If you need 7 reasons why you should use it, check it out here:  7 Reasons Why You Should Try Out Windows Live Writer 2009

I wouldn’t blog without it.  Trust me, it will speed up your blogging..

This one is hard for me but yet simple. 

Clean off your desk..  I purchased a desk that has a lot of workspace and still fits my computers & monitors.  The unfortunate thing is I have 2 boys, a husband and myself that think putting things on top of it is a great way to “for it find its home.”  So I need to constantly go through the things on my desk and take care of them or find its home before it starts to pile up.   But a clean desk makes me smile when I walk into my office.   I know I get depressed/crabby when I start seeing piles of stuff.

So even though it sounds simple, clean off your desk and make an effort to keep it mostly clear. 

Sure Windows Vista, XP and Mac all come with built in unzipping features into the operating system.   But most of them are limiting and you don’t have as many options.   A good batch unzipping tool is what a digital scrapbooker needs.

I went through some of these and settled on using ExtractNow.  Here’s my post on using ExtractNow   Cool little unzip tool, Extract Now.    (This post also explains my process and gives a video.)  I also read in December that they are continuing to work on ExtractNow.  (Sometimes these little tools never get updated and get out of date.)  I like that I can queue up a list of folders to be extracted, then when I am going to take a break, I let it roll and my computer happily unzips.   (I hate having things slow me down while I am trying to do other things.) 

A digital scrapbookers needs for a unzip tool is:

• Batch mode so they can do many zip files at once.
• Control over where & how the folders are zipped
• Control over what happens to the zip file.

Here’s a fairly comprehensive list of software that digi-scrappers are using to unzip their files in no particular order.

• Unzipthemall
• WinRAR
• ExtractNow
• IZArc
• ACDSee’s built-in unzipper
• Unziplify v1.3
• Stuffit for Windows & Mac
• 7-Zip

Here’s an article on a quick summary of the best 5 rated by Hive Five..  Five Best File Compression Tools

So take a little time, and look over the unzip tools and see which one fits into your process.  You’ll be amazed at how much time it speeds up your “process” once you have  a good unzip tool.

You have a few choices..

1. DVD, flash drives, etc..
2. A second hard drive, either internal or external or on another computer in your house.
3. Online backup services

The advantage of 1 & 3 is that the backup can be is or outside of your house in case of catastrophe to your home.  Or if you have external hard drive you can store outside of your home that would be good too.

I think the DVD’s and small flash drives are too small to be practical for digital kit storage.  I know I don’t have the patience to burn them.   Backing up to online backup service can take a long time.  The other drawback to online backup is your ISP might limit you to upload/download each month and this would use a valuable portion of that bandwidth.   So my preference is an External Hard Drive.  The drawback of these: is once they fall, they break. 

So pick the method that suits you.  But do it!!!  It is very costly to try recover what is on a hard drive after the fact if it can be recovered at all. 

For those of you that use a second hard drive, I have started using Synctoy now.  It has many features and is free.  More info:  SyncToy website on Microsoft.com.  You can choose to do 3 different types of sync’ing…

• Synchronize: New and updated files are copied both ways. Renames and deletes on either side are repeated on the other.
• Echo: New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames and deletes on the left are repeated on the right.
• Contribute: New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames on the left are repeated on the right. No deletions.

I have chosen to Synchronize.  So if I change something on my EHD – from my laptop, my desktop will be updated.  (When the speak of left and right, they are talking about the 2 drives.  The left is the original drive and the right is the backup drive.)  

So go backup now, please!!!

Now I didn’t go through my entire digital kit collection.  Just a bunch of older folders that I haven’t stored anything in lately.  2 years ago, I started putting my digital kits into year folders.  So I have a 2008 folder for freebies and 2008 folder for purchases. etc.  By doing it this way, I can purge older stuff faster. 

So the first thing I did was created a 2006 and older folder..  I went through all my older kits (2006 and earlier) and started looking at them.  Oh, if you have organized with ACDSee do this in ACDSee so your organizing carries along.   If I found a kit that I liked and didn’t want to delete, I moved it into the 2006 folder.  If I didn’t like it, I just kept moving on.    While doing this, I realized just how improved all those talented digital designers have become!  It wasn’t hard to throw old, simple kits when designers are coming up with beautiful, intricate kits.    Once I have moved all the kits I wanted to save into the 2006 folder, then I deleted the folder of kits I just went through.

