Confessions Of A Scrapaholic

Sharing our Story

I have been thinking a lot about sharing our story these days... reorganizing my scrapbooks, looking at layouts, listening to Zoë... There is so much more to telling your story than just scrapbooks, although that is a huge part of it. It seems that quite a few people have gotten the reorganization bug lately. I can't tell you how much that helps my motivation.

A few things I have noticed (and it seems Ali and Cathy have too) I have quite a few older layouts with nothing even remotely informative on them. Cute picture of Zoë? Sure. Actual insight into my child? That would be a negative. In my beginning days of scrapbooking I felt pressured to scrap ALL my pictures. Not the bad photos or similar photos, but everything else. And scrap I did. I've been doing this for almost ten years now (yikes!) and have quite the library. Thankfully I am getting much better and focusing on the photos that tell the stories and filing the rest away. (I will share my organization system with you soon. Maybe after my Library of Memories class.)

Scrapbooking is fabulous, don't get me wrong. (I've drunk the Cool-Aid, I know.)

But there is more to telling your story than just scrapbooking. I have come to realize that Photo Books are my friend. Sure, I used to poo-poo them silently thinking, "That is not scrapbooking," but you know what? They may not have fancy embellishments or unlimited layout options but they do tell the story. They also let you share photos without feeling like you need to tell a story. (The food at my wedding reception perhaps... The arrangement was gorgeous, but all I really have to say about it is, "Yes, this was the food.")

Example #1: The photo book from our trip to Disneyland was finished, printed, and delivered to my front door less than two weeks after we returned from sunny California. I have yet to scrapbook our trip to Hawaii two years ago.

No, there are no beautiful embellishments (although I may pick up some Disney stickers while I am in Portland this weekend) but the story of our trip is there. In perfect detail no less. I doubt I can remember that much about our trip to Hawaii. (Remember, I scrapbook because my memory is terrible.)

Example #2: The Adventures of Zoë and Brodie John
I created this little book for both Zoë and Brodie (I simply changed the wording to Brodie and Zoë through out). It is designed to read like a simple children's book and contains all of the fun photos from our week long adventure in Spokane last summer. This was Brodie's very favorite birthday present and Zoë still loves reading it almost everyday.

I like that this book is so simple. There are no embellishments to come off the page or layouts for the children to remove from the protective sleeves (done that.) The best part? Zoë remembers in detail her special week in Spokane and will have this forever. Also, if something happens to the book, I can order another copy through iPhoto.

And last but not least...movies! I was blog surfing the other day and one of my friends posted a video of her cute little boy. Someone left the comment, "That is really cute, but how are you going to scrapbook that?" Um, hello people! There are other ways of telling the story. One of the most obvious ways is by taking movies.

I mentioned that I have been listening to Zoë this week. (I try and listen to her everyday, LOL!) She said to me, "Mommy, I want to watch the Zoë movie!" She means our 2006 Family DVD. Honestly, it is pretty much thirty minutes of her being darling, but it tells her story. She gets it. The videos are a perfect compliment to our family albums.

End of rant. LOL! Are you still with me? Hopefully this little post will help your creative juices flowing. I would love to hear how you tell your story. Scrapbooking (obviously if you are reading this blog) but what else?

That is all for now! I am heading to Portland tomorrow for a weekend of girlfriends and scrapbooking. I can hardly wait. This is my favorite weekend of the entire year. I get to relax with good friends and scrapbook. It doesn't get any better than that. Well, maybe if I could have a couple drinks...

Invasion of the Morning People

I have never in my life been a morning person. Ever. You can imagine my horror when my husband decided to become a morning person. It boggles the mind. Truly. He makes me look like a morning person. Kelly is going to Chicago next week for 7am meetings (which will feel like 5am to him) so he decided to acclimate this week and start waking up early. He has been in the office at 5:30am every day this week.

Now to truly understand my pain you have to understand how un-morning people we are. When we moved in together we had the same shift at work, 10am-6pm. It was blissful. We would sleep until 9am every day. Of course we have to get up earlier now that Miss Zoë has come along, but we don't wake up before she does. I wish I was the kind of mom that woke up early, got ready, and had breakfast prepared by the time Zoë was out of bed, but that is just not me. That being said, I would never stay in bed and let Zoë wander the house fending for herself so that I could get a couple extra minutes of sleep. That would never happen (but neither would me waking up before her.)

