I am starting with my wedding. I also like to do things in order. So I put all my photos in order, and started with the wedding which to me is the beginning of my family. I have 16 years to go including 2 children, 11 and 9. This is a very time consuming way of doing it, but I couldn't see starting in the middle somewhere. Hope this helps.

I use the "divide and conquer" method. I also place things in chronological order but in their own albums. I have themed books, one for Christmas, one for weddings, one for SCUBA diving, one for everyday life, etc. This way I don't get overwhelmed by trying to get everything precisely as it happened from the beginning. It also, allows you to share the albums with someone that might want to see the pics from a dive trip but not want to have to look at the wedding I attended the week prior to the trip. PLUS you can change themes when you are tired of working on one. You can start anywhere you like, do some current then drop back and do some older ones. This works for me and I like the results. I hope this helps. Rebecca

I don't have 16 or 20 years of photos to so, but my first album was for my first daughter's first two years (because that's when I started.) I couldn't decide how to organize them, either, so I did a variation on the ABC album. I picked pictures I wanted to put in the scrapbook and sorted them into 26 envelopes each having a different letter of the alphabet, writing on the front of each an idea or "theme" for each of the pictures that started with that letter. Clear as mud? :) i.e. for the "A" enveolpe I had pictures of aunts and uncles, alligators (for our trip to an alligator farm), "B" had birthdays, blowing bubbles, bathtime, "C" had Christmas, cousins, and so on. I made sure I included the letter on the page and all the captions or theme for the page centered on that letter.

I didn't stick with just one page for each letter like the traditional ABC albums, rather had as many pages for each letter as I wanted with as many pictures as I wanted. That way I had the best of both worlds. I was able to organize them into a theme for the whole album and I could also organize them into chronological order within the certain letter.

I also put die cuts, stickers, etc. in the envelope if there were particular ones I wanted to use. Some pages had several different pics if I had a single picture of a few things and didn't want to do a whole page for each. For example there was a mixed "S" page because I had several small single pictures that I could title with an "S" word but didn't want to do separate pages. There's "S" is for sandbox, stories with Daddy, "Soooooooo big!" and sliding and swinging in Savannah, GA. all on one page. It's a simple page, but it looks very pretty. All in shades of blue. I was able to experiment with different techniques and styles with this type of album, too. It was a great way to do it. As always, of course, some pages turned out better than others, but I love how it turned out on the whole.

It is kind of hard to picture, I know, but if I wasn't clear enough on something feel free to email me and have me clarify. Good luck and happy scrappin'!

-Sarah

All of these ideas sound great! I recently did a BUNCH of gift albums for Christmas of my brother's lives growing up and started each album with a family tree, and then their earliest baby photos and then went in age from there. In shots where there were more than one family member I decided who in the photo stood out the most and it went in their album ( I had 4 brothers) if the shot was important enough for all of us to want or need a copy I made reprints.
IF I ever get caught up I will probably keep adding to their albums as the years go by, and to my own as we each take photos of each other. The plus side to this is if one house should ever burn down (this happened to my mom), there are still photos of each of us somewhere. A little off topic but an answer. Penny