my overall style.

Pinterest art

For example, if you had asked me a few months ago to describe my say, home design style, I wouldn’t really have known what you tell you. I probably would have rambled on about nothing too traditional or fussy, haha.

But ever since I started using Pinterest, I feel like I’ve gotten such a clearer picture in my head about what my style really is because I’m seeing a pattern in the things I like. Like I love crisp whites with rich woods. Rich colors and bold, graphic patterns. Modern, clean lines. Photo walls. Well styled shelving.

It’s definitely giving me an added boost of focus and confidence when it comes to actually choosing items for our home which is awesome considering I tend to be super indecisive when buying anything above like $50, haha. That’s the main reason why we’re still rockin’ folding chairs in the dining room. Haha.

Pinterest home

So if you’re a scrapbooker who hasn’t quite found their style yet, Pinterest can be an awesome way to really get a better feel for the types of design and layouts you love. Start pinning all your favorite layouts in digi-land and look for the common threads among them, like colors, white space, patterns, photos etc. I guarantee it’ll give you a much clearer picture about what you truly love.

And with that I’m going to end my little ode to Pinterest and this first edition of Friday Faves. If you want to see more, you can check me out on Pinterest here.

So what are you all obsessed with lately? Any other Pinterest lovers out there? Let me know in the comments!

Have a great Easter weekend everyone!

Fraudulent Drugs Are A Huge Global Problem

POSTED IN Stuff I Love, Tips & Tricks

Why Every Scrapper Should Scrap a Faves Page

POSTED ON April 19, 2011 IN 5th Scrapiversary, the Faves

As I mentioned in my last post, April 7th 2011, was officially five years to the day from when I created my first digital scrapbooking layout. Boy how time flies.

This week, in celebration of my 5th Scrap-i-versary, we’ll be continuing our trip down digiscrappy memory lane by revisiting some of my favorite digital scrapbooking hits and misses over the past five years, beginning with one of my absolute favorite scrapbooking projects ever: the Faves layouts. Or as I like to lovingly refer to it: the little scrapbooking project that would forever shape my future scrapbooking layouts. (Oh yeah, it’s that awesome.)

It’s All About the Faves

All you gallery stalkers out there have most likely seen my Faves layouts floating around in the digi galleries before, but for any of you newbies out there, here’s a quick refresher of what my Faves layouts are all about.

Back in January 2009, I decided that every month for that year, I would create a digital scrapbooking layout documenting my top ten favorite things from that month. My faves could be anything I wanted: people, places, things, experiences – anything and everything I was loving at that moment was fair game.

But I did set myself a few loose guidelines:

  1. My list had to include exactly ten items – no more, no less.
  2. Journaling had to be in list form but numbers were optional.
  3. The title for the layout had to include the month followed by the word FAVES.
  4. Each layout had to include a NEW self-portrait taken during that specific month. (I know some of you camera-shy peeps out there are cringing at the very thought of this, haha.)

Everything else was entirely up to me – color, design, kit, etc. (Well technically it was ALL up to me, but, uh, you get the idea, haha.)

The one thing I didn’t do was set myself a specific timeline for completing the layouts. No layout must be finish by the 8th minute of the 15th hour on the 1st day of the new month requirements here. If I scrapped my April faves on April 28th but didn’t scrap my May faves until July, I was totally ok with that. As much as I believe in the power of a deadline, I knew setting deadline for myself might quickly make this project a chore which I definitely wanted to avoid.

The Faves: the 2009 Edition

By the end of the 2009 Faves project I had scrapped these 12 layouts which I absolutely love:

Faves 2009

Uh…December?…December?…Come in, December…

Or uh, these 12 11 layouts.

Confession time…

Yes, I discovered as I was writing this post thatapparently I never actually scrapped a December 2009 Faves page. Oops. Looks like I have a little bit more scrapbooking to do, haha. (Guess it’s a good thing I didn’t set a deadline to complete these, huh? LOL)

Anyway, *clears throat* moving on…

By the time December 2009 rolled around, I was ready to be done with the Faves layouts. Don’t get me wrong. I loved loved loved creating these layouts. They were most definitely one of my favorite scrapbooking projects I had ever done. Just looking at them makes me smile a big goofy grin.

But by the end of 2009, Adam had been deployed for a total of six months and the stress of him being gone had slowly taken it’s toll on my scrapbooking mojo. (Which is to say my digi mojo pool was at the bare minimum.) So I decided to take a break from the structure of the Faves for awhile and see where I ended up.

