Update on my little California Palm. It's still alive, and appears to be doing great, although slow growing. No apparent effects from putting it sideways in the ground. The picture I took this morning, the plant looks pretty much as it did last summer. [URL=http://s796.photobucket.com/user/dahur1/media/IMG_8045_zps4c31176e.jpg.html][IMG]http://i796.photobucket.com/albums/yy249/dahur1/IMG_8045_zps4c31176e.jpg[/IMG][/URL] These four California Palms I planted 1 1/2 years ago are doing fabulous. In the last three months they have nearly replaced all their winter burned leaves. Compare to the picture above, I posted right after planting them. [URL=http://s796.photobucket.com/user/dahur1/media/IMG_8041_zpsd4fec437.jpg.html][IMG]http://i796.photobucket.com/albums/yy249/dahur1/IMG_8041_zpsd4fec437.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

My husband was just reading over my shoulder and said, "These women are all full of crop!" Can you believe it? He was being silly, of course. (Read his statement carefully- there are no typos.) It was a pun, a joke, a hehe-haha kind of thing- please don't write me nasty letters! LOL Anyway, Carla, you are right. As a beginner, I was thrilled to hear all these responses from the seasoned professionals. Boy, oh boy, Mar, are YOU a professional or what?! :) I think the best suggestion is getting double prints of all your pictures, then label the envelopes and save them in tact. That way, you have a set to keep all those other "background object" memories and focus your scrapbooking on the focal points of the photots. You could even indicate on the envelopes which scrapbook page(s) used that particular set of pictures. So if you screw up when cutting, or want several copies of the picture on one page, or want to do a whole page over, you can just pull out the right pack of pictures, grab the negative, get a copy made for a quarter (that's all it costs at my grocery store) and voila! Easy organization, too, for when you want to see ALL the pictures from Christmas '99 for example, not just the few you selected for the pages. I love reading these posts. I just went to a craft store and spent *ahem* dollars on supplies. I haven't completed a full page yet and I'm addicted already! I think I'm in big trouble, don't you? Thanks for all the wonderful input so far- can't wait to read the new stuff, too!

Well, it seems I have more "planned" than I've actually done. But here's the scoop on what I've done/am doing. 1. 8x10 size for my mom's 2nd wedding 2. Going Down Under (trip to Australia) 3. Baby's first Year (my dd's baby book) 4. Ds#2--Birth to 5 years (not quite done, as he turns 5 in 5 weeks LOL!) working on my wedding/honeymoon album just decided to do an ABC album with ds#1. He is 7 and we are homeschooling, so this is kinda his project too. I tell you guys, this is an awesome way to use up misc. photos. In the future: I will have a Birth-5 years album for ds#1 and dd. These will be their books to have when they leave home. (Obviously will also do 6-10 yrs, then 11-graduation) I will have my own family album. But when I say "family" I more mean just pics of my kids. Maybe some other family members will make it into the album, if they're lucky LOL. christmas thru the years album The Grandpa Book this will be a 5x7 tribute album for each of the kids, about thier grandpa and great-grandpas who've passed away. Summer and Winter Fun Birthdays This should take me till I'm dead!

Music, and by extension recorded music, have been lifelong passions for me and are subjects I know a lot about. I'll try to avoid this becoming a pedantic monologue and will just say that many of the preceding comments may be well intentioned but they're very misinformed. Some truths - most people's ears can't tell the difference between a good sound source and a poor one - just look at the popularity of lossy MP3 and the Apple counterpart files and crappy headphones/earbuds to understand. That doesn't mean there isn't a difference because the differences are dramatic and substantive. Most people don't have amplifiers, other equipment and speakers in their homes to take advantage of better sound sources. It's not that analog vinyl is the Shangri-La of sound sources. It's only because CDs by comparison are so crappy (and this was known from the start) because of limited data storage capacity and the need for low sound quality mastering and lossy sampling to fit albums within the 700Mb space. Vinyl recordings contain more of the sound "data" and sound better only for that reason. There are people who collect mismatched china pieces. Broken antique pieces or other items in very imperfect condition. So too, there are people who collect old vinyl recordings. To have them, not to listen to them. True audiophiles, which is the group with a continuing interest in vinyl recordings, have no interest in platters that have been stored in anyone's attic or garage. They're scratched. Listening to such recordings is agony to someone who wants to hear good sound. Sit on your boxes of "fortune" if you wish but don't expect a rush of interest if you try to dispose of them. Like an old anchor in your backyard, they're heavy, awkward to move, and of interest to very few people. Another surprise for some of you- the so-called "studio masters" of most modern recordings are made these days on digital equipment. Yes, not analog. Why? Greater data capacity, it's unlimited. And the greater data capacity allows for capturing the full depth of the sound. And better editing and mastering, also typically done digitally. The recordings are then mastered and downsampled specifically for the intended destination, whether a vinyl record or a CD. Mere compression doesn't necessarily alter the sound because so-called lossless formats are available. FLAC is the most common, Apple has an analog for its world called ALAC. The problem is that what's called "lossy" compression - MP3s and Apple's similar AAC/MP4 format, downsample the sound source to produce smaller files and in doing so, the quality degrades.The same thing is true with digital images - so-called RAW or TIFF (there are different names) are large files that contain the totality of what passed though the lens as captured by tens of millions of pixels. Those files when the original source get downsampled and compressed in a lossy way are used to produce JPG or GIF files, which are never as clear or crisp as the originals. They can't be, they don't have as much "data". Higher than CD quality recordings, specially mastered, are available for a lot of existing albums. Websites such as HD Tracks sell them, they're expensive but noticeably better. than standard CDs. They can't help but be so, they have more "data" in them. I've bought several for my favorite albums over the years, they are a pleasure to listen to. But as above, most people don't have equipment that will even play a high sample rate digital file. Turntables purchased for under $1000, and with inexpensive cartridges, will only begin to take advantage of a vinyl record in pristine condition. And if the signal is not passed to excellent (and expensive) equipment downstream, may not even do that.