Scott and I just visited one of his childhood friends, Michael Alltop, his wife Whitney (friends since college for me) and their family.  While we were there, the family celebrated their oldest child's 16th birthday. Mike made a photo book for his son's birthday. The picture above shows how amazing a gift a photo book is.  The family gathered around the book and laughed as they relived some favorite moments of their lives together.  It was a great moment to be a part of.

Before the gift was given Mike talked making the book.  It was so fun to hear the excitement as he talked about how easy and quick the process was.

Easy solutions to bring photos into families' lives is what is important to Ahni & Zoe by Creative Memories.  Even though this product wasn't ordered through AZ, it encouraged me to find more people like Mike who want to do something with their photos and their families who will be blessed by the end result.

MAKE IT SIMPLE, GOT IT. :)

I have ordered Historian and Artisan tonight.  I will be working on my trip to NY, PA, CT, NJ this weekend using the new software.  That way I will be able to better share with you what it is like.  Feel free to add comments with questions.

Ordered Historian. Downloaded. Uninstalled Memory Manager. Entered activation code. Opened Historian. Open vault from Memory Manager. So easy.

For my birthday this year I asked my family for one present: de-clutter our house and hire someone to come in and deep clean.  I have been working a 2nd job now for 6 months and it has been hard to keep up with the clutter that likes to grow and have babies all over my house. :)

So, last night we worked as a family for 2 hours.  Huge dent in the mess was made.  It felt soooo good. 

My son has a hard time letting go of toys, school projects, etc. because of the memories that they hold for him.  I said, "What if we took a picture of them, would that work the same as keeping them to look at and remember them?"  He said... yes. Yeah!

So, there we were in my front yard last night (while it was still light out) taking pictures of him - making crazy faces - with his toys and art projects and other "junk" that meant a lot to him.  We were able to fill up a box of donations and a couple of trash cans full of trash that he can now "hold on to" via pictures.

I joined the donation train and donated some decorations I had that I loved, but really no longer had a home in my house.  They didn't fit with the décor and I just wanted to not have them cluttering up my home.

My husband spent the two hours de-cluttering his den - which had become the electronics graveyard for our family.  Computer dies - put in den. Get new TV - put old TV in den.  Get new Blu-ray player & sound system - put old system in den.  Last night he filled the back of my van with these relics and I am going to L.O.V.E. recycling them today.

I texted a friend's house cleaner last night and requested the deep clean for next week.  This was before we started.  I was committed to getting this done.

Loving my birthday gift already!!

I was so excited to hear this morning on my leader call that CM is working on making printing storybooks a part of their offerings in 2014.  So, I am going to keep working on storybooks and getting them ready to print so I am ready to go when they are.

If there is a project that you have that needs to be printed right away, you can, of course, print elsewhere.  I personally am stockpiling projects that can wait to be ordered in 2014. :)

I have added a calendar to the site.  Still learning about all the functionality.  One thing that I learned is that this website works best on a computer and some functionality is not fully utilized on mobile devices. For example, when looking at the calendar you cannot see Saturdays. Ummm.... when are most of my events??? Saturdays.  I thought at first that the events were not there, then I noticed that no Saturdays were there. :)

On a computer, you see a scroll bar to move over to the right and see the rest of the calendar. But, it's