Memorandum Monday

Waving to Sian and the Monday Memorandum folks recounting weekend adventures and things learned.

The weather was pretty awful all weekend. After being spoiled for so long with warm, sunny weather, we were inundated with rain and cold winds. Friday was particularly dreadful. The rain never stopped all day, and the wind was so strong you had to fight to keep the umbrella right side out! Friday, however, was saved by our very first charity event. We regularly donate funds to several local organizations, but we’ve never attended a fund raiser before. This one was held at City Hall downtown, and the first floor and second floor balcony were filled with tasting stations from local restaurants, bakeries, wineries, breweries, and distilleries. It was held to raise money for Cameron Ministries where I volunteer twice a week in the after school program. I was delighted to see it so well attended.

Saturday was a bit better since the rain was intermittent, but it was still very windy and chilly. We were supposed to go to the Finger Lakes with friends, but they backed out. We decided to go to our favorite Amish market just north of Seneca Lake and to the Outlet Center where we both picked up a few new things. We treated ourselves to lunch at Ventosa Winery on Seneca Lake where I had the best escarole and white bean soup I’ve ever had. They have a fabulous view of the lake.

So what did I learn this weekend? Well, I started an online class with Ali Edwards two weeks ago called “Hybrid.” I’ve been having this ongoing debate with myself about whether to stick with hybrid scrapbooking or to go digital with my Project Life pages. In September, I finished Cathy Zielski’s class,”Scrapbook Your Year,” where she documents every month digitally and makes a photo book each year. I see real advantages to that system, but I can’t quite give up the paper. So I’m going to stick with hybrid for 2017 at least. 

The best thing to come out of Ali’s class so far is her system for organizing digital supplies. Despite the fact that I’ve been primarily a paper scrapper, and only in the last year or so a hybrid scrapper, I had accumulated a HUGE supply of digital files, most of which I downloaded for free over the last 7-8 years. Her system of organizing by theme made so much sense to me, and in about 4 hours time, I had organized my digital files, and reduced them by about 75%. The 25% I kept are ones I’ll use (and most of them I paid for.) Each category of digital supplies (brushes, kits, templates, etc.) has a set of themed subfolders. The themes vary by supply based on what I have.

Once that was done, I tackled all my Project Life cards, and organized them the same way, reducing them by about the same amount.  Finally, I did the same with my embellishments and stickers, filing them in the same clear envelopes I use to store my clear stamps. The charity shop is getting two shopping bags of goodies later this week. 

This weekend I learned just how effective it is. In just one afternoon, I finished four months of Project Life pages with the filler and journaling cards and embellishments all in place. It was so easy to find just the items that might work out for a given page. A couple of years ago, Ali wrote in a blog post that the fewer supplies you have, the easier it is to make decisions. That motivated a huge clean-out two years ago, but I still had (and have) way too much stuff. Once my class at the University of Rochester is over, I plan to tackle my craft closet again, and make similar changes there. And once the sun comes out long enough to photograph them, you’ll begin to see some Project Life pages once again.