Organization Archives - Page 3 of 11 - Ashley Hackshaw / Lil Blue Boo

Simplify With A Monthly Household Worksheet

March 5, 2013 by Ashley Hackshaw

A few years ago I created a worksheet for my business to help me keep on top of all the moving parts of accounting, taxes, inventory etc. I was a disaster before….but now I am always on top of everything. I’ve adapted it into a household worksheet as well to keep our monthly finances and other things in order. As technical as I am with computers and smart phones, over time I’ve come to the realization that there’s nothing better than handwritten notes and records. A few things I like about this system:

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Yearly Photo Book Ideas

December 27, 2012 by Ashley Hackshaw

In addition to our yearly family photo albums, I make a photo book for Boo stocked full of memories. I just finished 2011:

My method/thoughts on photo books:

1. I complete the books about 10 months after a year has ended. I like for them to be January 1st through December 31st. It’s an OCD thing. The delay also allows time for missing photos to show up.

2. I compile memories, quotes, etc by going through blog posts, Facebook posts, and even just browsing photos. I usually cut and paste snippets into a word document in order of date.

3. I organize my photos, artwork, etc by month before starting my project. I work on the book by month….sometimes skipping around to the easy months first and then coming back to the hard ones.

4. I never feel bad about going overboard on pages. The bigger the better and I don’t think there is a price I can put on family memories. My books (through iPhoto/apple.com) usually cost about $75 to $100 each. It seems like a lot (especially when ordering multiple copies) but I would rather have a photo book over a few trips to a restaurant!

5. I save the photo book as a PDF (“Print” as a PDF in iPhoto) and back it up to a hard drive or CD and store in a safe place.

Here are a few things I added into this years book:

Boo’s Self Portraits:
Boo asked for a mini tripod a few years ago and she had so much fun taking self portraits. When I would look at the camera I would be surprised by hilarious snapshots she’d taken of herself. I made them into a collage (using PicMonkey.com) and then loaded that collage as one photo into the book template:

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The Office Makeover: Craft Storage (Free Vintage Label Download)

December 18, 2012 by Ashley Hackshaw

Martha eat your heart out. I labeled 70 boxes yesterday with vintage-inspired labels. It’s part of my big office makeover. I can’t show you the office yet because it’s a disaster. Anyway, it took almost all day to organize the boxes and create the labels but I feel really organized now:

The shelves were an early Christmas present from Mr. LBB. This area is a hallway behind my office….technically it’s a “butler’s pantry” for serving food and storage but it’s the perfect area to store supplies right off my work area. The wall space above the countertop was just empty space. The area used to be a huge sunken living room before we remodeled a few years ago. We added a wall at the end of the room to create the storage space.

Here’s what it looked like two weeks ago:

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