Real Scrappy - Digital Scrapbooking From Start to Finish: July 2012

This morning I am so down and depressed. I am so angry at myself for my carelessness. I KNOW BETTER, but I was lazy and blind and now I'm paying for it. Yesterday, my external hard drive crashed. It took with it:

Every family photo from 2006-2011.
Every digital scrapbooking layout for all three of my books. The baby books for the twins were almost done.
All my digital scrapbooking supplies
All my family videos from March until now that I was just getting ready to put on DVD.
Other stuff I can't think of now but will no doubt realize later is indispensible.

Yes, we are taking steps to recover it. Last resort is to send it into a data recovery company, but the first quote I got said it would cost between $600-1900! I about DIED. I don't even have money for groceries--how can I pay that? My husband is working on a plan to use a universal hard drive adapter to access the information, so maybe we can get it working long enough to get most of the information back. On the upside, all my digital scrapbooking supplies are backed up on my hard drive at work, so I can at least get THAT back, though I can't actually scrap anything or use it until I find somewhere to store the files here at home. Some of my family photos are backed up to DVD, but they are all old. Also, I had uploaded my digital scrapbooks to Cherishbound, so although I can't change the files or even access them, I can at least SEE them so I can re-create them if necessary. Most of the videos I lost are still on the video camera, so I can probably get at least a lot of that back as well. (I almost deleted them twice, but felt I shouldn't until they were on DVD. Thank goodness!)

But I thought I would post this experience here as a lesson learned for me and as a prevention for you. Most of you are probably thinking, "You didn't have any BACKUP? Are you CRAZY?" And the answer is: yes I am. I guess I have that "It won't happen to me mentality" which is so stupid because I've had THREE external hard drives die in the past.

So what do I do now? Well, I think I will invest in an INTERNAL hard drive--I got one at work and its so great. But I think I will also invest in Carbonite and start backing everything up online. Its a small price to pay to not go through this again! The main reason I haven't backed stuff up is that I had no space. That's the reason it was all on my external hard drive in the first place. But now I know--make hard copy DVD's. Backup online. Thank goodness I backed up some of it at work. I write this to remind myself--it CAN happen, and be prepared!

And then--we get up this morning and realize we left the garage door open all night. We are so bad about that, but usually one of my awesome helpful neighbors will call us and remind us. This time, no one did (not that it's THEIR fault!) and this morning Trevor's bike was stolen. Yes, it CAN happen to you! Grrr!

I'm starting to get the creepy guilty feeling that I haven't updated this blog for a while--just in case there are four people out there that follow it close enough to notice. Well--it's summer. As a school teacher, my whole world completely changes once summer hits. You'd THINK I'd have more time for stuff like scrapbooking, seeing as I don't work for 10 weeks. But--not so. In fact, four weeks into the summer, I have done very little in scrapbook land, though I have been quite productive in other areas. My three children consume every second I'm afraid. It's so fun to be home and spend so much time with them, though, so although I haven't had much time to scrapbook anything, I HAVE had time to take some great photos for the future! I have a couple of ideas for future layouts percolating in my head at the moment, but not a lot of time to implement.

So, to ease my guilt, I thought I'd at least post the few layouts I have done recently.

If you recall, I'm working on three books right now--my 2012 year book, and my one year book for both the twins. I just finished their 10 months--only two more months to go! For the twins books, I do the page for one of them, then change the coloring slightly for the other one. The writing is mostly different, though some paragraphs are the same. And the pictures are usually quite different. So, here are a few pages from my twins' books, using the kit Ma Bebe from Diane Rigdon.

I start each month with a large, full-bleed photo of them. Then a sort of cover page with pictures from that month. Each month is 2-3 layouts. I focus a lot on writing. Each month I sit down and write a few paragraphs about the progress that child made that month. Then when I have time to actually scrap it, it's just cut and paste. This next layout is simple, but I love it because I got so many pictures and so much journaling all in one layout.

Here's another set of layouts I love!

Ok, here are some layouts from my Year Seven book. Don't have a title for it yet. The working title is "Changing All the Time" but I haven't decided for sure yet. Last year's was Room 2 Grow, which was SO cute--thanks to my friend Heather for coming up with it! Anyway, here are some layouts: