Shutterfly Freebies!

On Monday when I shared my bill paying checklist there were a couple of super cute magnets holding them up!

Every couple of weeks (or even more often!) Shutterfly has freebies which is an awesome way to get personalized free stuff! These magnets were something I picked out right when we moved in. I chose a few pictures, paid for shipping and they arrived at my door.. pretty cool!

Even more recently I've managed to get more items for free!

These four coasters came in last week and they are a great item we actually use!

Lastly I ordered a notebook with a picture I took of Charlestown Beach. What a pretty notebook right? I just paid shipping for all of these items!

If you haven't signed up for Shutterfly yet you definitely should, and once you do select to receive e-mails so you get notified every time they are giving away free items! It happens more often then you think and all of these items would make great gifts (which I haven't done yet...but I may start stocking up on gift items!)

Sign up here!

**This is not a sponsored post! Just me promoting something free that I love!**

Photo Organization and Declutter

My goal is to have a clutter-free life where only the things I truly need and love are in my home. Well, I have always loved taking pictures, however, lately the pictures began to take over! I had fifteen or so thick photo albums and boxes full of photos and cards, and quite honestly I was not interested in holding onto them anymore. I still wanted the photos, but not the physical piles and shelves that they were overtaking. So I took them apart. I spent time pulling every picture out of every album. Then I sorted. For days. Until my room looked like this:

Super stressful right?! But, things have to get worse before they get better! I ended up purchasing a scanner off of Amazon, and it showed up and didn't work! So I sent that one back and ordered a Kodak scanner instead, which has worked beautifully. It only scans 4x6 and smaller, but that was the majority of my photos anyways. I can use my flatbed scanner for any photos that are larger.

In the past few weeks I have managed to scan every picture I had, every ticket stub, and other important items that I wanted to save. Now my goal is to finish scanning the larger photos and then start working on photo books. I would prefer to have photo books on a shelf instead of huge scrapbooks and photo albums. It will look simpler and completely uniform unlike all those bulky albums I once had. I will take you along for the process as I put all my pictures into albums and show how much nicer it will all look on my bookshelves.

How do you organize your photos? Do you have boxes full of printed photos?

Oh! For those of you concerned about losing photos on the computer, I do have them all backed up onto an external hard drive! I learned my lesson years ago :)

Have a great day everybody!

The Frames Are Filled!

For months the walls of my new bedroom have been empty... it was pretty depressing! Then one day I  decided to hang up some frames- but I hadn't filled them with pictures yet....even more depressing!

I finally placed an order for photo prints from Shutterfly and when I received them in the mail I managed to get my frames filled!

This three picture frame I decided to fill with photos of the beach.

Although the lighting in this photo is pretty bad you can see how serene this frame and pictures are. I love this!

I have two frames on my big wall, one is a bigger frame with a photo from my trip to France.

I love this picture!

My final frame holds four pictures which are filled with friends and family! I love having pictures of my loved ones around. It's nice to have reminders of good times!

What is on your bedroom walls?

Photo Organization: Printed Photos

Remember last week when I told you I was going to be organizing my printed photos? Well I did it!

Nowadays when I print photos they usually are placed directly into scrapbooks (or at least my scrapbooking organization system) but I have a decent sized collection of photos I previously had printed for frames. I also have pictures from my childhood in this box (some of which are cut into lovely designs- yay 12 year old me!) that needed to be organized. 

Here's where all these printed photos are stored:

This box is where I store all my photos and it works well to hold on my pictures, the problem was what was happening inside...

I know. Embarrassing. There were so many pictures from every year all mixed together in one box. No organization at all. It was driving me crazy!

So first thing first, I took out all the pictures and began sorting and sorting. My main goal was to sort all of the pictures by year. I wasn't as concerned with the months pictures were taken because in some cases where I hadn't written down on the back of the pictures it was quite impossible for me to know when it was actually taken. Having them sorted into years seemed a realistic expectation of myself!

Here's more of my sorting method. I made dividers out of oaktag paper so I could keep the years separate.

