Preserve Your Memories.

Yes it has been almost a month since my last post. My husband has a new job working from home and somehow I get less done with him around. He's not even really around- just in his office, but he is distracting. I am getting better at not interrupting him with my every not so important thought or going to say hello just because I can and I like him.

That being said I have been working on preserving my pictures and videos. Every time my computer hiccups I fill up with stress thinking that at any moment it could possibly consume my memories. And yes I know memories are something in your brain, but if I had to rely on my brain to remember the last eight wonderful years I know I would be in trouble. So I have been backing everything up. We found me a 1TB of external memory at Best Buy. It was on sale for $99. This may seem like a lot for something I may never have to use- but it is worth it to me. Last weekend I loaded every picture I have since 2002 which was around 6,000, every home video, my journal (which I have been keeping in a word file since 2002 which I highly recommend), digital copies of the scrapbooks I have created for the children, and anything else that seemed mildly important to me onto it in one simply hour. Then whisked it away to my fire safe and locked it up for safe keeping. It looks like a bar of minted silver- but it is worth its weight in gold to me.I am 100% sure that keeping everything on an external hard drive is a much better system than my old system... CD's in a box. Not that I am not keeping these too, as a backup to the backup.

The next step in preserving my memories was to have a backup of what I could that was not in our home. For this I turned to shutterfly.
There are tons of picture printing and storage sites online and I have used several of them. Shutterly seemed to have the quickest upload to me, as it only took my three days of running my computer to the ground to upload all 6000 or so images. This may seem like a long time- but often these type of sites take hours just to upload twenty high resolution images, so I would say they are doing alright. They have no limit for storage like others do. No limit! Now if anything happened to my hardrive, box of CD's, computer and printed copies, I could re order most all of them for .15 cents or less in one simple click.
I have found too that when you sign up with them you get emails every so often in your email for 50% an order or free shipping. I never order anything without using a promotion.
Another not so perfect backup I have is BLURB.

I make three or more of these printed digital photo books each year. You can make these through a lot of companies too, but I have mine printed through BLURB. I think they are one of the cheapest and I like the more modern look they offer. This company really needs to pay me because I sing their praises to my every acquaintance and have turned some many people on to their products. Most everyone I know uses them now to print memory books, you will be converted to if you go check them out.
On their site they claim they are only responsible to keep the book you create available for one year. But I log on to my account and can still order books I made three years ago. Obviously they will not be there forever, but it is nice to know they are available to me for reprinting now if anything ever happened to the ones sitting on my bookshelf. I also uploaded digital copies of these books to my external hard drive as well.
Of course many of my memories will forever be available on the internet via my family blog as well.
Oh what a stress relief it is to know that I don't have to rely on my brain to remember the wonderful parts of my past.