Infographic by Katie. Light bulb icon from Wikimedia commons. Fonts are varying forms of Arial.

I’ve been fascinated with infographics for some time now. I love the visual representation of data and facts and I really see it as another form of digital scrapbooking. When Steph posted this amazing infographic at the beginning of the year, I knew I had to figure out how to work on my own graphic design skills so I could make my own creation!

The most important ingredients for an effective infographic include; data that can be represented visually, a clean & organized design, and good typography. Study infographic images that are appealing to you and make note of how the information was presented and what design techniques were used. Here are a few that I love:

source: daily infographic

source: daily infographic

I especially love these infographics because they represent personal data shared in a fun & beautiful way. These would be great for scrapbook layouts!

When you’re ready to create your own infographic, there are several great resources you’ll want to explore.

• Infographics toolbox doc that Steph shared in this Christmas Card post
• How to create outstanding modern infographics by Vector tuts+
• Awesome free tools for infographics from makeuseof.com
• Tips, tricks, & resources to make your own gorgeous infographics from thenextweb.com
• Mashable’s Infographic pinterest board
• Steph’s Infographic pinterest board

If you create any infographic-inspired layouts, we’d love to see them! Just upload them to our flickr group or leave a link here in the comments.

I pride myself on having an organized email system, but I have learned some valuable new tips and tricks in the last few weeks thanks to this free 21 day e-course from Baydin Inc. You can sign up at any time and they will start you off with day 1 and send you an email everyday for 3 weeks.

It might seem funny that you need to get more emails to learn how to manage your email better – lol! but there are tasks & guidelines to work through each day that will really help. I feel like I have a much better handle on my email now!

If you want to see a sample of one of the days (Day 3) you can read this post where you can even download some search function “cheat sheets”. It’s worth spending a few minutes each day to avoid hours of wasted time in the future. Steph and I are always working to improve our email systems because it’s such a big part of what we do. Truthfully, it’s a pretty big part of most people’s lives these days. Everyone could benefit from a little email organization.

Here are some links to our other email related posts:

• Drowning in email
• Managing your email
• How to hide your email addy from spambots
• Optimizing for the web and email
• Reading unread messages in gmail
• He must have been reading my mind

Keep that inbox nice and tidy!

headphones from Way Rad by Micheline Martin & Laura Banasiak. The Architect font by Heather Hess.

In this age of cordless and wireless technology, it seems like there are more cords to deal with than ever  before. I personally hate cord clutter and I at least wish there was a way to use universal cords for everything. Until that time arrives, I’m forced to find ways to tame the many cords that are a part of my tech-loving life.

If you label your cords, it will be easier to troubleshoot when you have problems, or if you simply want to move a piece of technology to another location. Martha Stewart suggests using bread bag tags to label cords.

Another way to mark cords for organization – Cable IDs

I don’t like to look at a lot of loose cords. You can keep cords tidy using pipe insulation (Martha Stewart)

With all the charging cords for iPhones and other devices, it’s easy for them to get tangled. We like these Cable Drop Clips found in many office supply stores or online.

Many of us bring headphones and charging cords along with us on a daily basis, or while traveling.  Bobino Cord Wraps are a nice way to keep everything under control.

If you’re like me, you use a power strip and also have a lot of other cords that are frequently used. This Cable Box is a handy way to disguise some of the mess of technology.

There are many knockoffs of the Pottery Barn Bedford Recharge Station available in stores like Target. I purchased a white station from Pottery Barn several years ago and it’s one of the best purchases I’ve made to keep my office area organized and looking clean and pretty.

Even without purchasing any special supplies, you can make your workspace neater by simply going through your cords and tidying them up a bit. Consider trying to hide them behind a piece of furniture or under a desk. Some twist ties might just do the trick to bundle them together. Be sure the area around your cords and plugs are free of clutter and kept clean to avoid any fire hazards. Just a few easy steps will make it all feel less cluttered and that makes it easier to feel happy and creative in your workspace!

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Google, but are you familiar with iGoogle? iGoogle is your own personalized Google page. It’s easy to add news, photos, weather, and stuff from across the web to your page. I have my own iGoogle bookmarked as my home page because it’s my very own starting place to get going on the internet. Instructions for making iGoogle your home page vary by browser, but are always as easy as clicking a button. See this link for details.

