Photos, photos every where

I was a very good scrapbooker for many years.  I enjoy looking back at the books I've made of my journeys: China, Europe, Chile - etc.  And I did a pretty good job of scrapbooking right away, so there are lots of comments and details that I had totally forgotten (and in some cases don't even make sense!).

But at some point, I got burned out.  And I've moved piles of scrapbooking items with me to the past few cities and one time when I was home in Neenah found a big ol' pile of never-going-to-get-organized photos in Mom's room.  So I rescued the ones with me in it and put them in a big ol' pile of never-going-to-get-organized photos in my office.  Great plan.  And I hit a couple snags with my scrapbooking - the biggest one being that they changed sizes of the pages (UGH!) so that the books/pages/protectors don't totally match (especially if you're just mixing & matching what you've got in your closet - and if you call a lady in Sonoma to ask if she can help, she's totally rude and snotty to you for not planning better and then doesn't ultimately help you at all).

A year-ish ago, I decided I was just going to buy some photo books with sleeves and put pictures in and caption them - shortcut/faux scrapbooking.  So I fill up two books and never wrote a thing.

Some of the things I never scrapbooked:

• My trip to Rome (I did all the rest of my semester in Europe, but I wanted to do a "really good job" because my time in Rome was so good.  And now it's been 13 years.  Sweet plan.)
• The last 4 pages of my wedding 
• The journalling on my honeymoon
• My first anniversary trip to Costa Rica (with ~150 printed photos)
• All the school photos of my siblings over the years
• Hundreds & hundreds of photos from teeny teeny through awkward terribleness through now
• Captions on hundreds of photos in the photo albums

Let's get this organized shall we?

Assuming the position: me, piles of supplies, a Mentalist marathon

 Several hours in and not looking ANY better

After a few hours, I had to stop and reorganize.  So when I was done with that, I put things in a pile.  And the brothers decided to stand watch.  Thanks guys.

Anyway, I think it took my ~14 hours over three days/nights (and a sore, sore back), but finally SUCCESS!!!! The pages are so not as pretty as my previous work - but as Mrs. Schuler used to say "Done is better than creative!" (Do you remember that Kk? That was always my favorite line of hers.)  My photos (and ticket stubs, receipts, etc etc) are all fully caught up/organized and safely filed away.  The past few trips we've gone on, I've done the online preprinted photobooks - man they're easier.  Especially since you can do captions, backgrounds, etc.  And if you're organizing your pictures to put on facebook (which, let's be honest, you are) - it's easy to send them to shutterfly/snapfish.

I cannot even tell you HOW delighted I am to say: #71 CHECK!!

Anybody else have a big ol' pile of pictures laying around?  Are there more at mom's house I should rescue??