Finally finished!

I've been seriously slacking on my blogging lately but it's had to take a bit of the back seat for the past few months while I've been working on my family slideshow for 2010. I've actually been working on several slideshows the past few months. A slideshow doesn't take all that long to compile, but it's the countless hours of watching it over and over again as I tweak it to perfection. It probably shouldn't take me so long, but I want it to be absolutely perfect in every way. Even after watching it dozens of times, sometimes something will pop out at me even though I've seen it so much. I truly spend hours carefully scrutinizing every aspect so that I make sure everything is 99.9% perfect in the end. (I would say 100% perfect, but I don't think this is attainable since I'm sure there's something that could be better. I can settle for 99.9%!)

I started doing slideshows for the first time last year. I recently went back and watched last year's slideshow and I could tell a definite improvement in my work because I was noticing things right and left that wouldn't be acceptable anymore! It just made me smile because last year I thought my slideshow was pretty much perfect, but now that I watch it with another year of experience under my belt, and I see how far I've come!

The slideshow is 31 minutes long. I tried really hard to keep it short, but that's a tall order when I have so many good photographs to choose from. I don't know the exact number of pictures I had to work with this year, but I would say I probably had at least 3000 pictures to sift through. It's really hard to narrow the pictures down, too, since so many of them are good and have a story behind them. This year's slideshow has 854 pictures in it, 13 video clips and nine songs. I can't wait for my family to watch it, and I'm just glad that so many of us will be celebrating Christmas here at my mom's house so that we can all watch it together.

Hooray for documenting my life – it's seriously like a full-time job. I get on my computer almost every day of the week depending on what's going on, and I stay on it all day. I almost always get back on my computer after I'm back in bed for the night. I'd say I'm on my computer a good eight to 10 hours a day. Although I'm disabled, I definitely have a busy and productive life and I feel so blessed that I can spend my days doing something I love.