I have my own page customized to show my Google calendar, the time & date, the local weather, a dictionary.com search box, and a wikipedia search box. I even added the rss feed for my Flickr set where I post my phone photo of the day (my own 365+1 project) – seeing that daily photo on my home page reminds me to take my picture each day and helps me to enjoy the ones I have already uploaded. (If you are looking for the rss feed on any Flickr set, just scroll to the bottom of the set’s page.) You can add any url to iGoogle with a rss feed to the page, just like a gadget.

The best way to explain how to set up your own iGoogle page is to have you watch a few very short videos from Google. You also should be able to find everything you need to know by simply exploring the links on the left hand side of the iGoogle page. Just remember to sign in to your Google account (top right of the screen) so all your changes are saved.

Now you can have your own customized home page!

Peppermint used Feedly as her pick of the week on The Digi Show a while back. It sounded like the perfect way to consume social media and blogs. Katie, Ali Edwards (who was a guest that day), many listeners, and myself jumped right on it and started using it. Anyone that has given Feedly a try says, “It’s changed my life!”

I have used a lot of different apps (plugins for my browser, readers, iPhone and iPad) but none has ever really helped me manage and get through content like Feedly does. I’ve never been able to keep up with all of the blogs I subscribe to and at many points have given up. Now, I have found myself able to easily get through the information and actually subscribe to more sites and blogs.

Why I Like Feedly

It’s visually based. I like that I can see an image and don’t have to stop and read a short summary before I decide if I want to click on it:

I can then mark a whole page read if I want:

Feedly is available for Android devices, iPhone, iPad, and any browser. As long as I am logged into the same account, everything syncs across the various devices I use it on.

I can “save for later” if I come across something I want to make sure I read later.

I can share content via email or one of many social media outlets from inside the app (in a browser or on a device).

I can manage feeds (delete a feed or add a feed) from within the app. This is one I especially love.

I can view my recent history if I want to go back and look at something again later.

To get a great view of what Feedly can do, go to their site and click on “watch video” below the download button (the download button will automatically match whatever browser you are using):

For many of us, the holiday season means that daily routines are put on hold. While we’re busy enjoying parties, school concerts, holiday traditions and visiting family and friends, important things like healthy eating, exercise and down time can get pushed aside.

I did a little research and found some ideas for having a healthier and happy December:

Making Food Preparation Easier

December is a great time to renew your friendship with your slow-cooker. While you’re out all day long, shopping or visiting, it is busy cooking you a lovely dinner. You walk in your front door and the house smells like a lovely feast! Here are some sites to try:

• Food.com has a list of their top-rated slower-cooker recipes.
• These slow cooker Maple Baked Beans are delicious.
• AllRecipes.com has a list of vegetarian slow-cooker recipes to have you eating healthy all months long.

In addition to your slow cooker, you can make some meals ahead. Here are some meals that you can double. Try making one for dinner tonight and freeze the other half to have on a busy day:

• Chili – how about this recipe for a “Cowboy Chili and Baked Bean Pot”?
• Baked spaghetti – cooked noodles, smothered in tomato sauce freeze very well.
• Beef and Carrot Stew or a Chicken Stew would warm you up on a cold night.

And lastly, some good comfort food is always welcome in December. If you haven’t made it yet, you should try Bake Potato Soup. Put on a pot today. You won’t regret it!

A Little Pre-Planning

You can do a lot of things in November or early December to make the rest of the month go smoothly. Some ideas:

• Pop on a favourite movie, print out your Christmas card address list and get those cards done! If you’re really keen, you can even stamp the addressed cards and have them waiting by the front door to be mailed the next day.
• Pre-bake freezer-friendly treats to have on hand later for entertaining or gifts. Things like sugar cookies, jam-filled thumbprint cookies, and gingerbread cookies freeze beautifully and you can pop them out whenever you need them.
• Buy multiples of gifts. For example, you can have several bottles of wine on hand to give as hostess gifts or the same gift cards to give to each of your child’s teachers.

Organization

My family runs on Google Calendar. My husband and I each have our own calendars, plus we have calendars for the kids. (I also have calendars for each of my creative teams, but that’s a whole other post!)

I love that I can check my husband’s calendar (and vice versa) to make sure that we avoid scheduling conflicts and overextending ourselves.

You can check out more about Google Calendar in Steph’s post here.

Moving More in December

I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t my area of expertise. But, here are some ideas to get us all moving this December:

• Build a snowman. Or a whole snow-family!
• Take part in your favourite winter sports: ice skating, skiing, snow-shoeing…
• Clean the house. (I can get a lot of cleaning done while listening to The Digi Show on my iPod.)
• Hop on that treadmill/stationary bike/elliptical machine in your basement. Make the time go faster by watching a favourite Christmas movie or listening to music.
• Go for a winter walk and enjoy the neighbourhood Christmas lights.