The Faves: the 2011 Edition

As 2010 progressed, I found myself more and more really missing scrapping my Faves layouts.

  • I missed the simplicity of the list journaling. Seriously, easiest journaling ever.
  • I missed having new monthly photos on hand for All About Me layouts. I know, I’m weird. Haha.
  • I missed the challenge of coming up with fun, creative ways to scrap each month’s list in a new way.
  • And I really missed having that monthly snapshot of my life to look back on. Having a moment captured in time like that is so cool to me.

So when January 2011 rolled around, I decided to begin my monthly Faves layouts again.

Same rules. New faves. Two years later.

This is the lovely layout I scrapped back in February to document my January 2011 Faves:

January Faves 2011

And for reference purposes, here’s a larger version of the layout I scrapped documenting my January 2009 Faves:

Seeing these two layouts – ten faves, two years apart – reminds why I LOVE these Faves layouts oh-so-very-much. (And not just because my drop shadowing has clearly improved, haha.)

In the two years between when I scrapped these two layouts, I’ve:

  • been through a year-long deployment
  • sold a car
  • sold our first house
  • moved to a new city and state
  • bought another car
  • made three trips to Disneyworld, trips to Chicago and Hawaii and numerous trips to California

To say my life is different today from how it was in January 2009 would be an understatement.

And yet when I look at these two layouts, I’m reminded again that while my world around me may have changed (such is life as a military wife), so much about me has remained the same.

Like my love for driving my Nissan Murano. Oh how I love that car.

And my obsession for home decor blogs. Young House Love is my newest fave.

This Is Why I Love the Faves

If I were to ask you today what your top-ten favorite things were back in January 2009, would you be able to tell me? Lord knows I wouldn’t be able to remember. But the beauty of these Faves layouts is I don’t have to.

Because my Faves? They are right there. On.these.layouts. Documented for all time.

And that right there is why I love scrapbooking.

Because it allows me to document all those little bits and pieces of life that would otherwise be forgotten. Those little bits that truly make up who we are. And that is oh-so-very-cool.

Why Every Scrapbooker Should Scrap a Faves Layout

Pardom me for a moment while I step up onto my little digi soapbox to say this:

I truly believe that every scrapbooker should take the time to scrap their very own Faves layout.

Why?

  • Because a top ten list is one of the easiest forms of journaling you can possibly do. For real.
  • Because a list of your personal faves will say more about you than a travel/event/birthday layout ever will
  • Because it’s an awesome way to make sure YOU are featured in your scrapbooks too

And if that wasn’t reason enough for you, I’m about to make creating your own very Faves layouts mind-blowingly easy.

Introducing FAVE-O-RITES Vol. 1 – The January Faves Edition

One advantage of my being one of the slowest digiscrappers ever? Despite it being now uh, April, haha (seriously, HOW did that happen??), I have only scrapbooked one 2011 Faves layouts – my January 2011 Faves. Which means, good news for you, there is still plenty of time for you to join me in scrapbooking your 2011 Monthly Faves! Woohoo! Go Team Slow Scrapper!

Today I am releasing the first in a series of digital scrapbooking templates based on my Faves layouts: FAVE-O-RITES Vol. 1 – The January Faves Edition.

Today’s release includes two templates: The January Faves No. 1 and The January Faves No. 2.

Each template can be purchased individually or you can purchase the template two-pack to save a little cash. These templates are not only perfect for documenting your own Faves layouts but they’re a great way to scrapbook any kind of top ten list for yourself, your spouse or your kids.

Here they are in all their digiscrappy goodness…

FAVE-O-RITES Vol. 1 – The January Faves Edition

FAVE-O-RITES Vol. 1 Jan Bundle

FAVE-O-RITES Vol. 1 – The January Faves No. 1

January Faves No. 1

FAVE-O-RITES Vol. 1 – The January Faves No. 2

January Faves No. 2

Now It’s Your Turn

And with that my 5th Scrap-i-versary tribute to my most favorite project in the past five years comes to an end. But now I want to hear from you.

Have you scrapped your own Faves layout? Did you love the end result? Have you thought about it but just never taken the plunge? If so what are you waiting for?

Hit reply and let me know in the comments and if you’ve scrapped your Faves, be sure to link me up to your page so I can check it out! And if you use one of my brand-spanking new templates, be sure to link me up here in the comments too so I leave ya some love. I can’t wait to see what you create!

