Pinterest.com

I'm so excited that I found Pinterest. Pinterest is "a virtual pinboard, that lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web." Like clipping pictures from a magazine and tacking them to a bulletin board, Pinterest is your online board. For years, I've been bookmarking pages which you then have to click through to try to remember why saved it in the first place. But Pinterest "pins" the picture to your board and allows you to make a caption.

You can have multiple boards. I've created five to start: Beach House Decorating, for interior design ideas; Beach House - Dream Home, for exteriors and home plans; Books Worth Reading, for books I've loved and ones I want to read; Places I'd Like to Go; and Stuff I Find Fascinating. I may do two more in the new future for recipes and clips related to my work in Elder Care.

Another great feature of Pinterest is that you can follow other members and check out their boards. You can "re-pin" items from others boards to yours. And because you're browsing through other boards with the same focus, it's almost like having access to hundreds of magazines or idea books without having to flip through the advertisements and articles that don't interest you!

Check me out on Pinterest @ BeachHouseBooks.

Walking

Here I go again - get organized, complete projects, start exercising, etc. I managed to get up two days in a row for a 6:30 a.m. walk with my neighbor. She's taking care of her elderly mom and has to go early. Although, I fight discipline with every fiber of my being, I'm forcing myself to change my thinking. If what you focus on grows, then my focus on being lazy is having great success on my rear. So, up I go. Shoes on and out the door. Tomorrow I need to take the camera because I forget how beautiful it is here sometimes. When we walk, this is what we get:

Breezy Point Beach, MD view from the harbor

Breezy Point Beach, MD looking toward the harbor

Maddie's Pictures

I love looking at my daughter's photos. She takes so many pictures with her cell phone and uploads them to her Facebook page. Sometimes she uploads them first to Picnik and manipulates them in different ways. She's so creative so I thought I'd give her some props here (plus you probably already know that I never miss an opportunity to talk about my awesome kid)!

Seabrook Island, SC (l-r: Sarah, Taylor, Maddie, Christian)

When we were at Seabrook Island, SC for spring break 2011, our teenagers took lots of walks on the beach. And they took some great photos. I love this one of the group, especially since it's with her best friend and her cousins from Georgia that we don't see near enough.

She's so wide awake at 6:50 a.m. waiting for the bus

She likes to take pictures while she waits for the bus, and has several great ones. Here's a self-portrait.

Coronado Beach, CA 12/10

She has taught me alot about shooting from the ground. This is a great one from our Christmas vacation to San Diego.

Sunrise from the bus stop

Another bus stop shot!

Gettysburg, PA Tournament 2009

Gettysburg, PA 2009

These soccer shots were uploaded and enhanced at one of her favorite sites Picnik. Enhancing the color and inserting text are just a few of the fun effects.

Winter sunrise at the Beach House

Above and below are photos she took in the winter. The one above was another bus stop photo after having several snow days off in 2010. And the one below was taken on a sunny day after a March snowstorm in 2009 on the road leading up and out of our little neighborhood.

Breezy Point Road, March 2009

Photos by Maddie Stedman!

Lost Photos

Morning sky from the back deck of My Beach House

I have been sick, sick, sick since the discovery in the spring that I have lost a file of photographs. I take a lot of photos. The next best thing to being at the beach is photos of when you were there! In April, when Maddie turned 16, I poured over hundreds of photos to make a slideshow of her life to show at her surprise party. It turned out so well.

While going through all those photos I came to the conclusion that I have no real system for filing photos both on my hard drive and uploaded off-site. I have photos on my Mac, on my desktop at the office, uploaded to Picasa and Flickr and none of them are in easy to find files. After looking through the photos for the slideshow I decided that I needed to decorate my office at work with my own photography instead of someone else's art and I went in search of pictures to use. I have two picture frames that have three prints of flowers in each one and the mat is in good condition.  I decided that I would take three of my sunrise photos for one frame and three of my sunset photos for the other. And I knew immediately that I wanted one of the sunsets to be of the abandoned houses in the Pamlico Sound that I took from Bodie Island.

It was September 2007, and I remember Maddie and Betsy and I rushing down the sandy road past the Bodie Island Lighthouse to get out by the water before the sun went down. I took a photo of a crab in the water that turned out beautifully and about 20 shots of the sun setting with these abandoned houses on stilts out in the sound. Gone. That whole vacation is gone. I've been searching and searching. I took the hard drive of my old desktop to a computer guy and he is working on locating and extracting all photo files. I'm praying that he finds it.

In the meantime, dear reader, I'm desperately seeking a system for filing my photos to avoid losing them. I don't know how this happened but I probably have 3000-4000 photos that need to be organized. And I have another couple thousand old photographs that I've sent out to be scanned. I'd like to have a filing system in place by the time they get back. One My Beach House goals for the future is to be more organized. It's much easier to relax and fully enjoy beach life when one's surroundings are not in chaos!
Looking for the most zen of systems and I welcome your suggestions.

Here's the criteria for photo organizing and archiving. It need to be simple. It should include keyword and date and possibly name if a person is involved. It should be a workable system on the desktop and exports to whatever site should maintain the filing system. Please send me your thoughts. I'll print them here so we can all benefit from the ideas. Thanks!