How do you organize your photos?

I've been asked more than once how I organize my photos. As a die hard lover of beautifully organized spaces, I wish I could say something like this:

'All of my old photos are carefully sorted by topic and date into matching storage boxes and stacked neatly on shelves. I pull out my favorites and lovingly yet artfully arrange them in acid free linen bound albums. I have a special shelf where all of these albums sit at the ready for a walk down memory lane. '

But as you can probably guess by now, I can say no such thing. All of my old (pre-digital) photos are stuff haphazardly in mismatched boxes and stuffed wherever I can find room. I have always wanted to make lovely keepsake albums but I never seem to get around to it. So the few photo albums I do have on my shelves are never quite finished and nothing special to look at. 99% of the thousands of photos I've taken since going digital sit on my computer completely underutilized and unorganized.

This is just pathetic. I love all of my photos and the memories they represent. I drag my camera everywhere so I preserve those moments in time and then I lock them away forever. A waste.

I just could never find the perfect way to display or organize them all so I just threw up my hands in frustration and gave up. I've decided it has to stop. So rather than finding the "perfect" solution - I'm just going to pick one. I've picked Blurb ( I also looked at Lulu and MyPublisher but picked blurb based on the reviews).

I'm working on a digital photo book of our travels in 2009. Its not all emcomposing. Its not as lovely as a beautiful linen bound, vellum paged, archival album. But its a start, right?

photos of blurb books found from tracy77, thimbleanna, tamaginidesign, neweyesblog

And I do mean a start. I haven't finished a single book yet. Im forcing myself to do something really simple so I can finish it in this century. Wish me luck.

So spill the beans - how do you organize and store your photos???

Have you seen...

the new passport pages?

image found on flickr by quinn.anya

Gone are the lovely old style simple style replaced with patriotic scenes. I really wanted to finish my collection of passport stamps art. <---Click there if you want to learn more about what I did with them last year.

I know this is an incredibly silly thing to be complaining about but its ruining my plans of completing a whole wall of them. The mismatched styles would just drive me crazy.

Now that the old style will soon be a thing of the past, I'm even more attached to my old stamps! I'll have to figure something else out. Such a shame to keep them locked in my passport forever, don't you think?

I know I'm not the only one generally obsessed with ephemera. Anyone else do something fun with their (or anyone elses) important documents? I'd love to see them!

Old School Brooklyn

Well now that Im all caught up on my travel recaps, things can get back to normal around here!

Today I thought I'd show you a little bit more of Brooklyn. I've already shared a couple of neighborhood tours, a fab flea market, the cutest coffee shop ever and a few other fav spots. But today is different.

I'm always quick to point out that Brooklyn is so completely different than what most people expect. But there are some things that are so absolutely old school that they define the stereotype and can't be argued. Not that I want to argue with them, if you know what I mean.


Case in point, Lioni's. An institution so unapologetically old world Brooklyn that you can not resist its charms and travel back to a different time the minute you cross the threshold. The meat, the bread, the italian specialities are all here just like you remember them.



Located in (where else?) Bensonhurst, it spits in the face of every hipster/yuppie establishment that has become the norm here. And while I'm all about appreciating progress, sometimes its nice to just have a good ol' sandwich and take in the scenary. They don't take themselves too seriously if this sign is any indication.

While Lioni's is not the only one left of its kind, its certainly something you don't see everyday anymore. And in case you are wondering, the mozzarella its famous for is absolutely worth all the hype.

If you want to see more of my fine borough, check out some of these posts about town. Or download my free guide to 1 day in Brooklyn.

Anyone else share my appreciation for this place? Where is your favorite old school food?

Cambodia Continued...

Continued from this Cambodia post. We had seen the 3 major temples and escaped only moderately dehydrated. Having had our fill of ancient history for a little while, we drove out of town to see a little more of the country outside of the temple walls.



We purchased some rice cooked in Bamboo on the side of the road.



We walked through a town precariously perched over water. Some villagers make their living fishing, some growing lotus flowers. Everyone but the smallest children working incredibly hard.





As some of these stops were not tourist draws, we were only ones there - and quite the novelty to every passerby that shouted to us along the way. We expected to get the odd look or maybe even a harassed or asked for money. Its hard to describe the poverty level here. These people have almost nothing so I wouldn't blame them for giving rich foreigners with fancy cameras and a waiting car the evil eye. Instead we got the warmest smiles and welcoming waves by nearly everyone.





On our final day there, we visited two more temples on the advice of our guide. The first, Bang Melea, was similar to Ta Prohm in that it was overrun by trees. But this one is not quite as well maintained. It has more of a wild feel than the others.



