That is a lot of photos!

622 photos made the printing cut. Even with my parents' cable connection it took me almost an hour to upload them. I didn't go through all of them because I felt it more important to upload them while I had the faster connection. I can do some basic cropping online & that is all any of them really need. It'll be just over $76 to print them all and I only have 2 photo albums at the moment, so they will get printed in batches

I did very little black Friday digi shopping. I got a template set by Teresa fergusson, and kits by ScrapKitchen Designs and Fee Jardine at Sweet Shopp and some some overlays by Stacey J Stahl & Birgit Kerr from DSAG.

I did spend $140 at Amazon on assorted Christmas gifts & now only have to buy one game & something for DH & then I am done.

I had no idea

I'd planned to spend part of my time here sorting through all my photos & pick out some to print. I have no printed photos. I haven't printed out a photo at all in the 21st century (professionally, I do print my own on my crappy printer for certain projects) . I thought I might end up with about 250 photos to print. But no. I selected almost that many just for the first 15 months of Havoc's life. And those are the ones I selected. I've easily got 5 times that many I'm not printing. I averaged about 125 for years 2004-2006. I have about 500 or so photos to print before I get to this year's, this will run me about $60-70 with shipping. I'm also going to need a few more photo albums. I have a couple nice ones that have a space on the side of sleeve to write information but they don't hold enough photos. I also don't recall where I bought them, World Market maybe.

I still have to go through & crops some & fix the eyes & lighting on others before they can be printed. There might be about 30 or so that need significant retouching. If they are just a tad dark or light I'm going to leave them be. I'm not running 500+ photos through Lightroom. I discovered that ACDSee will to batch resizing so once I have them cropped to right the proportions I can just tell it to make sure they are all 4x6 so they will print properly. I'm hoping to finish with this by Friday so I can upload to WalMart from here. My parents have cable internet.

I miss my dual screens. I am so not used to the limited screen of my laptop.

I have scrappers shoulder

As a result of scrapping all weekend I have overextended some muscles in my right shoulder (my mouse arm).  I have a hard time staying properly seated when I am scrapping & end up hunched up with my mouse arm straight out & a bit to the right.  Apparently doing this continuously will pull those muscles. 

But I am about to take an enforced break from scrapping in a few days.  We'll be going on vacation and with 11 people in the house and a minimum of 5, maybe 6, laptops in use, I'll be lucky to find an out of the way outlet & bit of tabletop.  See, those other laptops are 'work' laptops and they take priority on electricity & work space.  My laptop is a 'play' laptop & is at the bottom of the power chain. Plus I really need my flatscreen monitor to scrap. I just can't work on my laptop monitor.  I've gotten a little to used to my dual monitor set up. 

So instead of scrapping I will be going through my photos.  My sons have been complaining they don't have a photo album to look through.  They have an album of printed digi pages & they like leafing through it, but they want just photos.  I haven't had a photo printed (other than by myself) since 2001.  We are 100% digi in this house, due to pure laziness on my part. I have blank albums that I have been intending for 2 years to get photos into. I just need to do. So that is my little project next week, to sort through 2002-2007's photos and choose the best of every month for printing.  My folks have cable internet so even with all the so-called 'work' being done (Yeah I can see over your shoulder little brother, I didn't realize you could sell furniture to you fellow WOW players) I ought to be able to upload everything to Shutterfly or Walmart easily.

Did some scrapping

Finally! I have had a longish streak of non-scrapping but I've done 5 layouts in the last 3 days & I am working on a 6th.  Considering I did about 4 layouts in the past 6 weeks, that is pretty good.

Check out my gallery at Digi Shop Talk to see my latest stuff. 

I'm trying to get it all in now while I can.  Next Friday we leave for my folks place for a week.  My brother & his family will be there at the same time. 6 adults, 4 preschoolers and a preteen in a 3 bedroom 1800sq ft echo chamber of a house. My ears already ache from the thought of the noise. I'll survive it. I always do, but I do get a bit bitchy about 3 nights into it. I love seeing my family & I love that my kids get to spend so much time with their cousins. But I am an introvert among extroverts. My family is gregarious & social & always going someplace & doing something and I left home eagerly at 18 because I like sitting quietly & reading and I can't do that around my family. They are active, involved, chatty people & I can't even manage that as an online persona, you can imagine how I am in real life. 