Making Time for Down Time

I love the busy holiday season and visiting with family and friends. Some of my favourite memories though are the quiet ones spent at home with my family.

• I look forward to quiet evenings spent with the fireplace on and two little kids snuggled up with me on the couch while I read The Night Before Christmas out loud.
• We listen to Alan Maitland’s recording of The Shepherd each December. It wouldn’t be the holidays without it.

Those are some of my holiday survival tips. If you have some tips (or recipes!) please tell us in the comments.

Just a note – no affiliate links were used in this post.

Being a grateful person requires practice and persistence. When I (Katie) researched the impact gratitude has on our state of well-being, I found overwhelming links between being grateful and being happy. Wikipedia sources say that “Gratitude has been said to have one of the strongest links with mental health of any character trait. Grateful people are happier, less depressed, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships. Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and self acceptance. Grateful people have more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life, being more likely to seek support from other people, reinterpreted and grow from the experience, and spend more time planning how to deal with the problem. Grateful people sleep better, and this seems to be because they think less negative and more positive thoughts just before going to sleep.^”

If you are looking for less stress, better sleep, and great ideas for scrapbook pages, expressing your gratitude might just be the answer! I’m going to spend more time recording the things I’m grateful for and I love the idea of gratitude lists. By writing down my own gratitude, I can become a more grateful person.

Ideas for Gratitude Lists:

• 30 things you are grateful for (one for each day of November)
• Gratitude A-Z -  use the alphabet as a structure and list something you are grateful for starting with each letter (A for apples etc.)
• Top ten – list 10 things you are most grateful for
• Fill a jar – write down bits of gratitude and drop them into a jar throughout the week, month, or even a year
• Hang a gratitude board – use a chalkboard or whiteboard as a place where friends and family members can jot down things they are grateful for as they walk by. We have one by our back door and it’s been a lot of fun to see what different family members write.

No matter what type of list you compile, be sure to hang on to the grateful thoughts that are shared so you can use them to document future scrapbook pages!

Thanks for visiting The Daily Digi today. I’m grateful for all of you!

How can gift-giving be made more fun, less stressful and maybe a little bit less expensive?

Simplify What To Get

Knowing what to buy is a key part of gift-giving, clearly. I love getting lists from my husband and kids! If I stick to the list, it is guaranteed that the gifts will be enjoyed by the recipient. (I, of course, frequently stray from the list to surprise them with something that I think they’ll love.)

I asked around and found out that many families simplify gift-giving by limiting what they can buy and how much they can spend. Here were some ideas:

• Draw names and then each person only has one other person to buy for.
• Share only homemade gifts (if your family is crafty).
• A funny gag gift theme would be sure to put a smile on everyone’s face.
• Rather than “things”, give “experiences”. Did you know you can buy memberships to your local museums? Other ideas are movie tickets, concert tickets, and gifts for classes at your local community centre or community college.
• Homemade baked goods are a popular and well-received gift.
• An all book gift theme would make me very happy!

When stumped, it’s always easy to get a gift card. You can get mall gift cards that are good at the majority of the shopping centre so your recipient can enjoy any number of items.

Simplify How You Get It

Like many people, I do not like going to shopping malls in December. To make my holidays go more smoothly, I do the majority of my gift shopping online. Toy shopping is a breeze online – and many toy stores have free shipping for the holidays.

The part I like best about online shopping for gifts is that it keeps me on budget. It’s easy to check my balance online – certainly easier than rifling through receipts at the mall and trying to calculate how much I have already spent.

If you’re like me and you have relatives in other cities, you can even send the gifts directly to the recipient. For a small fee, some companies will even wrap the gift for you.

Simplify How You Wrap It

I am all thumbs when it comes to wrapping presents. I just cannot get the tape on the wrapping paper without weird creases and nothing can be done to salvage ribbon after I’ve attempted to make a bow with it. It’s sad, really. So, gift bags are my holiday friends! After many years of doing this, I have an impressive collection of gift bags that I reuse often. Better for the environment and the bank balance!

To make putting together gifts more enjoyable, I don’t wrap each gift as I buy them. I wait until I’m done the majority of my shopping, then I pop in a holiday movie (I like Elf) or some holiday music and start wrapping and bagging gifts. It turns a dreaded chore into a fun couple of hours.

