Sunday night (late, like 9 PM) I was settled in with my two oldest sons to watch an episode of "House" when I turned to my son and mentioned that he hadn't done a book report in a while and asked when the next one was due. He got that look that said, "Um, yeah, it is due tomorrow." I was NOT a happy camper. He pulled out the instructions and the book report required him to write a children's book version of the book he had read. Why, oh why can't they just write a report?!? In about an hour and a half (I was lecturing him for about 45 minutes of that) he wrote up the draft, downloaded some clip art and created his report using My Memories Suite, I thought it looked good for a last minute effort and he was able to complete it while I was lecturing him - very impressive. He came home on Monday he said his teacher was so impressed that she asked if she could keep it as a sample!! So much for for him learning not to put things off to the last minute.

PS: Do I get the mother of the year award for the best report or should I be guilt ridden that I didn't know that the report was due? In support of the guilt, Carter did have the due date of the report written very neatly in his calendar - if only someone had been looking at it!

Traditional album to photobook

This is a page out of a scrapbook my mom, sister and I created out of my grandma's photos after she died in 2001. My grandma was a woman who liked to get stuff done so her photo albums consisted of those self adhesive books - she would just stick the photos in there and that was it. There were photos from 1971 next to photos from 1952 but they were in an album!!! In an effort to save the photos and restore some chronology we created these traditional scrapbooks. It was definately a labor of love. We presented the finished albums (3 volumes in all) to my mom's 3 brothers and her sister the Christmas after my grandma died. While they were thrilled to see the photos and read the stories my mom wrote they were also a little annoyed that they didn't have a copy of the photos OR the album. The albums had original photos, there was only one copy and the album posts were always coming apart. We had to treat them like small children we were all sharing custody of. This year I solved the problem! I scanned all the pages from the albums and imported them into My Memories Suite as backgrounds. Then I ordered photobooks for my aunt, uncles and siblings. It was super easy and fast and I was able to condense all three traditional albums into one photobook. The books were a huge hit and now we have gone from being the people who were hoarding the albums and photos (you know they were thinking it!) to being the favorites!

I just started this album on January 1st - I got the idea off some other brilliant person's blog. The concept is simple, you take one photo every day of the year and journal a few sentences about it. It may be a photo of your child, a photo of your dinner or a photo of your laundry (there are lots of days when I feel like that is all I see!!!). I am trying to keep it REALLY simple so that I will actually follow through on it. I am building the album in Polaroid My Memories Suite (http://www.polaroidmymemoriessuite.com/) which I love - it is all digital, the design is done and it is FAST!

So far I love making this album - it lets me include all those little things I normally wouldn't take a photo of but are a big part of my daily life - backpacks, laundry, snow shovels (I am SOO ready for spring!!) Yesterday I took a picture of my new tires - $650 dollars and I haven't gotten a single compliment on them all day! I hate buying tires, I feel like they are accessories for my car when I would rather buy accessories for ME! Anyway, at least now I have commemorated the occasion!