How Can Customers Lower Their Remedy Costs

POSTED IN 5th Scrapiversary, the Faves, Digital Scrapbooking

This Day in Scrap History

POSTED ON April 7, 2011 IN 5th Scrapiversary

Today folks, we are going to take a delightful trip down memory lane using only our imaginations. (If only the Tardis were here to take us for real. Or the DeLorean would work too. Haha.)

***cue wavy lines signaling a trip back in time***

The date is April 7th, 2006.

Adam and I have been living in Seoul, South Korea for just under four months. Not only was this our first military duty station, but I was also a brand new Army wife on her first ever even trip overseas. To say it had been a challenging few months would be an understatement.

A few months earlier, during one of my many I’m-so-bored-I-want-to-cry trips to the magazine section at the PX (that’s an on-base Wal-Mart-esque store for you non-military peeps), I had stumbled across a special issue of Simple Scrapbooks magazine featuring digital scrapbooking.

“You mean I can use a computer for scrapbooking?” I thought at the time. I’m pretty sure a heavenly chorus of angels started singing “Hallelujah right then and there.

The next several months were a flurry of activity as I tried to learn anything and everything I could about digital scrapbooking. Many a day were spent browsing the galleries and forums at places like The Digi Chick, Scrapbook-bytes and Two Peas soaking it all in. Watching as many lynda.com video tutorials as possible in an effort to learn Photoshop as well as I knew InDesign, because I knew having a solid foundation in Photoshop would make everything that much easier when I was ready to get started.

April 7th, 2006 was much like any other day. Adam was hard at work at the military hospital on post and I was home alone once again, hanging out on our un-comfy military issued dorm-style couch in our 7th-story Korean apartment in the heart of Seoul.

It might have seemed like a normal day, but in reality, this day was special. Because it was this day that scrap history was made.

You see, on April 7th, 2006 I created this gem of a layout:

Carmel LO

That’s right. That is my very first digital scrapbooking layout.

Take a photo now before it gets locked up in the vault for good, never to be seen again. Haha.

When I look at this layout now, I see many mistakes.

  • A photo in desperate need of some fill light.
  • Some sketchy beveling in an effort to make the alpha look like a sticker.
  • And the biggest crime of all – the use of the dreaded Papyrus font. To my knowledge I had never before nor ever again used that font. I have no idea what came over me that day. Temporary design insanity? I blame the Yellow Dust!

And yet at the same time, I can’t help but feel a bit of fondness toward this little first layout of mine. Sure it’s not a layout I would create today but when I look at it, I do see glimpses of the scrapbooker I have become. The paper blocking, the little wordstrips, a moment captured in time. Those are all elements I still love and use today.

More than anything, this little layout represents the start of my digital scrapbooking adventure. An adventure that over the last five years has seen me through multiple military moves, two deployments and numerous other life experiences. I have met so many amazing people and have captured so many life moments that would have otherwise been forgotten.

If you had asked me five years ago if I thought I would still be at this hobby today, I probably would have said no. But I am oh so glad that digital scrapbooking and the amazing community of people have become such an integral part of my life. I truly can’t imagine by life without it.

It’s Time to Party

Today, April 7, 2011, is officially my 5th Scrapiversary. That’s right. Today is exactly five years from when I created that first little layout of mine.

And it’s time to celebrate. You can’t see me, but I am donning a party hat and throwing confetti in the air. Woohoo!

Today begins the official 5th Scrapiversary celebration here at NettioDesigns. That means a slew of fun Scrapiversary themed posts as well as some awesome new products in the Shoppe. I am so excited!

So with that, let the celebrating begin! And since every good celebration needs music…

Let’s get this party started.

What about you? Anyone else ever celebrated a Scrapiversary? Were you excited to reach that milestone or did it make you wonder how in the world that many years slipped by in the blink of an eye? Any chance you were able to finagle a present out of it? I’ve been trying to convince Adam to buy me a gift (perhaps a camera upgrade?) but he doesn’t seem sold so far, haha.

How do I purchase Levitra without going to the doctor

POSTED IN 5th Scrapiversary, Digital Scrapbooking

Why Having 4 New Goodies Folders is 3 Too Many: The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-thon Days 2-4 Roundup

POSTED ON April 5, 2011 IN Adventures in Organizing, Memory Keeping, The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon 2011

The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon four-day event officially ended Friday so I am back to say I survived my crazy cleaning adventure!