So Kel has been waking up before the crack of dawn. That in itself is really cramping my style. Add to that my little angel, who has for some ungodly reason decided that she too would like to be a morning person. On Tuesday she woke up at 5:45am!!! Mommy was not pleased. I went into her room and told her that it was still night time (it was dark after all) and that she needed to go back to sleep. Normally that works, but not this time. At 6:45am Kelly went in there (since he was up anyway of course) and she had her light on and she was playing with her dolls. %$#@!

Then there is my cat. Ever since Aphrodite passed away we give Archimedes soft food every morning. He has always been on the skinny side and since he is our only furbaby now he gets spoiled. He has also decided that I should be a morning person and starts walking back and forth across my head and meowing at about 6am because he wants food. I'm about to turn him into slippers.

They are all ganging up on me, dangit! And I can't even have coffee anymore.

Make them go away!!!

At least until 7am. Is it so wrong that I just want to see a 7 on the clock before I get out of bed? Is that too much to ask?!?

I think not.

Baby's Middle Name? Check.

Kelly and I were watching How I Met Your Mother the other night. If you have never seen this show you should watch it. We found it accidentally while we were channel surfing a couple weeks ago (since there is nothing on television). It is hilarious! By far one of the funniest shows I have ever seen, strike or no writers strike. In the episode one of the characters Barney, discovers the existence of a porn star named Ted Mosby (the name of another character on the show). Poor Dude. Unlucky coincidence there. LOL!

And that is how we get to the actual topic of this post. As Kelly and I were walking upstairs to bed he tells me:

Kelly: If we have a girl, her middle name should be Gertrude.

Me: What?

Kelly: Gertrude.

Me: Why?

Kelly: Well because that way she will have a terrible porn star name.

Me: What?!?

Kelly: You know, to get your porn star name you take your middle name and the street your were raised on.

Me: OK?

Kelly: So if her middle name was Gertrude she wouldn't have a chance.

Yes folks, that is how my sweetie's mind works. He also shot down the name Gabriel when I was pregnant with Zoë because, "People would call him Gabe which could be shortened to Gay which could morph into Gay Gabe. And let's not forget the whole Angel of Death thing....Kids can be vicious."

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! Make sure to give your sweetie a hug. *MWAH*

Back in the Land of the Living

It's been a rough couple of weeks, but I am happy to report that I am back. The morning sickness seems to be going away (hopefully for good). I wouldn't say that I am feeling like my normal self, but as long as I keep food in my stomach it is tolerable. Nothing really sounds good to me so I am trying to stick with healthy food choices. When I was pregnant with Zoë I didn't really care about the weight I was gaining. I figured pregnancy is the one time in your life it is acceptable to gain weight. Boy did I. I stopped looking once the scale reached a 30 lb. gain, but I am pretty sure that it was in the 50+ range. I do not want to do that again. Of course, I only feel better when my stomach is full which means I am snacking all day long. So you never know. I started a pregnancy journal on our family blog to document the next thirty three-ish weeks. I wish I had thought of that with Zoë. It is such a cute idea. Plus, pregnancy tends to make me totally forgetful so it will be good to have the details written down somewhere.

It is a good thing that I am feeling better, our house is a disaster. Kelly really is helping, but his idea of doing the dishes is buying paper plates so that he doesn't have to actually do dishes. Not that there are tons of dishes because the smell of cooking food just about kills me. And he is threatening to go commando tomorrow if I don't do laundry. I may wait one extra day just to see what happens. Bwahaha! (That would be my evil laugh).

Today I am transferring Zoë's baby book into its new home. I let Zoë pick out her scrapbook. You would think that being a girl she would go with pink or purple? Nope. Blue. It's always blue. Blue has been her favorite color since she was a wee one. Silly monkey. I'll post some pictures later.

I am having a great time mixing layout sizes already. I may even create her school album in 8.5x11. While we were in Spokane last weekend, Kelly's Dad gave us another scrapbook that his Mom made. It was a school scrapbook that had his class pictures, report cards, letters from his teachers... not a lot of pictures but it was a perfect snapshot of Kelly as a a little boy. I think I am going to do the same thing for Zoë. I am also going to scan her artwork and reprint them as 4x6, then put them in page protectors. That way we will have her artwork but not BOXES of it. I plan on keeping the most special pieces, but not all of them. You should see the pile we have already accumulated and she is only 1/2 way through the school year.

Alright, I am off to clean. Good times, I tell ya! Have a good day! Hopefully you are all save and sound. There is crazy weather all over the country. Did somebody say global warming?

We've got a secret.