Advice from a Dog - Stealing Life from Death

I have determined that the most beautiful element in the art of scrapbooking, is that the scrapbooks are the stories of our lives.  They are about the beauty, fear, happiness, anger, joy, sadness, and love that we have experienced.  They are an artistic representation of our journey.  They are a pictorial journal.  They are our legacy.  


This morning, my Grandmother is on my heart and my mind.  While I woke up to an absolutely GORGEOUS spring day, she was headed in for surgery while battling pneumonia.  While I was breathing in the fresh air on my walk, she was breathing in an oxygen mask.  While I was listening to the birds chirp, she was listening to the beeping of the heart monitor.  Oh the things in life we take for granted.


I have recently finished a book titled "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein.  This book is narrated by a dog.....a most profoundly deep and insightful dog.  As I read through it I found one enlightening quote after another.  This morning, as I thought of my Grandmother and the moments we take for granted, I was reminded of one of the greatest quotes from the book.

 "To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life. To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to."

Tears of  gratitude filled my eyes as I allowed the words to absorb into my heart.  For this scrapbook page I choose to not include a photo.  I wanted the observer to not be distracted with a photo, but instead be struck by the beauty of the words and what those words mean to them.  I want to live by those words.  I want them to be the story of my life.  I want people to look through my scrapbook, my journey, my pictorial journal, and see that I lived each day as if it had been "stolen from death."  What will your scrapbook have in it?

(As always, please comment or share this on fb/twitter.  I would love to have your feedback!)

FREE Photo Editing Software - How to make your photographs look like the professionals

Probably FIFTY times a month (that may be a slight exaggeration) I get asked by Mommies, "What software do you use for your photo editing and scrapbooks?" Deep down I slightly wince every time I am asked.  It isn't that I am opposed to sharing this information.  It is that I use a  program called Adobe Photoshop.  For those of you who use (or have attempted to use) Photoshop, you understand my hesitation in suggesting this software to the work 40-hours-a-week-with-3-kids-soccer-Mom with her point and shoot camera.  For those of you who have never heard of or used Photoshop, let me get you up-to-date....It's "da BOMB."  It is the ultimate super star in photo and graphic arts software.  It will do EVERYTHING except your laundry (it may even do that and I just haven't found a tutorial on it yet).  The downside to it?  It is highly complex.  It will be your best friend and your worst enemy.  There are students who have gone four years of college using Photoshop to get a graphic arts degree and STILL do not know how to use it to 100% of it's capabilities.  Not only that, Adobe is proud of it's products (and should be) so you will pay a pretty penny for it.  All that being said, if you are willing to invest the time and money Photoshop is the ultimate software.

However, for those people who ACTUALLY have lives and do not want to commit 3 hours every evening "playing" with photos in Photoshop (I know I am a geek), I have the solution for you....Picnik.

The first thing I like about Picnik is that does a great job of encouraging the user to "play."  For instance, I can go from making my photo black and white to a sepia tone with the click of a button.  While many online photo editors give you those options, Picnik gives you THIRTY-SEVEN of them....and that's just for filters.  There are hundreds of other options for effects.

Picnik also does a great job of balancing the "professional" side with the "fun" side.  Many professional photographers use Picnik because it is so simple to use.  I can remove red-eye and add a soft filter on my photograph in Picnik much more quickly than I can in Photoshop.  However, the software is still something that is fun and easy for kids to use because there are digital stickers, text, and fun frames that can be added to the photos.

For those of you who use social media (and who doesn't?) Picnik can import photos from your social media site and export them directly to your site.  Which means I can sit down at ANY computer, load one of my Facebook photos directly into Picnik, edit it, and export it back to Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Photobucket, Webs, Picasa Web Albums, etc. so they can be seen instantaneously.

Picnik provides online forums for users to find out more "how to" information or discuss creative ideas with other Picnik users.  It has a very in-depth FAQ section to help you with any questions you may have.  However, Picnik is so user-friendly most people I know have never even needed it.

The best part about Picnik?...it is free.  You do not even need to register to use most of their features.  There is a premium package that can be purchased at $4.95 for 1 month, $19.95 for 6 months, and $24.95 for 1 year.  This package will allow you to use more of Picnik's advanced features such as airbrushing and manually adjusting the levels of a photo.  For me, the $24.95 for a year is worth it.  But again, I am a photo geek who will spend hours playing with photos.

