So many digital photos, so little time

I have many, many thousands of digital photos saved in iphoto right now. So many, I couldn't possibly scrapbook them all. Let's face it, once you become addicted to making scrapbooks, you go looking for things to take pictures of just because they might make a great scrapbook page some day. Can you relate? Well I can. I take pictures of everything!!!

I think I would shrivel up and die if I didn't have a camera. Three years ago, my husband got me a digital camera for Christmas. It was by far the best gift I've ever received because I used it every day. At first I fought it. I didn't want to mess with learning something new. However, at the time, I agreed to give it a try because developing and printing film was costing us a small fortune with 2 kids to take pictures of (now we have 3 kids).

I couldn't believe how much better my photos were with the digital camera, and I had a really nice SLR before. I can take more photos without feeling wasteful and I love how well the camera takes low light photos.

Anyway, so now I have an abundance of photos, right? Well, recently I have been experimenting with the different new items you can make with your digital photos.

Earlier this month, my daughter was invited to 2 birthday parties. For their gifts we made photo books for each birthday girl. I had all these photos of Natalie playing with her friends and was planning to save them on a CD to give to their moms, but I started playing around in iphoto and before too long I had made a little book. Four days later it came Fed-Ex to my door. I didn't have to go out to the toy store and wonder which toy they would like. Instead they got a personalized book with their pictures inside along with a message from Natalie. They turned out great...and the mom's really appreciated them too.

This past Christmas, my husband gave me another great gift — a digital picture frame similar to the one shown above. You just load this bad boy up with photos and it cycles through. I have it sitting in our family room...it even plays music. How cool is that!

Just yesterday I placed my first online digital photo order with Snapfish.com. I was prompted by an email that said my membership would expire and I would loose all my uploaded photos if I didn't buy a minimum of one photo at 12 cents each. Well, I didn't see anything wrong with spending 12 cents, so I proceeded to place my order. Then I came across a special where you can order photos for just 10 cents each, but you have to buy 250 of them. Well...okay...so I signed up for that thinking, what a great savings I was getting. Now I could finally print my Disneyland photos. Even when I take them to the store, the photos cost anywhere from 16 cents to 18 cents a print. So I proceed to upload all 350+ photos to Snapfish.com...TWO DAYS LATER I finally have them all uploaded! Whew! Now I am starting to rethink my "savings," because what I saved monetarily, was nothing compared to the time I lost trying to upload all my photos 12 at a time. Not to mention, the shipping was $13. Yikes!

I also uploaded some special photos I wanted in unusual sizes (4x12, 12x12, 3.5x5) to 2peas pictures from twopeasinabucket.com. Their cost for 4x6 prints was 18 cents per photo, but their enlargements price was almost half of what Snapfish was charging, plus the shipping was a flat rate of just $2. They also offered some cool photo treatments. See the preview photo of the magazine cover featuring Zander standing next to Lightning McQueen. I can't wait to get my pictures and start scrapbooking!