I'm hoping to get to the beach this year. We missed it last year for some reason, just never made the time. The boys want to go. It looks like the waterpark will be open this time, they closed last year due to lack of lifeguards.  DS1 wants to play mini golf & that is my favorite thing to do on vacation.  I've got my list of 'books to buy' ready. I take one book with me and buy 3-5 while I am there.  When my brother & I had no kids we'd all go out to dinner nearly every night, but now, can you imagine seating 11 people, let alone paying for it??  We'll probably go to CiCis for pizza one night.  Mom will no doubt make spaghetti one night. I've volunteered to make meatloaf for dinner one night and I'm guessing there will be burgers once as well.  And of course Thanksgiving. I offered to make stuffing, so I have to remember to bring both the cornbread stuffing recipe and the cornbread recipe because you can't find cornbread in south Florida, not even a mix. I'd like to make conrbread & oyster stuffing but no one will eat it but my father & I, so I am leaning toward cornbread & bacon, but may stick to the cornbread & sage.

Traditionally on Friday night my brother, SIL, DH and I leave the kids with our folks & go out to dinner together to celebrate our anniversary. But this year they are leaving on Friday (they usually don't arrive until Wed & stay until Sun, this year they are arriving on Sun) and Thanksgiving is so early in the month, our anniversary is well into the following week.  But I think I may have to insist on a nice dinner, in a quiet restaurant that night anyway.

This is going to take days

I haven't been scrapping much lately. I had little to no desire to do so for the last 6 weeks. I quit all my CTs but the PSP script one. I totally immersed myself in reading for 6 weeks. I re-read all of the Sarah Kelling mysteries (10), all the Mrs Pollifax mysteries (13), most of the Peter Wimsey mysteries (7, there is only so much Lord Peter I can put up with), some of the Amelia Peabody mysteries (8, again, only so much Amelia can be tolerated), all 4 for Hillary Tamar mysteries, several of the Mary Russel mysteries (Mary's personality is similar to Amelia & Peter's. I'd like to shut them all in a room together with a pot of tea & watch them all one up each other with thier knowledgeable smug superority.) and a half a dozen novels of historical fiction.  50 some books later I think I am as sated with reading as I am ever likely to be (though I have 2 more Polly Platt travel memoirs to go) .  And I'm in the mood to scrap.

I've done 2 layouts in the past 2 days for challenges at Sweet Shoppe.  It's also Digital Scrapbooking Day today so all the stores are having sales.  Plus one of my favorite designers, Traci Reed, was having a special sale a couple days ago to celebrate her new store and it's the start of the month so 2 sites where I have membership have new monthly kits.  I bought 2 kits from Traci, there was a gift kit at MSA and one for signing up for Little Dreamer Designs newsletter, then I went shopping at Sweet Shoppe. I got a paper pack from Lauren Reid, a kit from Scrap Kitchen designs, the SS Quarterly Pack and the SS Goodie Bag.  All together I spent less than $20.  I have 61 folders of stuff to tag in ACDSee!!!!

61 folders of stuff, many with subfolders of other stuff.  I'm going to be at this for a week!

And the winners of the "our mom is so lame"

category of the Halloween costume contest is....

HAVOC & MAYHEM

for their mother's last minute pirate costumes consisting of her belts, her workout bandanas and their father's T-shirts!

And lets not forget to mention her fabulous camera work - taking a photo of kids in black T-shirts against a dark green bush in the dark!

I honestly think it is fun to rummage around the house & see what sort of costume I can come up with.  That was one of the best parts of Halloween when I was kid.  I had some pre-made costumes when I was small but by the time I was 8 or so I was wearing rollers in my hair, had cold cream on my face and my mom's bathroom & claming to be dressed as a housewife. Or my dad's overcoat & old hat with a notebook and calling myself a detective. A cardboard box and aluminum foil made a robot. And there was always the ubiquitous white bed sheet ghost or toga. 

As an adult I am still not inclined to spent $25 on a costume that will be worn for a total of 2 hours & then discarded.  I'm not inclined to buy the same costume, a couple sizes larger for $8 on Nov 1st either. It will either be misplaced or forgotten by next year or the child who wanted it this year will want to be something else next Halloween. Nor am I inclined to spend several hours sewing something that will only be worn for 2 hours. Plus given my children's tendencies, they will have changed their minds on their costume right around the time I get done sewing.  I do sew their Ren Faire costumes (heavily hemmed so I can let the out & get several years wear) & then encourage them to wear those outfits at Halloween. I'd meant to make proper pirate outfits for faire wear this year but then we decided to do Great Wolf lodge instead of the faire this year so I put it off.  They have kilts though. The wore the kilts to a Halloween party last week & were all set to wear them trick or treating, but then at 2pm yesterday I was informed that kilts were not scary enough. I decided they are bit young for me to disprove that by showing them Braveheart, so I went through DH's shirts until I found a couple non-collared, solid colored Ts.  I was going to cut some fabric strips for belts when I remembered I had some that would work.  Pull the shirt on over their regular clothes, strap the belt around their waist, tuck in the plastic swords they got at a birthday party this summer and wrap a bandana around their head. Voila! Pirates!

They looked really adorable too.  I wish I had thought to take pictures when it was still light out.