Just want to say thanks very, very much for creating and maintaining this album, Karen. I know it takes time even if you love doing it. I often have a quick look for inspiration and always notice something new. Very helpful when creating!

I don't have 16 or 20 years of photos to so, but my first album was for my first daughter's first two years (because that's when I started.) I couldn't decide how to organize them, either, so I did a variation on the ABC album. I picked pictures I wanted to put in the scrapbook and sorted them into 26 envelopes each having a different letter of the alphabet, writing on the front of each an idea or "theme" for each of the pictures that started with that letter. Clear as mud? :) i.e. for the "A" enveolpe I had pictures of aunts and uncles, alligators (for our trip to an alligator farm), "B" had birthdays, blowing bubbles, bathtime, "C" had Christmas, cousins, and so on. I made sure I included the letter on the page and all the captions or theme for the page centered on that letter. I didn't stick with just one page for each letter like the traditional ABC albums, rather had as many pages for each letter as I wanted with as many pictures as I wanted. That way I had the best of both worlds. I was able to organize them into a theme for the whole album and I could also organize them into chronological order within the certain letter. I also put die cuts, stickers, etc. in the envelope if there were particular ones I wanted to use. Some pages had several different pics if I had a single picture of a few things and didn't want to do a whole page for each. For example there was a mixed "S" page because I had several small single pictures that I could title with an "S" word but didn't want to do separate pages. There's "S" is for sandbox, stories with Daddy, "Soooooooo big!" and sliding and swinging in Savannah, GA. all on one page. It's a simple page, but it looks very pretty. All in shades of blue. I was able to experiment with different techniques and styles with this type of album, too. It was a great way to do it. As always, of course, some pages turned out better than others, but I love how it turned out on the whole. It is kind of hard to picture, I know, but if I wasn't clear enough on something feel free to email me and have me clarify. Good luck and happy scrappin'! -Sarah

I really don't know why I didn't think of this earlier... about storing all member photos on the FKB server. I guess I figured it out be outrageously expensive to host all the photos. But the cost of storage has gone down tremendously (an extra 20GB on picasaweb costs only $5 per year), and I am making small change from the ads on the FKB. So it's definitely do-able. I replied back to gellchom with a message similar to this. Please feel free to mention this when you send out your emails (although it's probably too late for most of you). Sample email: There are a couple of options for getting your photos back onto the FKB. Option#1: Upload your kitchen photos to one of the online photo management applications (photobucket, flickr, picasa, etc.). Remove password-protection from your kitchen album or members will not be able to view your photos. Email the link to me. (Many members choose this option because they like managing their own photos.) Option#2: Email all your kitchen photos directly to starpooh and she will upload them onto the FKB's photo album. Her email address is: starpooh@gmail.com. They will be put into a separate folder (similar to outwest's kitchen): http://picasaweb.google.com/starpooh. If, in the future, you decide to remove your photos from the FKB just send an email to starpooh and she will take care of it. (Some members are choosing this option because they don't want to worry about keeping track of their kitchen photos. They also do not need to worry about password-protecting their personal photos.)

I rely heavily on closed captioning. My hearing has gotten very bad and my hearing aids give me a severe headache when I try to use them to watch TV. I'm not sure why this is, when I first got them I wore them all day every day. Now they are more of a hindrance than a help. Guess I need to get my ears checked again, and probably replace the aids. Back to closed captioning. There are some voices and programs that I can hear and understand quite well, others I can't. I haven't noticed any 'gobbledegook', but occasionally words are misspelled, and sometimes, too, misinterpreted. This seems to happen most often with names rather than words. But my biggest complaint is that in some programs it scrolls by much too fast to read. And I am a fairly fast reader. But over all, it is a big help to me. Rusty