Family Photos Deserve an Audacious Goal

Posted on September 25, 2014 by pixologie

Three Things You Need to Know About International Save Your Photos Day

Craziness at Pixologie over the past week . . . since we committed to scanning 100,000 photos in honor of International Save Your Photos Day this Saturday. With our Kodak Picture Saver scanners, we have scanned anywhere from 2,000 to over 10,000 photos a day and have seen so many memories that are finally coming out of boxes, envelopes and deteriorated albums. (WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AT HOME, SEVERE RISK OF FRUSTRATION AND THROWING FLATBED SCANNER OUT THE WINDOW!)

Here’s three things you need to know about Save Your Photos Day and why we went out (like way out) on a limb to bring attention to this day.

ONE: There is a Save Your Photos Alliance

We were humbled during the Association of Personal Photo Organizers’ 2014 National Conference when volunteers spoke about helping tornado and flooding victims be reunited with some of their photos.

Out of this presentation was born a group of photo organizers, non-profits and businesses who have committed to the safeguarding, recovering, restoring and reuniting of photos and treasured memorabilia before and after disasters occur.

The Save Your Photos Alliance designated Saturday, September 27 as International Save Your Photos Day. Pixologie is a proud member of the alliance and thrilled to be having a special Open House here at our studio this weekend.

TWO: The National Disaster Photo Rescue (NDPR) Group Proves Photos Matter

The NDPR online index of recovered photos

Located in Joplin, Missouri, the NDPR volunteers have rescued, cleaned, indexed and stored over 35,000 photos and documents that were blown from homes and businesses on May 22, 2011. Over half of these items have been returned to their owners. Here’s a link to their website.

A photo is a lifeline when disaster hits. Please take a few minutes to watch how Joplin has recovered from the horrific tornado that tore apart their town. While the video doesn’t deal with the photo recovery efforts, it definitely makes one think about all we have to be thankful for.

THREE: You Can Help – Your Donation Will Be Matched by Pixologie Up To $1,000

Run by volunteers, the NDPR could use our help for expenses in helping these photos be saved. Donations will be used to provide mileage reimbursement and meals for volunteers who donate countless hours of service both at disaster sites as well as working with recovered photos to repair and restore them for return to the owner.

We have a challenge grant for the NDPR – we will donate matching dollars to the NDPR for every dollar we collect for Save Your Photos Day up to $1,000.

So. . . whether or not you have your own photos to save or you’d like to help someone else save their photos, please plan an hour to stop on by our Open House this Saturday.

Your photos really do matter – ask anyone who has lost their photos to a tornado or flood.

How about joining us in making your own audacious goal?

Get your photos out of chaos and back into your life to be protected, celebrated and shared!

Save Your Photos Day at Pixologie

Saturday, September 27, 1 to 4 pm

9803 South 13th Street, Oak Creek, WI 53154

RSVP to 414-690-0791 or FACEBOOK

Stepping Out of Photos For a Moment . . . Can You Find Your Music?

Posted on September 12, 2014 by pixologie

When you need motivation for getting going on your photo project, music can be extremely inspiring. One of my favorite songs about memories is by Bon Jovi . . . (Okay, it is a bit romantic, but he sings about photos!!!!)

WATCH You Want to Make A Memory Video

SWITCHING GEARS FROM PHOTOS TO MUSIC

There is a lot of music that I love listening to while working on things that have taken me a while to get to. I am switching gears for this blog from organizing photos to talk about your music collection. Why in the world would I do that?

Music matters too! It inspires, sets the mood and brings back many memories. (Calling the 80s – my childhood & Uptown Girl!)
Pixologie has connected with Murfie – an online music collection and store. Murfie is a partner of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers which is important to us – because it tells us that Murfie understands the significance of photos and memories and what we do.

Murfie is a fellow Wisconsin business – located in Madison just an hour and a half from our Pixologie Studio in Oak Creek, WI. We had to go check them out especially when Tyler Stubbe, long time Murfie employee, told us they have over half a million CDs in their warehouse of music.

