Saturday 2 January 2010

Happy New Year! {& a Christmas Eve Pictorial}




Over the course of last month {December 2009} I took roughly 1 000 photographs {1.8G worth} so I have been busy for days, uploading, sorting, editing, copying, burning...it is truly a humungous job but I have vowed to keep up to date with my photo storage this year & to get the images printed aswell. I'm putting this ahead of my actual scrapbooking in an attempt to be more disciplined in my process.

Due to the quantity of images, I've created a collage for each family member highlighting their involvement in our Christmas Eve Dinner. This one is for Camryn's album. We ate steak, chips {fries} & salad for our Christmas meal as we took a family vote & this was what the majority selected! Temps here are 35 - 45 degrees Celsius but fortunately it rained the day before Christmas which cooled things off considerably.

Above is Reilly's collage. I asked everyone to wear green, red or gold {yellow} to make it simpler for paper matching! Reilly is always dressed in a hoodie {jacket/sweatshirt} when the temps are soaring!!! The light isn't very strong in our dining-room & without an add-on flash I just had to do my best at the time then lighten them up more when editing. I really dislike the yellow tint that the flash causes but have found that lowering the saturation levels when editing helps to reduce it a lot.

Here's Jack's collage. I didn't want to spend too much time worrying about which photos I managed to get as I still wanted to enjoy myself & for everyone else to enjoy themselves too. I have kept aside a few photos per person & a few of various combinations of people, to scrap separately as I don't want EVERY page to be a collage but for practical reasons need ONE PAGE PER EVENT PER PERSON to be a collage or there's no way I'll get all the photos scrapped!

The collage below is for our family album. I will print it larger than the others that are 20 x 25cm. This one will be A4 size so each image will be clearer.

Below is a collage of our home on Christmas Eve, before Santa came to fill all the stockings & with all the gifts under the tree. I also "Flipped" {recorded} our Christmas Eve Dinner speeches for posterity. We all type out a short {20 lines max} speech, recapping our year - highlights, lowlights, what we have to be thankful for & what our hopes are for the New Year & read it out to each other. It is really a lovely tradition & sweet & sad too...

If you look in the food picture above you can see one of the speeches inside the red glass - we put them in there so they don't get lost or covered in food {!} then I collect them up straight after the speeches & put them away safely.

I took these a couple of nights before Christmas, when the kids were enjoying the Christmas tree lights in the lounge. Chelsea was out, which is why she wasn't included.

More collages {of Christmas Day} to follow tomorrow...



10 comments:

Vicki said...

Wow the amount of photos you took for December is staggering but good for you on making it priority to sort them out. Love your collages.

Pearl said...

Wonderful that you have soo many pics to work with Helen ! & way to go with getting organized with them !

Hope your New Year is off to a fab start !

Lynette Jacobs said...

I love your photo collages...taking so many pics guarantees some beautiful ones to choose.

Happy New Year Helen...may you experience much joy and laughter in this year.

topkatnz said...

Haha - steak, chips and salad for christmas dinner! did I see tomatoes in that salad Helen???heehee

Shayne said...

Impressed at the photo's you took!

Gorgeous collages - such a wonderful reminder of the evening your family shared. Memories to last forever.

Jessy Christopher said...

I always enjoy looking at all your photos!! I am glad that you scrap them as well. Have a wonderful 2010 & cheers to a fantastic year!

Ella Swan said...

Thanks everyone - yup I sure do have some scrapping to do for December so collaging some of them simplifies the process somewhat. Yes Heidi those are tiny cherry tomatoes in the salad - 3 of us eat them & 3 of us don't so they are the easiest for the one's who don't like to remove because then there isn't any soggy tomato residue on everything like when you use sliced tomatoes {BTW you have a great memory LOL}!

tania said...

hi helen, great photos!!
you must enjoy your new year and all the scrapping going along with it!!

Michelle Ramsay said...

Stunning photos and what a lovely tradition of everying writing down the ups and downs of the year!! Hope 2010 is a great year for you.

Andrea said...

Gorgeous - thanks for sharing xxx