I am thrilled with how this turned out! A simple bit of sorting and organization, some handmade dividers and a reused box makes for a great photo organization.

Let's do a before and after shall we?

            

 Looks so much better right?!

How do you organize your printed pictures?

Organizing Photos

One of the biggest struggles for me is organizing my pictures. Seriously.

I operate solely on my macbook meaning that every picture I take, whether it's on my phone or camera, goes through my iPhoto program. I also have Photo Stream which means all the photos I take on my phone instantly get transferred into my iPhoto. Except they don't always...

Then all my photos get out of order in iPhoto because some stream and some don't and I have to manually organize them. Which is fine, but confusing. Sometimes I take pictures for the blog I won't need again (organization projects, couponing hauls..) so I can delete them once I'm done with them. Other pictures I save forever so I need to make sure those photos are all separate.

I print some pictures for scrapbooking and others for frames. Some pictures never get printed and live forever on my computer. I back them all up to a photo sharing site as well as on my external hard drive.  

The pictures that are printed and not in a scrapbook or a frame are left in a box in my closet- completely unorganized. Seriously, it's one of my biggest shameful moments looking into that box!

So. That's my photo un-organization story. Now, I just need to come up with a plan on how to organize it all. Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to organize all of my printed photos in that box as well as come up with a way to organize all of the photos I have in iPhoto and I'm taking you along with me!

How do you organize your photos?

My Disney World Vacation Scrapbook

Despite the frigid, snowy winter days we've been having in Rhode Island lately, I've been hanging out in Disney World- in my scrapbooking life!

Today I thought I would show you my Disney Vacation scrapbook that I recently completed. I may have mentioned before that I am not a fancy scrapbooker. I think of myself as a practical scrapbooker- I don't have the time, nor do I want to spend the time making each page perfect. I don't have the patience to work on one page for an hour. I'm more of a slap-together-those-pages-and-get-this-done-as-fast-as-possible kinda girl. Therefore, my scrapbooks will never be the most beautiful albums in the world, but they do a good job of preserving my photos and memories, and that is all I really need them to do.

This scrapbook was purchased in Downtown Disney during my last day in Florida. You can also purchase it online here. I ended up with extra pages in the back of my book since it was only a four day trip, I didn't have an overwhelming amount of things to book. I also liked the fact that there is a folder in the back of this scrapbook. I didn't end up using it, but it's nice to have that option.

So, without further ado, my July 2013 Disney World Vacation Scrapbook...

Hope you enjoyed this view of my scrapbook! Do you scrapbook?

Project 365: Week 1!

Happy Thursday everyone!

We're almost at the weekend guys! Woohoo! This year on the blog, every Thursday I will be sharing the pictures from my Project 365. If you haven't heard of Project 365 before, it's simply when you take a picture every day for the entire year. I am sharing these pictures over on my Instagram page- which you can find by clicking on the link in the sidebar, over there------------>

So here are my pictures from the first week of this project!

Wednesday January 1st

Walking with Roxy and my mom down trails nearby our house.

Thursday January 2nd

Watching deer from the window, getting a jump from AAA, and waiting for the blizzard.

Friday January 3rd

A half day snow day, I did't have to work in the morning, only in the afternoon which was a nice break!

Saturday January 4th

In the morning I left for work and it was -5*- Yuck!

Sunday January 5th

I went shopping at the mall and got my cracked phone screen replaced. Followed by an awesome Tone It Up workout and a run for SundayRunday!

Monday January 6th

I was wishing that I could have a lazy day with Roxy. She was so cuddly!

Tuesday January 7th

I held my baby for awhile when I got home from work!

Wednesday January 8th

I had a great day spending some time with my BFFL . We ran some wedding errands, got mani-pedis and had dinner at a winery!

Remember, every Thursday I will be sharing this pictures all year long, but you can also find them posted daily on my instagram. My user name is melissapearce and I would love to have you check out all the pictures I take!

Have a great day everybody!