Lose Track of Purchases no More!

I consider myself to be pretty good at organizing. Not perfect, mind you, but pretty good. So when I "re-organize" my office or craft supplies -- or anything else -- I am pretty frustrated when I can't find the new items I just bought when I look for them.

I find myself going back to look for them in their original spots before the massive decluttering and of course, they are not there.

I have come up with a solution, I hope. I am going to create a notebook system that will prevent me from wasting any more time.

Here's the plan: I will list everything I buy or bring into the office/craft space in one notebook. All of the new stuff will then be identified as to where it is. I may even go so far as to number the drawers in my office so I can quickly go to them when I need something.

For example, in my Yeasty notebook I will write:

• Silver Beads for Christmas bracelet gifts: Left drawer (no. 1).(Seeing as how I just misplaced some beads like this, I wish they were actually in that drawer).
• Blue cotton yarn to go with white for January baby blanket. (wicker basket, front hall closet)

Now this might seem like a little more work than you want to do, but believe me, in the long run, it will save you time -- and money since you won't have to buy replacements for those items you can't find when you need them.

The other alternative is to buy a warehouse filled with shelves holding clear containers or file cabinets with labels where we can literally see everything we have in our stashes. Heavenly.

This reminds me of the time when we were looking at houses years ago and were shown the home of a doctor who collected cars. He had built an eight car garage behind his house to house his collection, which made the asking price for the property prohibitive.

But when people asked who else could possibly need a garage like that, I remember thinking -- me. I know you would have felt the same way.

A Photography Talk along the Banks of Lake Erie

We were visiting Presque Isle State Park in Erie PA last weekend and took a few moments to sit on a bench and spend some time enjoying the quiet landscape.

A man carrying a camera with a large telephoto lens on it walked over to talk with us. After a few moments I realized he had a DCNR (PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources) patch on his shirt and I assumed he worked with the park service. It turned out that he is a volunteer ambassador and the official "volunteer" photographer for the park.

Every day Brian Bechtold drives out to the state park and takes photos of wildlife while hiking or from the kayak he keeps strapped to the top of his official four wheel drive vehicle.

We talked for over 30 minutes about his work which he absolutely loves with me peppering the conversation with questions about equipment and apertures and ISO and all the things that seem so difficult to figure out when taking photos. And unfortunately, take a lot of the fun out of it.

While we talked, Brian had his camera slung across his shoulder where he says it doesn't really get in the way when he is moving around. The source for these slings is BlackRapid.com
And he said to be sure to get the swivel hook for when you attach your camera to the sling. Can you say Christmas present?


We also talked about Photoshop (PS) and Lightroom (LR) as being the two most popular software programs used by photographers. I have been thinking about updating my PS4 but the cost is prohibitive: about $600. I have LR 2, but haven't really checked on its update cost yet.


Brian suggsted that I use LR for organizing photos (which I used to do when I was taking a class on it) and also look into buying PS Elements 11 instead of updating PS4 (a much more reasonable purchase). For my personal photo editing, the Elements program would make more sense.

We thoroughly enjoyed our talk with the park's ambassador, whose hobby really interested me and had me wishing we lived a lot closer than two hours from the state park.