And our last temple, Banteay Srei, was our least favorite. It was beautiful but it had recently been taken over by a commercial organization that sucked some of the charm out the experience. I hope this group will help preserve these structures and its the price of progress - but I can only hope the other temples don't suffer the same fate.



Our tour guide, who is also the leader of a charitable organization that subsidizes schools (teachers make just $40 per month there!), asked if we would mind making a pit stop at a grade school to drop off some uniforms. Once again, the gorgeous children of this country surprised us with their charm and warmth. If I had known ahead of time, I would have brought pens or stickers but it was a last minute visit. So we purchased a big bundle of candy and handed that out. These children were so polite - the older kids made sure the younger kids had first crack at the candy and even the youngest children would only take one piece and say thank you.




Despite the additional help, the schools are in pretty bad shape. If you'd are interested in learning more about helping or donating, check out the Ponheary Ly Foundation website.

Cambodia is a place I will not soon forget. Both its tragic history and its amazing citizens impressed me beyond words. I imagine it will be quite different in the not too distant future but I'm glad we got to experience it as it is now - good and bad. Hope you enjoyed seeing some of the highlights of our trip.

If you would like to own one of my photos, please click here. Prints start at just $6.

Visiting.

If you see a tumbleweed blow by in here, please accept my apologies. I'm visiting over at the very fabulous From The Right Bank to the Left Coast to the Deep South about my favorite design trend. Please come visit me.



I'll be back next week with more travel photos and some other goodies. Have a fabulous weekend everyone!

Are you watching? 9 by Design

Before I get back to Cambodia, I wanted to ask: are you watching our new favorite show, 9 by Design? In short, its about about a couple that runs a renovation business who just happens to have 7 children and live through the highs and lows of the process. The matriarch of the family is able to handle so much more than I could possibly imagine. They manage to transform run down NYC properties into amazing modern homes for the uber rich while raising 7 children who all appear to be well adjusted and cool in their own right. If I weren't quite so impressed with them, I might hate them.



Their style could not be more different than my own but its absolutely gorgeous. I really appreciate how the series shows so much more of the reality of renovating than any other show on television. Even for people who have a bundle of cash, full time support staff and all day to focus on their projects, its still incredibly stressful and a lot of hard work. They have to be on top of everything and have a vision to get it all done. This family does it all with amazing calm and cool.

Here are a few shots of some of their work but you really have to see the show (or pop over to their design site or maybe read their book) to get the full picture.


So are you watching? What do you think?

Blistering Cambodia

I use the word blistering for two reasons. One its hot as Hades there - the heat and humidity is completely unescapable unless you hide out in your hotel room (which would certainly defeat the purpose of visiting!). But I also mean that its becoming quite a popular tourist destination. Considering its not so distant past, its changing fast to accomadate all of the global travelers that want to see Angor Wat and the hundreds of other temples Cambodia has to share. In large part its why we chose to go now - we wanted to see the temples before they were too greatly changed by the tourist machine and/or destroyed by tourist traffic itself. In that respect, it did not disappoint.

I won't bore you with too many of the temple details but each of them had their own character and interest.

Our first stop was the granddaddy of them all, Angor Wat.


Next up was Ta Prohm, likely most famous by Angelina Jolie in the Tomb Raider movie.



As you can probably tell from the photos, its the trees that are the real attraction here. Gorgeous branchy growths have grabbed hold of the temples making it quite an interesting view of nature taking back the land. In reality, this temple's trees are cut back regularily and work is being done on the temple itself to maintain the structure. But that doesn't make it any less impressive to visit.

At this point, we were all melting and the appeal of the temples were wearing thin on us. So we planned to just high tail it back to town until we passed by Banyan. We just had to stop.



The sculpted faces were really amazing and beautiful.

We visited at off hours (the middle of the day) to avoid as many of the crowds as we could. The difference between having the area mostly to yourself versus fighting with big tours is substantial so well worth the trade off in terms of uncomfort and poor photo lighting conditions.

Based on the guidebooks, we had expected to be swarmed with children begging and following us around. We really didn't experience very much of that at all. There were a few children selling knick knacks but they politely asked once or twice and then left us alone. We were never asked for money once. Not sure if that had to do with the way we timed our visit or just luck but we had nothing but positive experiences with the people living there. While the temples were beautiful, its the people of this country that really resonated with me. More about that later.

Click here to see the rest of our trip to Cambodia.

Like my photos? You can purchase some of my favorites from this and past trips here. Prints start at just $6.