When I originally started this project, I had planned to post a daily update of my progress. And to be honest, I still really really love the idea of doing that. Nothing like capturing a project in action! But after spending the majority of my Day 2 organizing time writing my Day 1 post, I quickly realized it simply wasn’t going to be do-able given my other commitments (namely the two creative team layouts that I had managed to leave until the veeerrrry end of the month to complete. My old friend Procrastination definitely won that point).

So instead I am back today to share my organizing adventures for Days 2-4 as well as a roundup of the lessons I learned from this project. Because what’s a good project without a lesson learned, right?

Day 2: The DigiScrap Cleaning Begins…or Not

So in the interest of keeping it real here on the ol’ blog, I’m just going to say that Day 2? Total bust. That’s right, absolutely zero spring cleaning got done, which considering the tight deadline I’d set for myself was not good. Between writing my Day 1 post and working on one of the two CT layouts I had to finish, I simply ran out of time to make any real digiscrapy-cleaning happen. But I’d argue it was still time well spent based on this rather cute layout I created…

10 Faves at 28 Layout

Credits: Social Butterfly by Meghan Mullens; Write On 5 by Misty Cato; Alpha Files No 17 by Krystal Hartley; Simply Stamped Alpha by Zoe Pearn; Punchy Edges by Julie Billingsley; Straight Line Stitched No 1 by Anna Apnes; Curvy Corner Stitched Blocks No 2 by Anna Apnes; Font is Museo Slab.

Now normally this would have been the point where I would say to myself, “oh well, it was a good attempt” and move on to something else, but since I had shared my computer spring cleaning intentions here on the blog, I was determined to see it through. Take that procrastination tendencies!

Day 3: The DigiScrap Cleaning Begins…For Real This Time

Thursday I was determined to tackle my DigiScrapping folder. This folder holds all my layouts, scrap goodies and CT supplies. Unlike a lot of digiscrappers, I prefer to store a majority of my files on my internal hard drive rather than an external hard drive. I have my reasons for this (which I’ll likely share in a future post) but for now all you really need to know is other than some CT supplies and my completed and printed layered .PSD layout files, everything else stays on my hard drive – photos, purchased supplies, layouts that haven’t been printed, flattened full-size jpgs, etc. It does mean my drives get fuller quicker but as long as I stay on top of things it seems to work out ok. Or at least it did until all the laziness kicked in and the need for The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon became evident.

Now normally my DigiScrapping folder is pretty neat and organized but thanks to the Day 1 cleaning of my Documents, Downloads and Desktop, a bunch of stray files had taken up residence in the DigiScrap folder leaving me with this mess:

DigiScrapping-before

Sadly one thing I can’t blame on the Day 1 cleaning would be the New Goodies, New Goodies 2 and New Goodies 3 folders. Those are there because I created them. Yes, I tend to create a new folder when the New Goodies in the previous folder start to feel like they’re a bit, well, old. Haha.

My clean up process for the DigiScrap folder was very similar to how I dealt with my folders on Day 1. I created a Random Files folder, moved all the orphaned files into that folder and then slowly started deleting and moving them into their proper folders until I was left with only this:

DigiScrapping-after

At this point I sorted through my CT Goodies and Goodies folder (aka purchased files) and deleted anything I felt like I wouldn’t likely use again (and in some cases have sadly never used). I’m pretty good at purging so this part when pretty quickly for me.

For any of you delete-shy scrapbookers, here’s my number one rule for purging:

Ask yourself:

“Am I going to use this?”

If your first gut reaction is NO, DELETE it. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Just hit that delete key. Because I guarantee if you stop to think about it, you will always always always find a reason why you need to keep that kit/element/alpha when in fact, you really don’t.

Go with your gut. I promise it will feel oh so good.

I also sorted through ALL of my font folders (and discovered I still had the font folder from my old PC hiding on the Mac, haha) and deleted any fonts I don’t plan on using anytime soon. I figure especially if it’s a free font, I can always download it again if I really really decide I need it.

The final organizing push for Day 3 was to clean out the NettioDesigns folder. I’m not going to share a ton about this because a) it’s not really all that exciting and b) it contains super secret information for the NettioDesigns Shoppe. Or ya know, something like that, haha. But mostly all I did was rearrange some files and folders, delete some duplicate freebie template files and clean out any unnecessary WordPress/site related files. I didn’t entirely finish this on Day 3 so I spent part of Day 4 working on this folder as well.