I checked out The Daily Digi and found some gift-giving related articles you might want to check out:

• For those of you wanting to make homemade gifts this year, now is the time to start!
• If gift-giving and all the holiday activities do get overwhelming, Steph had a great article on stress that many readers related to.
• You can find some amazing and unique gifts on Etsy. Shop early to ensure pre-Christmas delivery – especially for international shipping.

I hope you have a fun time gift-giving this year!

Over the years, there is something I have discovered about myself through my scrapbooking journey.  What I’ve discovered is that I am passionate about memory keeping. I am passionate about documenting the things I want to remember. It doesn’t matter if those memories are documented on my blog, through photos, in a magnetic album, paper album, digital layouts, or video as long as they are recorded.

I am equally passionate about MAKING MEMORIES with the ones I love. I try hard to live by the moto of giving my kids experiences instead of stuff. Quite often though, I have a difficult time coming up with ideas of fun things to do that are inexpensive.

Many of you know and love Janet Phillips who actually started The Daily Digi with me. I have always admired Janet’s creativity with the fun things she does with her family. I was super excited to learn several months ago that Janet was working on an ebook with fun family activity ideas.  As I read through the book, my mind was swarming and I was so excited to have some new things to do with my kids. I was also super excited about the photo ops these activities would provide, the memories they would make, and the new layouts I would be able to scrap! She has a free chapter you can download with a fun activity idea that I can’t wait to try this month with my family. It is filled with FIFTY super fun and affordable ideas, things I never would have thought of on my own. It’s priced at a super low $5.99 (that’s 11 cents per idea).  Janet’s book is available as a downloadable PDF, as well as Kindle or Nook versions.

P.S. This ebook is great for anyone with little people in their lives: grandparents, aunts/uncles, teachers, etc.

If you want to do your own de-cluttering, here are some books and web sites to help you focus your efforts:

It’s All Too Much – Book

From the book description: Veteran “organizational consultant,” TV show host and author Peter Walsh (How to Organize (Just About) Everything) has more ideas in his latest book on clutter management than the spare closet has junk, and, even better, it’s organized, in-depth and entirely user-friendly. Part One examines the “Clutter Problem”: how it happens, how it hampers and how to face it without excuses or discouragement. Part Two presents a step-by-step approach to “Putting Clutter in its Place,” which begins with “surface clutter” and developing a household plan before moving on to the bulk of the book, a walkthrough of each room in the home.

Unclutter Your Life In One Week – Book

From the book description: Simple living isn’t about depriving; it’s about enriching. But while scribbling “Be more organized” on a list of New Year’s resolutions doesn’t take much effort, actually becoming more organized requires real change. Are you constantly late to the office because you have trouble getting out the door in the morning? Is your house in such disarray that you can’t have friends over for dinner? It’s easy to feel stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed when your surroundings, schedule, and thoughts are chaotic. The solution? Unclutter Your Life in One Week with organization expert and Editor-in-Chief of Unclutterer.com Erin Rooney Doland. This essential manual is a simple, day-by-day plan for purging your life of clutter, becoming more efficient and productive, and creating a symbiotic relationship between your work and personal life. There is no one-size-fits-all answer for organization. Erin offers useful and innovative suggestions for tackling the physical, mental, and systemic distractions in different areas of your home and office each day. Her down-to-earth approach will help you part with sentimental clutter, organize your closet based on how you process information, build an effective and personalized filing system, avoid the procrastination that often hinders the process, and much more. Once you cure the clutter, she shares practical advice for maintaining your harmonious home and work environments with minimal daily effort.

Unclutterer – Blog-site

The author of the above book, Erin Rooney Doland, also runs a very informative blog-site, Unclutterer.Com, related to leading an uncluttered life.

Be More With Less – Blog-site

The Be More With Less site (and related e-Book) is about simplifying your life in all areas, including owning less stuff. The site author also has a great twitter feed for regular inspiration.

Cleaning Organization Sites

FlyLady, of the cleaning routine fame, has a nice guide to de-cluttering, in addition to her routine-based cleaning system. Motivated Moms features a chore routine set built around daily “to do” checklists. I’ve been using it for a few years and love checking items off my list.

Good luck in your de-cluttering efforts! You never know what you’ll find. Here were some of my finds:

• Bed sheets for a size of bed we haven’t owned in years.
• Spices that must be 10 years old. Eeek!
• University course notes. I won’t tell you how long it’s been since I was in university.

Happy cleaning!

P.S. As always, no affiliate links were used in this post