MY TOUR AT MURFIE HEADQUARTERS

Here’s what I learned during my tour in Madison. You can:

Stream your CD and vinyl collection eliminating the need to store hundreds and hundreds of old CD cases in your home
Sell your CDs and vinyl records in a personal shop
Purchase CDs (digitally from other Murfie members – you are buying a physical CD that Murfie stores for you.)
Download CD files to add to iTunes and other music playing software
Trade albums with other members
Add albums to your Wishlist, choose a price, Autobuy and much more

Okay – I couldn’t resist taking some fun photos of the Murfie team.

The Murfie team let me ship my classic music collection in to try their services out. I loved it – thought it was supercool to hear MY music over the internet. (Literally, I was playing my CD – Murfie copies EVERY single CD that is shipped to them – per their obligations to the music industry.)

And. . . I loved to see that I could very easily sell my CDs also. And. . . I found Bon Jovi’s Lost Highway album for $3.00 – which has my very favorite “Let’s Make a Memory” song on it.

So – it’s a THUMBS UP for our fellow Wisconsin business – Murfie Music!!!

If you are interested in Murfie, here’s a discount code for you! Send your music collection in and use discount code: PIXMSN1 for 10% off!

www.murfie.com

We Survived Shark Tank Casting Call Today! : )

Posted on July 21, 2014 by pixologie

What a day we had at Pixologie! A Shark Tank kind of day complete with our 60 second pitch, plenty of photos ops and lots of fun at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Thanks to US Cellular, Shark Tank had the open casting call in Milwaukee today. We’ve had so many people tell us we should submit our business to be on the show – that it seemed like a no-brainer to get in line at 5:30 am this morning to join the line of other would be “bait” for the sharks!

The sunrise at the Milwaukee Art Museum!

At 5:30 am, there was a nice line going around the railing on the South side of the building. We figured we had around 60 people in front of us . . . and the line stretched out down the steps of the museum and just south to Michigan Street. The first people in line had arrived at 2:30 pm the day before and slept overnight! We thought about that – but we are NOT that fanatical about the front row! : )

At 6:00, when we were fresh and ready!

We enjoyed visiting with the other people waiting in line and we definitely made some new friends. In a way, this casting call was like a big networking event. We also had fun watching all the media, Shark Tank staff and US Cellular staff with video cameras interviewing people. We saw fun clothing, a cabinet maker, an awesome type of thermostat, an annual birthday book journal, kitty litter picker-upper, makeup and much, much more.

He created a make-up line!

Finally, Scott Salyers came up to announce the handing out of bracelets. While we waited for ours – he was gracious enough to have his photo taken with us!

With Scott Salyers – funny, funny guy! Made us laugh a lot during our time at the casting call!

And then . . . our Shark Tank bracelet arrived and looks so good below along with our Rustic Cuff bracelet which states “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail!” We are blessed every day knowing that our work will help others learn how photo organization and management can bring memories out of chaos and back into life to be celebrated and shared!

Woohoo! #53 in line!

Around 9:15 we were invited inside and loved, loved the air conditioning! Everyone was encouraged to find a seat where Scott then gave tips, instructions and funny smart aleck remarks. Put everyone at ease! (Like they wouldn’t be timing us with timers; that we didn’t have to be perfect – but be ourselves and do be sure to ask for a specific amount of money. )

The pitches went very fast. Around 10:12 they called the first numbers and by 11:05, I think they were calling us up! In the room where we gave our pitch, they had five tables set up for a quick turnaround. We got set up quickly!

Our pitch went exactly as we planned and practiced. . .

Gave a great, relevant statistic (Yahoo! reports that 1 trillion photos will be taken this year and that is in addition to the 3.5 trillion already taken since the 1800s)
Had a fun visual (ours was a clear container of lots of photos, slides, old albums, VHS tapes all mixed together) – the casting gal said it looked like her mother’s house!
Introduced ourselves and our company
A couple of lines about what we do (Photos out of chaos and into life to be celebrated & shared, etc. etc)
A line about why we are unique (hands-on help, studio location & trademark licensing)
Our ask – you’ll find out what ours was if we are ever on the show! : )

The gal said we did great – and she smiled at us! We don’t think we could have done it any better!

We’ll find out how we did in the next week. If we get a phone call, we’ll get a second interview. No phone call? Well, we had a WONDERFUL time!

