I've received seeds from trades in all the methods & styles mentioned above. They all appear to be successful and allow seedaholics to choose the method that works best for them. Plastic baggies - I've found what works best for me are the smaller 2" x 3" zip-envelopes, also available at Walmart if you hit it when they're in stock, 100 @ $1.00. If I see them late in the season, I buy multiple packages. I use sticky labels, also available from Walmart, that can be printed from my computer. I include botanical name, common name, cultivar name, USDA hardiness zone, height, light & moisture requirements, bloom time & color along with any extra pertinent plant or growing information. If there's room, I'll include year harvested in brackets. Before mailing, I Google the seed name and do a little research so the information on the label is current, however I sometimes wonder if that information changes as time goes by. Mailing seeds - I use bubble mailers of different sizes but usually the smaller 5" x 7" size. Bubble mailers I receive get torn apart/cut up or reused as is if they're not too travel-damaged. For single trades I'll tape the seed envelope to a piece of recycled bubble envelope and tuck it inside a standard envelope with "PLEASE DO NOT MACHINE - SEEDS" on the front in the lower left-hand corner. After 2 years of sending seeds via mail in this way, I've not heard of anyone receiving crushed seeds. When harvesting seeds over the course of the season, I set them in paper bowls or spread them on paper platters that are placed on shelf units inside the garage to dry. This also allows any crawlies that may have taken up residence inside the seedpods to depart the premises of their own free will. Once thoroughly dry, seeds are stored in small plastic salad dressing cups with clear, snap-on lids I'm able to buy from the cafeteria where I work. They last from year to year and are re-used. Generally I try to not have seeds leftover from year to year despite evidence that they remain viable for many years. This thread is a good idea and hopefully we'll hear from plenty of folks with other ideas/methods for seed preservation and sharing.

A quick note to say that DVDflick worked. I got the video's made - just in a nick of time (bc. I have a full day conference tomorrow). Now my daughter can bring her friend the videos (and scrapbook). DVDflick was amazingly easy compared to other things I tried. Once on the program, I printed the 6 page guide - which explained most of what I needed to know. Two things I had to figure out myself - and am posting here for others who may try this. 1 - on the Configure your Project tab, there are settings for video. If you want to change the resolution/file size (as I did to fit a 45 minute video on a standard dvd), you can adjust the bit rate). 2 - I would recommend on the burning settings (also under configure your project tab), choose to have it burn it to dvd, and verify, and eject. The first dvd I made I only selected burn it and verify. It burned it - ejected, reinserted and played it. But then the dvd tray was locked and couldn't be opened. This is somewhat frequent occurence with disc burning software - which wants to prevent you from accidentally opening the tray before it's done. The only way I could open the tray was to shut the computer, and hit the open disk tray button as it was rebooting. The next video I made, I selected eject when done - and it ejected it. For a while I thought the tray was broken - and tried the usual methods to release - like the paper clip in the tiny hole near the tray. And going to my computer, d:, eject disk. Nothing worked bc. the software was preventing it. Once my disk was ejected - and the software closed, the open and close tray works fine with other programs. Thanks so much. This was a great program. Just curious if convertxtodvd would get me additional features. I can see burning many dvd's for people (we seem to be the videographers of many social gatherings and I'd like to give dvd's to people who were part of the plans). DVDflick worked great - but I don't mind paying a little if it gets me more features. Any thoughts? Thanks so much. You saved me. Lynn.

Bob - Good Grief is right. But it's probably not as bad as it sounds. One of the problems is that before I found this forum a year ago (and had some sense of saving files to the appropriate place), not only did my husband and I just save files (with no regard to where they were being placed) - we also had 2 different computer guys help at various times - and I've discovered that one of them took it upon himself to set up some folders and put items there (he set up a Lynn's documents) when he transferred data from one computer to another. Now I can see why he set up my own folder (since my husband and I shared a computer in those days) - but he never told me he was doing that- so lo and behold - I have an entire Lynn's documents folder that I never use but contains some of my older files. yeah - I guess it's a lot to sort. Personally, your method makes sense to me - just set up folders in the C drive for the categories I'm interested in. I'm now the only one on my computer - so I don't think I need a "my documents" folder (and certainly not a separate "Lynn's documents" folder). I am so glad to have found this forum and decided to get mastery and comprehension of my computer. Having professionals set things up - but not bother telling you what and why they did things - just complicates everything. And the pictures are also a mess bc. this helpful computer guy put picasa on my pc - which grabbed every picture - so that many pictures appear in picasa and elsewhere. It's the picture finding and organizing that seems the most daunting. Videos and music I've done myself in the past year - no one else has touched it but me. Word files are manageable too. BP - my question about the Tivo files is that I want to sit in my living room, have Tivo search my computer to see what's on it. That's what I'm thinking has to be in the Tivo desktop program. When I'm at my computer, I think I can find the videos anywhere - I'm just thinking that no matter where they came from (Tivo desktop, hulu, my camcorder, edited in Videoredo), that I might somehow have to move them all to My Tivo Recordings folder in order to access it using the Tivo and watching tv. Do I have that right? Jemdandy - that's one interesting way to approach the 2 drives - one for programs and one for data files. But then I'd be backing up data files to yet another place. I have a 500GB hard drive and am thinking of adding a second 1TB hard drive. So both drives have lots of room. Except for video files, I would think my c drive could easily handle my programs and data files (music, documents and pictures) - and the software and those files could be on the c drive and backed up to the second internal drive. Is there a reason - in terms of improved performance, etc - to use the c drive only for software? Does that add an extra step if I want to use one of my software programs (say photo editing) and have to go to the other drive to get the actual photos to work on? Or is it just as quick to run a program on one drive and get the data from the other? [Okay - good grief, it is]. Thanks everyone. Lynn.

I wanted to update/edit my post above, but can't see how to do it this time!? EDIT: well now, isn't that special; it appears that I get an edit button for this post, but not the one above. Anyway, I don't know what is different about my win8.1 machine, but my win7 was able to recognize the DVD disc and played my video and I found Movie Maker and it appeared to load or see my video. I assume that I will be able to edit with it if I wish. Pre edit before testing disc on win7 desktop: I now see that the small files are ifo and bup files and a wiki says they direct a dvd player while running a vob file. If so, I don't know why my win8.1 dvd drive didn't just run with it. EDIT: I guess I have solved my most critical issue which is to be reasonably certain that my mini DV camera can have its files saved so that further work can be performed. I still don't know enough to be sure of a practical direction to transfer the file to relatives. I have heard that youtube can be kept semi private. Is that a good way to go? I have a google mail account if I can remember it (find my notes), I never use it. I have skydrive that was set up on my win8.1 machine. Can that be easily and safely used somehow?