Too Many Photos!

Well, it's been a while since I have updated my blog. I have some fun photos from New Year's Eve that I am unable to upload because my hard drive is too full...do you think this could be attributed to the 21,000 photos I have stored already on the hard drive? Yes, thanks the digital camera age, I have more photos than ever.

So what have I been up to this past week? Mostly just trying to get the house back in order from all the festivities last month. I think I did 8 loads of laundry yesterday!!! A few days before that I completely cleaned the play room...and ya wanna know the best part? It has been staying clean thanks to the new LOCK we installed!!! It's one of the best things we've done to the house so far. By having the playroom door locked most of the time, the constant flow of toys has really come to a screeching halt! They are all trapped in the playroom and the kids, who are missing their toys, really appreciate them more and have done a great job at keeping them put back when they are done...because they know we won't let them play unless everything is put away afterwards...it's quite a monumental turning point in my housekeeping!

I've also been having fun with a site meter I installed on my paper capers blog. It allows me to see how many visitors are checking out my site. I've got visitors from all over the United States and Canada (represented by the colored dots):


...and even some in the Dominican Republic, England, France and Australia! I can track how long they have been on the paper capers blog and how they found the blog (google search engine, or links from other blogs etc.) It also shows how many pages they have looked at and where they are located. I thought it was pretty cool to see so many different locations listed in just the three days since I set up the meter.

Here's a what a referral looks like from Google:
Someone left a nice comment on the penguin party post and it (the meta tags) were picked up by Google! I've actually generated quite a lot of hits from people looking for party ideas. The penguin party has been the most popular so far.

Added Saturday morning. Just got visits from the Netherlands, Korea and Hawaii since I posted last night.

The Ernstopia blog is set to private for our friends and family, so I doubt there are too many viewers from other countries.

At any rate, I hope to download some photos on to Dan's computer and update my blog soon. I also hope to get an external hard drive to relieve some of the storage taken up by all my photos!

My Treasure Boxes

It's time for spring cleaning. So when I came across some of my most treasured things (found when I was cleaning in the garage) I thought I would share them with you.

Baby clothing from my three babies:
In these boxes I have kept their adorable baby clothes, the outfits they came home from the hospital in, the cute winter baby sweaters they wore, the outfit they wore for their 1 year baby pictures, some cute baby shoes, their "baby's first Christmas" ornament, a newborn sized diaper and their birth announcement.
Baby clothing from when I was a baby:
I have three outfits (pink, yellow and blue), my blankie and a moccasin/bootie. When Natalie was a baby, I put her in the yellow dress with ruffled diaper cover. It was fun taking pictures of her wearing my baby outfit. I also still have one of my teddy bears.

Wedding Mementos:
The ring bearer's pillow my mom made from the same fabric my dress was made out of, our unity candle, my shoes, a pew bow, our wedding invitation, Dan's corsage, and the corsage that was pinned to the back of my dress.

Time for some spring cleaning

This weekend I have been in the mood to organize all those areas of my life that just seem to get cluttered. Last night I reorganized my pantry. After a recent trip to the grocery store, I realized there was too much clutter in the pantry to put away all the food. I feel so much better now that it's all organized again...thanks to my friend Shannon who hooked me up with all those Tupperware containers years ago.

Then today I finished organizing all the files in my computer so they are all sorted by category. Normally I don't have the patience to sit and sort through all my files, but after awhile it just gets too disorganized. Anyway, I felt like doing some mindless work and now it feels good to know where everything is. I think it has been a few years since I have really gone through and "put things away." Even though it's only a computer, it feels like a weight has been lifted... almost like cleaning a room in the house. As you see on the screen capture, I have all my files in order...hooray!

Tomorrow I think I will tackle organizing all the kids clothes. This is a big chore as I have to sort everything and weed out all the clothes the kids have out grown. I have several large bins of hand-me-downs that Hayden should fit into by now that I need to sort through...then I need to make up some boxes of out-grown clothes for consignment. I've also got a couple bins of clothes that used to fit me that I 'm hoping to be wearing again soon. Maybe I should sort those out too as I'm sure some of the styles are better off at Goodwill...Wish me luck.