Back out into the gathering area, we were so happy that we hadn’t been devoured and spit back out by the casting crew! Then we met Barclay Pollak, from US Cellular’s sister company, TDS to mingle and interview some of us entrants. We had fun telling him about Pixologie – and he asked us how we knew he had lots of VHS tapes at home. (Because everyone over 20 either has VHS tapes or they have their parents!)

Barclay, Ann and another really nice guy – they owe us a video in a month or two! : )

After that we headed over to the US Cellular Semi-Truck Trailer/Entertainment Center and thanked the staff there for helping bring Shark Tank to Milwaukee!

We came, we pitched, we survived!

POSTSCRIPT – To write this blog, I used the photos from two cell phones, a camera card, the camera’s memory, Twitter & Facebook. It was hard! No wonder we need photo organizers! : )

Website: pixologieinc.com

Business Development: pixologiebusinessdevelopment.com

Fantastic Vacation Photos? Don’t bet on your phone or Facebook being the place to store those memories!

Posted on July 16, 2014 by pixologie

Capturing City Center at Dusk in Las Vegas

Viva Las Vegas! I just finished an amazing trip out to Nevada’s hottest spot (literally!) where the day offers beautiful scenic day trips and the nightlife is loud, eye-popping and colorful. Truly a great girls trip to celebrate one turning 40, we took nearly 500 photos!

Some of our best moments . . .

Checking out the Fremont Street Experience
Trekking around Charleston Mountain
Conquering the Strip
Traveling through the Valley of Fire
Sweating it out at Hoover Dam

As a professional photo organizer, I loved all the opportunities to take pictures of these spots with my traditional digital camera. My girlfriends, by comparison, spent some of their photographic time composing selfies with their smartphones.

Such an interesting contrast of how we wanted to capture our vacation. And I learned a lot about how my friends manage their photos. Here’s what I found fascinating as I know many other people have similar habits:

Smartphones are their photo home. One of my friends actually pulled up a photo on her phone from her last Vegas trip which was several years ago.
Facebook is another home of their photos. My other friend was hoping I could upload my photos so they posted on her timeline. As hard as I tried to get my album up so that it would be on her timeline, I couldn’t figure it out. In order to make it work, she took screen shots of my Facebook album to make her own album to post.
Each of them have an iPhone with a PhotoStream to make the sharing process much easier – but they (as many do) found it confusing to access and navigate.

I know that we are bombarded with photo apps and social media opportunities to share our fun memories. And in the short term, this is great. We loved for our friends and family to track what we experienced on our trip.

For the long term, I wouldn’t want to bet on smartphones and social media to be the place where I go to find my photos and enjoy the memories.

Here’s my few suggestions on how to manage your photos once so that the sharing, celebrating and remembering is accomplished all at once!

Take your wonderful photos (all of them – both on smartphone and camera) Delete the ones you don’t want.
Download the photos to your computer – save in a consistent place (Mac – iPhoto; PC – Windows Explorer)
Review again and delete unneeded photos
Then share to your social media, order prints, etc. and enjoy.

I would love to help you with your photo questions. Feel free to email me at mollieb@pixologieinc.com and let’s get your memories in a better place!

In the meantime, enjoy this final selfie of the three of us – it’s my favorite from the whole trip!

Put Your Family On Expo This Weekend!

Posted on April 3, 2014 by pixologie

At Pixologie, we love celebrating life, family, fun and much more! We do this by helping people reconnect with their photos, get them organized, printed, shared and much more. Making memories is so much fun (figuring out what to do with the photos is what we offer to you!)

Every time you take a child’s photo or have a family portrait done, you are featuring your child, your family and your life for a moment. That moment is captured and on exposition for a split second in time! These moments, so very often, are tucked away in digital memory (smartphone, tablet, camera card, computer, etc.)

We saw a staggering statistic on Yahoo at the beginning of the year . . . nearly one trillion photos will be taken this year. Consider this:

The vast majority of those photos will never be printed
Many will be lost through digital crashes, smartphone disasters (stolen, left behind and never found, traded in without a back-up of photos saved)
Most people are so overwhelmed with their photos, they have no clue where to start.

Here’s where we come in. . .

Pixologie Challenge & Simple Solution for this weekend – Put Your Family On Expo!

