Itching to Scrap and Template Albums

I think this is the longest I have gone without creating anything new in a very long time.  Not having a computer that functions at 100% is something I don't hope to do very often.  I even bring my laptop on vacations with me because I can't stand to not have access.  I'm turning to my journal in the meantime, so hopefully I'll have a good stash of ideas and material when I am up and running again (which will hopefully be sometime tomorrow). 

In my hiatus, I am mulling over projects that have been started an not completed, started and lost in the crash, or not started at all.  I have two albums that are acting like elephants in the room, and I have been avoiding them at all costs.  First is John's 1st Year album. Although he is not finished with his first year, I wanted to stay close to current.  I'm almost afraid to look at which layouts are safely on my EHD and which are potentially lost.  So I'm also thinking I am starting from scratch.  Ugh!

The second elephant project is the album about Scott and I that I started traditionally and got about 6 pages in before I was overwhelmed by the scope of the project.  Part of my problem with this one is I keep changing my mind about how I want it to flow.

To solve both problems with one stone, I am thinking of picking up a template pack and working from that.  At least that way I am not reinventing the wheel for each page.  I'm thinking of this one from Biograffiti at oScraps.com:

I also like this one from ScrapElf at mylifeandscrap.com:

There is a third I liked, but it was bookmarked on the dead computer, and I don't remember which site it was from.  Yet another pitfall found from losing a computer!

I like the journaling space in both, the clean lines and ability to have some photo heavy pages in the Biograffiti pack, and the helpful element placement suggestions in the ScrapElf set.  Maybe I'll have to use both, I just don't know.  I've never completed a whole album from templates, so that makes me a little nervous too.  Maybe I'll wait until after September, when my second attempt at Me: The Abridged Version is over. This time I am determined to FINISH the album, which should be easier since this time I am more digi savvy and can reuse some of the posts I created for the last version, which was never finished. 

Anyone have any thoughts on albums created with templates?  I'd love the hear about other's experiences or see examples!