Day 4: Holy Photos, Batman!

I knew coming into Day 4 that once I finished organizing the NettioDesigns folder, I would have to tackle the Pictures folder and possibly Lightroom. Eek. I’ll admit the idea made me a bit nervous. Or perhaps more like completely terrified. Sorting through 200+GB of photos sounded like a TON of work.

So I decided instead to take it step by step by organizing the folders in the Pictures folder first. Luckily as I import my photos by capture date, the folders themselves are pretty organized already. It was mostly an issue of reorganizing the photos sent to me by the other family members, screenshots, stock photos, etc. Eventually I ended up with this:

Pictures-after

Once I finished organizing the folder itself, I knew it was time to open up Lightroom. Boo. I’ll admit the majority of my time spent in Lightroom involved browsing through some old photos I had never looked at (Hawaii trip! Disney!) and once again debating the merits between Collections & Smart Collections vs Keywords. Score 1 point for Procrastination. In the end, I spent more time moving around keywords and collections than I did purging my photos. Computer Spring Cleaning Fail. I’m thinking this is going to have to be a task I do in short 15 minute increments rather than in one big sitting. It was just way too overwhelming to try to do it all at once.

One good thing that did come from organizing the Pictures folder? I discovered that Lightroom had apparently saved every.single.catalog.backup it had ever created since I installed Lightroom 2 in 2009. The grand total of these backups? 6GB!! I deleted all but the last few backups, keeping just the last three in case one was corrupted. So a heads up, if you’re a long time user of Lightroom, you may want to check your Lightroom backups folder too. It might be hogging a bunch of space!

And Now for the Grand Result

So now for the all important question. After four days of The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon, just how much hard drive space have I freed up on my computer?

When I started this project last Tuesday, I had just 76GB of free space on my 500GB hard drive which actually sounds like a lot. I’ve certainly had a drive that was much much fuller than that before. But the reality is that actually worked out to being just a mere 15% of empty space on the drive. And while technically Adobe argues you only need like 1GB minimum of space for Photoshop to run, we all know that the more free space on the drive, the better Photoshop runs.

As of today, I now have 106.57GB of free space on my drive for a grand total of…

drum roll please…

30.57GB!

Not too shabby for four days of work especially considering I knew this week would be limited in just how much organizing time I would actually have. Yay me! I can already tell Photoshop is running a bit smoother. I finished a layout yesterday and other than a slight delay when I used the brush tool to adjust my shadows, I didn’t receive any weird program errors or anything, which is a definitely improvement from even just a week ago. I can already feel my missing scrap mojo returning!

I know there are still a few more things I want to do to get my Mac back into tip-top shape but I love that this project has given me a much more solid foundation from which to build my future organizing adventures, especially when it comes to checking off #21 on my 28 @ 28 List.

What’s Next On the Horizon

Although the progress I made during The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon was great, there are still quite a few things on my list that I didn’t get to. So here’s what I’ll be working on over the next few weeks:

  • Organizing the files on my EHD
  • Moving all my printed layered .PSD files to my EHD
  • Moving all my CT Goodies onto my EHD
  • Purging, sorting and organizing my photos in Lightroom
  • Deleting unused Applications from both the Dock & my computer
  • Running a cleaning program (like CleanMyMac) to clean up any leftover files
  • Calibrating my laptop battery
  • Reorganizing my Google Reader and deleting any blogs I no longer read
  • Reorganizing my internet bookmarks
  • Clearing out my email inbox
  • Down the road I would also like to set up some kind of tagging system for my DigiScrap files

Lessons Learned from The Great Spring Clean-a-Thon

So what exactly has this crazy four-day organizing sprint taught me about myself and my organizing tendencies? Well a few things actually…

  1. I loved loved loved having a tight deadline

    Procrastination for me is always a combination of two things: fear and indecision. I overanalyze things a lot so having a tight deadline forced me to make decisions quickly. It also kept me much more focused knowing that there was an defined endpoint in sight. I will definitely be using this technique again. Deadlines=action.

  2. I really don’t enjoy organizing my photos

    I’m not sure whether it’s Lightroom or just the sheer number of photos I’m dealing with (most likely a combination) but there is very clearly a reason why I procrastinated the most when it came to this task. I definitely need to figure out a way to make this photo process work better for me.

