I've been saying for YEARS that I need to get my act together in regards to this whole physical-proof-of-photos-beyond-the-jpeg thing. From the shocked look on my mother's face when I said, "I literally have not printed out one single picture of Dakota's entire life," to my feelings of overwhelmedness when pondering the THOUSANDS of pics backed up on our external hard drive, it became clear that something needed to be done. Action needed to be taken! It's all good in the hood that we, as an entire generation, are extensively computer savvy with pictures, therefore saving everything in folders and on external hard drives, but what happens when your kids want to look back on when they were 5 years old? Are they going to log into the family Shutterfly account or something so they can click through their little lives? (Actually that isn't such a bad idea....) No! That is not what I want for them. I really enjoy flipping through the several photo albums my parents made of us three Paplia children when we are at their house, so the same must happen for our babies.
First thing was first. I knew that if I made the process of actually printing out the pictures even the least bit complicated, it simply was not going to happen (read: aforementioned ZERO pictures of Kota's life - she is almost 4!). For example, I've always heard that Costco has the best prints around, but our closest Costco is 15 minutes away. There ain't no way mama's driving that far for what was bound to be several trips of picture-picking-upping. Nope! The closest printer to us is Walgreens, so that's where I've been going. Also, I would ideally like to get everything in matte, but there's some weird thing with going that route. It's either more expensive or is only available via home delivery. Not going to happen. I just needed to be able to swing through Walgreens swiftly to retrieve my cheap prints given the massive amount I planned on developing.
I started with our external hard drive since it has the furthest-back recording. The only problem was that when we started our bedroom re-do, we disconnected the computer and hadn't plugged the whole thing back in because we weren't sure where we wanted to put it, which meant no ordering the selected prints from home. So I just took the darn external hard drive into the store to plug it into the kiosk. I found out that there were 8,342 pictures on there. EIGHT THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED FORTY TWO. And hey, here was one sign I had waited too long to do this: the kiosk would only allow me to download the most recent 5,000, which landed me somewhere in 2010-the end of 2013. OMG. So I started chugging along that way, printing out about 45 at a time from the kiosk.
Once I started nearing the carefully-selected end of my 5,000 pictures (2010-2013), I asked if Chad could hook up the computer somewhere in the house so I could get organized with the remaining almost 4,000 on the hard drive (2009-2010, marriage, wedding and Carter's birth years), and then upload the recent photo albums still saved on our computer (2014-present), and then go through all of our cell phone pictures and FB pictures. ORGANIZATIONAL NIGHTMARE (or dream, once I got going ;). So I went through the thousands of day-to-day cell phone pics of both mine and Chad's phones, categorizing them in 6 months increments from 2012-present. (I'm out of breath just typing this insanity out!) Then I went through our FB albums and tagged photos and uploaded the pics print-worthy enough to their respective albums (Beginning of 2009, End of 2009, Beginning of 2010, End of 2010...... THE MADNESS!). Finally, after a weekend of uploading to the Walgreens photo page, ALL HAS BEEN ORGANIZED! Now I just need to print everything out in batches and add those to the already printed-out-from-external-hard-drive stuff. I just sent 2006-2008's to the printer, thanks to FB's records, so I'll pick those up tomorrow. Next I'll carry on with the several 2009 albums, supplement the already large amount of 2010's printed out, then go on with 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. But wait! Once I get the 2006-2008's back, I'm going to order a nice, good old fashioned 4x6 slip photo album. Nothing flashy, just a nice way to go through pictures. Every time an album fills up, I'll get another matching one and continue on with my prints until all has been printed and slipped into their new homes within the albums.
In regards to 2015, I may switch over to the photo book route. There was just NO WAY I could rake through all the pictures saved over all the years to construct a nice, modern photo book, hence the simple 4x6 printing and old school album choice. But maybe going forward, since hopefully the photo beast will be a bit more tamed around here, I'll feel good about one swift order of a nice, aesthetically pleasing photo book.
Oh! Before I even think of permanently PHYSICALLY recording 2015 within the walls of this here house, our wedding album MUST be ordered. I know - gouge my eyeballs out. It's DISGUSTING THAT THAT THING HAS NOT BEEN ORDERED!!!!! PUKE ALL OVER THE SITUATION! So yes, that needs to happen first.
AND THEN.... there are the hundreds of cell phone videos that need to be dubbed into DVD's. THIS WILL TAKE FOREVER. But hey! I'm just so happy I started now. Can you imagine if this was started a mere 6 months from now??? In that case, I would have at least a thousand more pictures to rake through. THANK. GOODNESS. FOR. ORGANIZATION.
Phew!
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And really quick, because this was so gosh darn cool:
I really enjoyed looking at our lives over the last few years. I mean, duh, this is one human who enjoys documentation (blog over-thinker right here!), but it was very precious. I always had this idea that our furniture, decor and general way of moving everywhere really sucked. Not like our lives sucked by any stretch of the imagination, but like we were always flying by the seat of our pants - "this is cheap! Let's buy it! Who cares if it's ugly!" "Let's move because our rent increased by $75!" (Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you know). But looking back, hey man! We had it great! Oh my gosh, thank goodness for the several Craigslist sellers who corresponded with us and sold to two newlyweds cheaply! Thank the good Lord for a roof over our heads - in expensive Orange County to boot! Thank you Jesus for how naive we were back in the day! Thank you, universe, for young, smiling parents and a happy toddler when it was just Carter, Chad and I! Thank you to our parents who helped us paint Carter's first room the darkest blue ever that should never have graced an apartment's walls! Thank you, hideous iPhone light, for allowing me to snap 10,000 pictures of Carter and Kota falling asleep right next to each other! Holy crap! What a life!!!!!!! It is DEFINITELY worth printing :) :) :) :)
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