I have used this for about 4 years now and have not been able to find any other software that is more user-friendly and versatile than Picnik.  It is the perfect software from the amateur who just wants to remove red-eye, to the professional who needs to remove elements with the clone tool.  Come over to the "dark side" with the rest of us photo geeks and upload and play with a photo.  You can find Picnik at www.picnik.com

I would love to know if any of you have used Picnik and what your thoughts are on it.  Or if you have never tried Picnik before and played with it after reading this amazingly inspirational blog, come back and let me know about your experience.  Has anyone ever run into any challenges using Picnik?  What is your favorite feature on Picnik?  Please share!  As always, please remember to tweet/fb this post if you like it.  Thank you so much!

The Importance of the Mundane

Hi, my name is Katie and I am, a work-a-holic.  The side effects of this epidemic are astronomical.  They are even worse when your business is in your home.  I sit down at my desk at 8:00am and the next thing I know it's 7:30pm, my dog is on the verge of getting a urinary tract infection if I don't get her outside STAT, my kids have eaten an entire bag of Cheez-its for "dinner" and they have trouble blinking from watching their 7th episode of Spongebob since getting home from school (wait, what time do they get home from school??).  To add insult to injury, I am slightly dizzy and nauseous from my strict diet of Earl Grey Tea and granola bars which has made my blood sugar rise and plummet all day.

If this wasn't bad enough, I then put my over-carbed, over-stimulated children to bed, let the dog out, upgrade from the Early Grey to a semi-sweet Red, and then sit myself right back down at the computer. By 11:00pm, I have sat at the desk for approximately 13 hours and still have a stack of papers I want to read, websites I want to research, and projects I still haven't even started.

I can see the confused looks on your faces thinking, "WHAT does this have to do with scrapbooking?"  Well....nothing, and everything.  Countless times I have told people that scrapbooks are as unique as each individual.  They are the stories of our lives.  People have preconceived notions that scrapbooks are all about new babies, graduations, and vacations.  While those are important, it is equally important to capture the day-to-day moments.  Even the things that we consider 'mundane' have value in our lives.  Today I wanted to scrapbook an aspect of me, that my kids will probably not remember when they are my age.

So the next time you think that it was "just another day," think again.  There may be an awesome scrapbook page waiting to happen.

Scrapbooking - The Gift of a Legacy

Many people begin scrapbooking or hiring a professional scrapbook artist when they realized that all of their grandparents, parents, and even THEIR childhood photos were shoved in a shoe box in the back of a closet.  The photos had no date, no labels, and worst of all no organization.  How many of us have stood around with our siblings or our parents squinting at a photo trying to figure out if that is your Grandma or her second cousin, Betty standing in front of a lake that may or may not be in Colorado in a summer between the years of 1935-1942?  Can you imagine what it would feel like to have a completed, organized, labeled scrapbook of your grandparents or parents childhood years handed over to you, rather that a messy shoe box?

Aside from organizing the photos another great way to preserve your family history is to conduct an interview with the older generations of your family.  Some great questions to find out are:

1. What is your full name? Why did your parents select this name for you? Did you have a nickname?
2. When and where were you born?
3. How did your family come to live there?
4. Were there other family members in the area? Who?
5. What was the house (apartment, farm, etc.) like? How many rooms? Bathrooms? Did it have electricity? Indoor plumbing? Telephones?
6. What is your earliest childhood memory?
7. What kind of games did you play growing up?
8. What was your favorite thing to do for fun (movies, beach, etc.)?
9. Did you have family chores? What were they? Which was your least favorite?
10. What was school like for you as a child? What were your best and worst subjects? Where did you attend grade school? High school? College?
11. Do you remember any fads from your youth? Popular hairstyles? Clothes?
12. What were your favorite songs and music?
13. Did you have any pets? If so, what kind and what were their names?
14. What world events had the most impact on you while you were growing up? Did any of them personally affect your family?
15. Describe a typical family dinner. Did you all eat together as a family? Who did the cooking? What were your favorite foods?
16. How were holidays (birthdays, Christmas, etc.) celebrated in your family? Did your family have special traditions?
17. How is the world today different from what it was like when you were a child?
18. Who was the oldest relative you remember as a child? What do you remember about them?
19. What stories have come down to you about your parents? Grandparents? More distant ancestors?
20. Are there any stories about famous or infamous relatives in your family?
21. Have any recipes been passed down to you from family members?
22. Are there any special heirlooms, photos, bibles or other memorabilia that have been passed down in your family?
23. When and how did you meet your spouse? What did you do on dates?
24. What was it like when you proposed (or were proposed to)? Where and when did it happen? How did you feel?
25. What memory stands out the most from your wedding day?
26. What do you believe is the key to a successful marriage?
27. How did you find out your were going to be a parent for the first time?
28. What was your proudest moment as a parent?
29. What accomplishments were you the most proud of?
30. What is the one thing you most want people to remember about you?

This information, along with a semi-organized stack of photos is a great beginning to a heritage scrapbook.