  3. Maintenance is key

    I know this is a cardinal rule of organizing but this project really reinforced to me the importance of this. I will definitely be working on creating better habits to keep things organized over time.

  4. Putting goals out in the open makes them happen

    I tend to be pretty shy when it comes to sharing my ideas so broadcasting my intentions in such a public manner was a HUGE step outside my comfort zone. But I also have no doubt jknowing that I was not the only unorganized digiscrapper out there and had people cheering me on kept this project from becoming just another in a sea of unfinished projects. A HUGE thank you to each and every one of you who left me a comment, thought or words of encouragement. I sincerely appreciated every one.

Overall, the most important thing I learned from The Great Spring Clean-a-Thon is that I am definitely on the right track. I love doing projects like this. Working on a clear, focused goal with a group of supportive peeps is totally my cup of tea. You will definitely be seeing more projects like this here on NettioDesigns. For sure.

So How Did You Do?

First off, if you’ve made it thru this rather long post, 1000 awesomeness points to you!

For anyone who played along I would love to hear how your own Spring Clean-a-Thons went! Did you clean-out the chub from your schlumpy computer? Or are you in the same boat as me and still have a little ways to go? Let me know in the comments!

Editor’s note: This post is the final post in a series of posts documenting my quest to get my beloved Mac back into svelte, sexy shape. You can see all posts about The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon here.

How Can Customers Lower Their Remedy Costs

POSTED IN Adventures in Organizing, Memory Keeping, The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon 2011

Downloads, Desktops and Documents, Oh My!: The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon Day 1

POSTED ON March 30, 2011 IN Adventures in Organizing, The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon 2011

Hello fellow digiscrapping spring cleaners!

Day 1 of The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon has officially come and gone and I am back to share all the juicy details of my progress. (And if today is your first day joining us, you can read all the details about this project right here.)

Last night when I told Adam about my grand plan for whipping my computer back into tip-top shape in just 4 short days, his response went something like this:

“Well, I guess I’ll see you next week!” And then he waved goodbye and laughed. Laughed!

Clearly he was well aware of just how much work I had committed myself to doing this week and to be honest, even I had found myself having slight reservations. Or to be a bit more accurate, random moments of gut-wrenching panic followed by “Holy crap, what have I just publicly committed myself to??”

But rather than frittering my day away by reading the design adventures over at Young House Love (dang that John & Sherry with their two posts-a-day awesomeness!) as I might normally have done, I decided to face my procrastination tendencies head-on and push through my fears and reservations in the name of action.

Today’s letter of the day is A for Action

Well perhaps it should really be B for Backup as that is always the first step I take before I do any major-level file deleting or moving. Better to be safe than sorry in the event that I inadvertently delete a file I really really need! But after a quick Time Machine backup onto my backup EHD, I was ready to go.

I had always intended that for Day 1 of The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon, I would ease myself into things by taking baby steps so as not to get too overwhelmed. So rather than tackling the bloated and in much need of help DigiScrapping or Pictures folders first, I decided to start with three sets of files that I thought would be fairly easy to make progress on: Downloads, Documents and the Desktop.

My original plan was to clear out the Downloads and Desktop files first before moving on to the Documents folder figuring that the files in those two folders would be easier to sort through than the ones that have been sitting forever in my Documents folder.

But after spending about 5 minutes browsing through the 198 files of complete randomness in the Downloads folder, I quickly realized that the reason 99% of those files were still in there was because they had no other place to go. Yes, poor things, they were adrift in a sea of random files, fonts and unzipped scrappy products. So instead I turned my attention to the Documents folder in hopes of giving all those poor orphan files a shiny new home.

I’m Not Sure I Want This Mess Documented

So here’s what the Documents folder looked like when I started:

Day1 Documents before crop

Basically a ginormous mess of random file and folders with the occasional note thrown in for good measure. As you can see based on the files names, I clearly run a very tight file-naming ship around here. A few of my personal favorites:

  • The Untitled file and folder Ooo, very descriptive.
  • the folder of Random Notes
  • Another set of random notes or noites. Perhaps that’s french for notes?
  • Quote which is not to be confused with its good friend Misc Quote

And sadly, this is only one screen’s worth of file names. I’m sure there were many more hidden gems lurking below. Sadly the only folder that actually sees any regular use here is the “Money Stuff” folder which is why it’s colored green. It was the only way I could find it easily in the sea of files, which probably should have been a sign, no?