Come to the Just Add Kids Expo this weekend in Racine – see details above – Visit our Pixologie Photo Zone and get a crazy fun family portrait together by a professional photographer (available for digital download at no charge)
Don’t live in the area? Send us your craziest family photo to contact@pixologieinc.com) and we’ll post it for you on Facebook!
From all the family photos, we will draw a name to win a digital photo album featuring your child with a value of $100!

For your simple solution to photo organizing dilemmas – we’ll be handing out our QuickPix Guide to Photo Organization – and give you ideas and tips on how to get started, one step at a time! For those who can’t make it – we’ll send it to you!

Happy memory making and we’ll see your family on EXPO! : )

Your Photos Are Calling You . . .

Posted on February 9, 2014 by pixologie

. . . And they want to remind you of so many things!

Truly, in our stacks of printed photos and countless stashes of digital photos, special things are happening:

The road trip to Florida back in 1962, hanging out at the beach!
A daughter’s six birthday where she got her ears pierced for the first time (YES, that’s a milestone!)
The seventh annual family reunion where cousin Mike spent $30 on a white elephant auction for an old raggedy ann doll (Okay, we need to know that story!!!)
A 1918 photo of your great grandfather sitting on his vintage (well, it wasn’t vintage back then) Harley Davidson
The annual trip to California with the kids to visit grandparents (Wow, look at how the kids grew in between trips!)
Family members who have passed away – are smiling and enjoying life

We hear so often from our clients and people we talk with about how they want to work on organizing their photos, get them printed and in albums to enjoy. The common denominator is. . . “I just don’t have the time.”

The truth is this . . . there will never be enough time to spend time with photos and memories. . . unless we DECIDE to DEDICATE the time. By dedicating, we mean “I will work on my photos and nothing will interrupt me, not the kids, not the phone, not the laundry.”

That is where Pixologie comes in . . . with weekend retreats where all you will have is DEDICATED time to put your photos in order, make albums and preserve memories! No matter what format you use to do this, Pixologie will be there throughout the weekend helping, cheering and working with you on these projects!

Retreat to Phantom Ranch, Mukwonago, WI – Friday, March 14, 2014, 4 pm through Sunday, March 16, 2014, 11 am

Pixologie is pleased to invite all gals who need some downtime away from the family to get their photo and video projects done in a beautiful location. While there is no cooking, no cleaning, no children clamoring for attention, this is a RUSTIC getaway with accommodations in cabins complete with bunkbeds and newly renovated bathrooms.

Join us for the weekend where you can work on your projects all night; enjoy beautiful outdoor walks, go for a horseback ride, get a massage, share and get ideas from other women working on their projects and much, much more. This is a great getaway for working on organization, scanning, digital books, scrapbooks and more.

$150 includes lodging, five home cooked meals and Pixologie’s co-founders, Mollie and Ann to help you on your projects when needed. We have a fun bunch of gals who have joined us for the last five years and we promise a great time! Click here to register.

Brrr. . . It’s Cold Outside, Let Memories Warm You Up!

Posted on January 4, 2014 by pixologie

This is a photo I took a couple of days ago – it was 7 degrees out and my seven year old, Alex, wanted to go sledding and tubing really bad. However, he took one ride down too many. As he left the hill, he placed the inner tube on the pile and began walking away, but then looked back for me.

I gave him my hot chocolate and took this photo. He said to me in a shaking, shivering voice, “I am not real stable,” and he hobbled inside. His feet were very, very cold – but it was his expression here that made my heart melt. Alex is a rough and tumble, talking back, trouble making boy normally – but in this moment, he was my baby again!

Without this photo, I absolutely know I would not remember this moment years from now. Can you think of moments you have gotten a snapshot of – that warms your heart? While the weather stays extremely chilly out these next few days – pull out your photo albums and enjoy smiling and laughing at some of your best moments, and maybe even some of the not so good ones!

If you need help figuring out a place to start with getting some of your more recent photos in an album, let us know at Pixologie. We have a great “Pixguide to Getting Organized” flyer to share with you. Email us at contact@pixologieinc.com.

And stay warm!

Pixologie

Your Story Matters, Your Photos Matter

Tag Archives: Memories