It took about 2 hours to go through my old stash and I deleted over 22 GB of old stuff.  I also deleted some old zips that were hanging around and never got deleted. 

So now, I am left with a bunch of year folders containing a majority of my digital kits.  I also have a few designers, stores, specific types of digi elements still in my main folder. 

So my suggestion is to go through your older digital scrapbooking stash and delete some of your old, never to be used digital kits.   Remember – they are taking up disk space (which costs), backup space and just time if you are looking or searching for something. 

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But basically, I suggest using a different browser Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc. until this patch is fixed (schedule for tomorrow.)

Firefox is my favorite!

I finally feel like I have caught up with my life.  I have caught up on work.  The presents are purchased.   What decorations are going up this year are done.  Plans to be with extended family are close to done.  Holiday cards are done and being printed.   All the junk mail and school papers that came in November is gone – that’s a huge task if you get behind.   I like it when I feel the weight come off my shoulders..  The house hasn’t a good cleaning lately but well, I can’t get it all done.  

So I am going to leave you with my holiday card..

Credits: 

• Weeds & Wildflowers Frame & Paper & Elements from 073a–The Great Outdoors–Element Pack & 073b–The Great Outdoors Papers
• SussieM_designs, Elements from All the Colors of Autumn
• Peta Boardman freebie from this kit: Magical Wonderland
• Kim Jensen alpha from Scrapdish "Basics" Designer Collaborative Kit
• Font: Ruach Let
• Tag from Autumn Glory - Birgit Kerr and Flergs Collaborative Kit
• Editor:  ACDSee  Photo Editor 2008
• Organizer to find all my goodies:  ACDSee Photo Manager 2009
• Photo is by me..  One of those shots where we are deep in the woods on a hike, I set the camera on a rock and set the timer and run to take my spot..

Table of contents for Foundations Style

1. New Organizing Style called Foundations
2. Foundations, Part 2: Photos and Text
3. Foundations, Part 3: Artistic Elements and Previews

Now that we’ve organized the basics of our pages, it’s time to dress it up. I like to compare embellishments to the garnish on a gourmet meal. It’s the finishing touch that really adds beauty and personality without overtaking the main story you are telling with your journaling and photos.  So the basic list is pretty compact. This makes it fast to speed tag your PNG’s.  Just assign large groups of them at once to the main category then go back later when you have time and sort out what type of fastener or notion they are. You’ll notice I have Buttons in fasteners even though you’ll find physical buttons in the notions department at more craft and fabric stores. Remember I decided to tag things according to how they are used. But you might prefer to put them with the rest of the notions. You can just click on that category name and drag it to the notions list and drop it right in there. This system is about well-defined categories and using levels of categories to speed up your organizing routine. Because in the end, it’s really about using your scrapping time actually scrapping!

I also wanted to show you my Previews category list today.  This of this as your own personal store. When you want to scrap, you can go straight to the page kits or templates to get started. Or if you are in the middle of a page and need just the right alpha for your title, get a quick look at your alpha previews. Chances are you’ll get a better idea of how that alpha will look from that preview than from just looking at the A’s in the Text Accessories | Alphas category or facing a browser full of folders if you use the alpha keyword trick to sort those out. Addicted to frames embellishment packs? Add a category for it! You can make this as specialized as you want, just remember the long the list, the slower the tagging goes. You might be wondering why you even need to tag all your papers, templates, alphas, etc. if you’re also tagging the previews this way? Well, you don’t…really. At least, you don’t if you are happy with finding kits and elements for your pages from just the previews. I personally love the quick shopping style of search for some projects but also appreciate the close up view I get by bringing all my ribbons into my browser pane, for example. But having a well-tagged selection of previews is one of the best things I ever did to get my stash organized! And if you come back to catch the final wrap up of this blog series, you’ll see how to get even more power from your ‘personal store’ preview section!

• Top 10 Gifts for DSLR Owners – 2008

In addition DeGeeked has some more lists for gift ideas:

• Top 10 Tech Gifts under $200 for 2008
• Top 10 Gifts under $100 for the Techie in Your Life
• Top 10 Tech Gifts for Boys
• Top 10 Tech Gifts for Girls

If you want more gifts lists, visit Degeeked at: 

• Tech Gift Guides

Thanks Degeeked for the ideas!