I’ll admit at this point I was really starting to feel overwhelmed. In fact, I had a text file I was using to keep track of my process and how long things were taking me and this is a direct quote:

started clearing out documents folder – feeling overwhelmed by all the files!!

Yes, double-exclamation points and all. So in an attempt to get things feeling a bit less overwhelm-y, I created a folder called Random Files (ah, the irony!) and moved all the floating single files into that folder. (If you look closely in the image above you can see I had already created it, haha.) After consolidating all the orphaned files, I was left with this:

Day1 Documents midway crop

Doesn’t that look so much nicer and neater already? Still not really organized but it at least looks like it could be!

At this point, I did a quick audit of all the files in the Documents folder and it became clear that the majority of these files fell into three categories:

  • References – files containing useful information
  • Memorabilia – files that I’d like to keep for memory-keeping related reasons
  • Action Files – files for projects or classes I’m currently working on (or have in the past)

So I created folders for those items in the Documents folder and started sorting and deleting. Eventually I was left with just seven folders in my Documents folder:

Day1 Documents after thumb

SO much better.

In case you’re curious about the internal workings of the folders (I know I always am!), here’s a little peek into the Reference folder:

Day1 Documents reference crop

Dealing With Downloads and Desktops

Once I had done the dirty work of getting the Documents folder organized, clearing everything out of the Downloads folder and Desktop was a snap.

Any files that didn’t belong in these categories (like DigiScrap, NettioDesigns or Pictures related) were moved into their proper folders elsewhere. Of course those folders are now a bit of a mess but that’s for another day, right? Haha.

Day0 Desktop before

The only real surprise was when I discovered a folder on the Desktop called “Desktop Cleanup” which was in fact, full of several GB worth of files, mostly photos, that I had cleared off the Desktop surface with the intention that they would be filed away on a later date. Oops. On the plus side, Susan, I found those photos from Disneyworld you were looking for! LOL!

Day 1 By the Numbers

All told, it only took me about 2 and half hours to go from a sad, embarrassing, disorganized Documents folder and bursting-at-the-brim Downloads and Desktop folders to an organized Documents Folder and completely empty Downloads and Desktop. Not too bad for Day 1, right?

But the important question here is, did I free up any space so Photoshop can have room to breathe again?

And sadly, the short answer is no.

Documents by the Numbers

Although I managed to clear out about 15GB of files out of the Desktop and Downloads folders, the majority of those files were moved into other folders. As you can see the Pictures, DigiScrap, NettioDesigns and Documents folders all grew in size with the worst being the Pictures files increasing by 12GB. Dang you sneaky Desktop Cleanup folder photos!

I did feel like I was a deleting machine as I was working but as we all know, documents in general are pretty tiny to begin with, so all told they only added up to about half a GB of space. Wah wah. But I know it’s a step in the right direction and the real progress will begin once I start tackling those dauntingly large Pictures and DigiScrap folders. So for now I’m content with the progress that I have made.

Now It’s Your Turn

So what about all you? Do you have a system for managing your documents? How do you treat your downloads folder? Do you store files in there for good or is it just a stop over until you get around to filing them? Anyone else make some good progress on Day 1 of The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-thon?

Let me know in the comments!

Editor’s note: This post is the second post in a series of posts documenting my quest to get my beloved Mac back into svelte, sexy shape. You can see all posts about The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon here.

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POSTED IN Adventures in Organizing, The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon 2011

The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon

POSTED ON March 29, 2011 IN Adventures in Organizing, The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon 2011

My scrap mojo is gone. Gone! And not just in an oh, I’ll take a break and it’ll come back eventually kind of way.

But gone in an omg, what if it never ever returns??? kind of a way.

Now I know what you’re all thinking.

“Just relax, it’s no big deal.”

“It’ll return eventually.”

“Every scrapbooker worries their mojo is gone for good when it disappears.”

Believe me, I know. And if this were just your run of the mill missing mojo, I would totally agree with you.

But this time it’s different. This time we’re talking defcon level five missing mojo. You see the reason for my missing mojo has nothing to do with creativity or lack of ideas. Those old standards of  “take new photos,” “use a template” or “buy a hot new product” aren’t going to work in this case.

Because the reason for my mojo going on this not-so-brief hiatus?

Complete disorganization.

For months now, I’ve been finding it hard to get motivated to scrap. I just chalked it up to outside factors – the gorgeous weather we’ve been having, other fun projects I’ve been working on, the fact that my awesome hubby is finally home for a change.

But last week while working on a layout for the Take Out Tuesday challenge at Sweet Shoppe Designs, I had a bit of a revelation.

Enter Exhibit A.

Totphotocluster 250

At first glance, I’m sure this layout seems quite innocent. It’s cute, it’s fun, it’s in my signature I’ve-never-met-a-paper-I-didn’t-love style. I actually quite like it! And despite my missing mojo, it came together fairly easily once I got started.

But let’s dig a little deeper here, shall we? Specifically, let’s focus in on the photo.

You see, I’ve scrapped this photo before.

Enter Exhibit B.

3layouts

Now normally this wouldn’t be an issue for me. I don’t believe in being “caught up” so I have no problem scrapping a photo I love more than once. And lord knows I must love this photo considering this is the 1st 2nd 3rd 4th time I’ve now scrapped it. It’s even got a primo spot on the photo shelves in our living room – which brings me to the real problem here.

Because the real reason I scrapped this photo again had absolutely nothing to do with how much I loved it and everything to do with it’s placement on my harddrive.

Enter Exhibit C.

Folder Image

It’s Time for a Confession

Last year when I had prints made for our photo wall, I saved the edited jpg files into a separate folder outside of my normal organizing program, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The reason at the time was harmless enough – it would make it easier to upload the images to the online printer later on. But ever since then, these photos have found themselves playing a recurring role in my scrapbook layouts for one reason and one reason alone: I could scrap these photos without having to open Lightroom.

I know. I’m embarrassed to even admit it (and seriously, if you saw the state of my files, you’d be embarrassed for me too, haha). But my beloved Mac is in need of a serious Biggest Loser-style diet and exercise plan.

In compy’s (as he’s affectionally known around here, haha) defense, it’s all my fault.

  • I got lazy about paring down photos when I uploaded them.
  • I stopped moving completed layouts onto my external harddrive.
  • I let my Downloads folder get so full of crap, it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack whenever I download new files.
  • I started relying heavily on Spotlight searches to find products on my computer because I had no idea which folder they were currently hiding in.

Unfortunately the effects of all this laziness have finally caught up with me and I’m paying for it with some serious Photoshop, Lightroom and Mac slowness (which the occasional random program error thrown in for good measure). That spinning beach ball-of-doom and I have become good friends and it’s seriously cramping my scrapbooking style.

It’s Time to Take Some Action

So I’ve decided that between now and Friday, April 1st, I am going to be doing some major computer spring cleaning.

Clearing out the Downloads folder. Deleting blurry/repeat photos. Consolidating the 4 different “New Goodies” folders I have sitting in my DigiScrap folder (appropriately named “New Goodies”, “New Goodies 2,” “New Goodies 3” and “New Goodies_MOVE.” See, I told you it was bad!).

I’ll be sharing my adventures here on the blog and I’d love for you to join me. 1000 points of awesomeness to anyone who plays along.

Join In the Fun

So who’s up for the challenge? Anyone else have a computer desperately in need of some spring cleaning? Please tell I’m not the only one who’s files are in such embarrassingly bad shape? If you’re in, leave a comment in the comments section so we can cheer each other on.

The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon. 4 Days to a fitter, faster, more awesome compy.

Let’s whip our computer loves back into the svelte, sexy machines they were meant to be.

Editor’s note (and by editor, I mean me, haha): Originally I had planned to give myself until the 5th of April to complete the Great Spring Clean-a-Thon. But as I am an absolute terrible procrastinator, I knew doing so would just mean I would wait until like, the 3rd ,haha, and then try and do everything at once. So in the interest of  focusing on action for a change, I have purposely given myself what is admittedly a crazy tight deadline. Even more so as I have two creative team layouts that have to get done this week as well. But I’m looking at this as a challenge and figuring whatever progress I do make this week will get me one step closer to scrapbook organizing zen. If you’d like to adjust the timeline so it works better for you, please feel free to share your plan in the comments!

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POSTED IN Adventures in Organizing, The Great Computer Spring Clean-a-Thon 2011

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HI I'M LYNNETTE. Graphic designer, tech-lovin’ memory keeper and lover of bold colors & patterns, good food and the great outdoors. Here at Nettio Designs, I share a behind the scenes peek at my own creative & life adventures. Read more...

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