Picture of the Week

I have decided to do a regular feature every week in my blog. I'm hoping it will give you something to look forward to and it will give me a focus every week... (Imagine that, sometimes it's actually hard to come up with scrapbooking topics!) I'll still sporadically write on topics as they come up - so hopefully that means I'll be writing more than once a week!

The first idea I have for a regular feature is a Picture of the Week. This could just be an interesting or funny picture that I took, or it could be a point I'm trying to make about the things that can be included in scrapbooks or the importance of journaling and writing a story.

The other feature I'm thinking of is scrapbooking themes. Many of you have the obligatory baby album, family album, Christmas album, vacation album, etc... but there are so many other ideas that I'd love to give you, I'll occasionally talk about them in this space, too.

So here's my first ever Picture of the Week:

A couple weeks ago my husband went down to San Diego to watch my nephew graduate from Marine Corps basic training. This is a picture of my sister-in-law (my husband's sister) seeing her son for the first time since he left for basic training. I love this picture. You can see how happy they are to see eachother and you can tell she's just drinking in every ounce of him, as any mother would... making sure he's okay, yet extremely proud at the same time.

Even though you can see the love between mother and son in this picture, that's all it is... a good picture that shows love. Without me telling you who these people are, where they are and what they are doing, it's not very personal. It becomes MY picture in MY album when I personalize it. Then, of course, MY pride is shown as well. Semper Fi!

Simplicity vs. Artistic

I've blogged before about how different scrapbooking is for everyone. People make albums for different reasons and everyone has different styles. There are people that recognize the importance of preserving memories in an album that will keep photos safe, but they're not concerned with creativity. There are people who see album-making as an outlet for their artistic side, as a way to make something that is a piece of themselves to pass on to future generations.

I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm certainly not the most imaginative person out there when it comes to designing pages, but I'm not really one to just slap on some pictures and move on. I can be a little bit of a perfectionist, too... spending more time on a page than I need to making sure things are straight, coordinated and aligned.

The key to this, is understanding what and who you are - and embracing that. It can seem defeating to watch someone next to you get 20 pages done in the same time it takes you to get 6 pages done, but knowing that it's because you're scrapbooking for a different reason, or because you're unleashing your artistic side can make it easier to swallow.

I have a friend who is behind in her scrapbooking... (one friend? Okay, MANY friends - who isn't?) Anyway, this particular friend is so far behind that she's even getting pressure from her husband to speed things up. He is even trying to persuade her to step away from Creative Memories and throw some pictures in a magnetic album (eee gads, do they still make those?) just so they're done. She's coming up with a compromise... she will put all recent family photos in the new PicFolio Album (Creative Memories answer to those who do not want to scrapbook, an album that provides photo safe sleeves and journaling boxes), which gives her the freedom to take her time on her kids' baby albums. Those albums may take her a long time to get done, but what she has done is absolutely lovely. And, most importantly it's something that SHE loves, a little piece of herself that she can give to her children.

I certainly don't mean to imply that you need to take hours on a page so that it's "creative". I'm always amazed at the beauty of a page that someone will think up in 5 minutes. Remember, most people just look at the pictures, anyway. The rest of it is to make YOU happy. There's not right or wrong way to get these albums done. Just your way.

Lessons Learned

What is that saying about how all life's lessons can be learned when we're in Kindergarten? Watching my kids scrapbook helps me realize and remember some of those lessons.

First of all, they don't sit and look at pictures for 1/2 hour trying to decide how to layout the page. They also don't necessarily put pictures in chronological order... they just pick a cute photo and work with it. They don't stress-out if something is crooked, off-center or if the colors don't match. If they don't have something, they quickly compromise... an example being that they will draw a star if they don't have a star sticker or if they are spelling "birthday" with ABC stickers and don't have a "Y", they'll just draw the "Y" in to match the other letters.

Now there are some legitimate reasons that I do some of the things I do... I actually want to put my scrapbooks in chronological order, for example. But I can learn that if, for whatever reason, I need to put something that happened in May before something that happened in January, it's okay. That's what my pens are for.... to label! And honestly, there are sometimes when I'm too much of a perfectionist to use different colors and fonts of ABC letters to complete just one word.

But I love scrapbooking with my daughters, and watching the pure delight of what they're doing and the pride in which they show off every page. They're like that with all their art projects, so why should this be any different, right? It's a good reminder of how much we love ourselves and are proud of our every accomplishments when we're that age. No judging or fear of failure. No perfectionism or stress. Isn't that how we should approach everything we do?

There IS a lot we can learn from our kids.

Dealing with Change

I realized recently that I'm in a unique time in my life - I think in your mid-thirties there can be a lot different changes happening. I have friends that are just getting married, some working on their second marriages and some that have been married more than 10 years. I have friends that are buying their first homes, many finally purchasing their dream homes and some buying their vacation homes. I have some that are pregnant with their first baby, some sending their kids to school for the first time and some with kids in middle school. I have some friends losing parents, I have some losing grandparents.

Change is inevitable and is certainly a growing experience - faced with it we certainly hope we can be strong. Too much of it can certainly be stressful and overwhelming. One of the hardest times in my own life was when I was dealing with a lot of change - and not all of it was bad change! The body sometimes just cannot handle a lot of it at once.

Throughout all the change, it's nice to have something to count on, some stability. Which is why, during that tough time in my life, when my body was virtually shutting down from too much stress and anxiety, a therapist asked me if I had a hobby. Now those of you who know me well, know that I've always had a hundred things that I'm doing at once. So, I figured in my busy life, I must have had a hobby in there somewhere. I didn't, but shortly after, scrapbooking came into my life. Not exactly what I call a coincidence.

Scrapbooking is not for everyone, but for me it was great medicine. It gave me something that was mine... Something I could control and something that would help me relax. I've had two friends take on scrapbooking because of a tremendous loss in their lives (both lost babies) and it helped them deal with the pain. I have a friend who is currently dealing with a lot of stress because she is dealing with a job change, an impending move and a sick parent. I have another friend who has a son with a brain tumor. On the other hand, I have a friend who just had her first long-awaited baby. And another who just got married to her long-time boyfriend. Change is inevitable. Stress is a part of that change. Life happens. I wish for you a hobby that is an outlet for the anxiety brought on by life.

For Jodi...

Some of my favorite albums are ones that I made for other people. Maybe it's because I'm sometimes more creative... with my own albums I just want to "get them done" and with other people, I might have more innovative ideas.

One album I did for my sister-in-law, although not my own idea, was a memorial album for her dog after he died. She is not a scrapbooker, so she gave me all the pictures she wanted to use and I put them together in a small album. It's a good size, small enough to stay out on a coffee table, or tuck away at times. But it says what it needs to say and is a good remembrance.

Since I made that album, I've thought about these pet albums. My own sister's dog died shortly after my sister-in-law's did and she has mentioned she wants me to make a similar album for her. And, I've thought more about taking pictures of our family dog, so that I don't regret not having current pictures when someday I want to make this album for us. (For those of you who get my Christmas picture, did you notice the dog's inclusion this year?)

With my dog getting older, I've thought about this more. Although losing our dog at anytime would be hard, the thought of it brings more dread as my kids get older. Our dog is mostly an outdoor dog, but I noticed this summer how much of a "family dog" he has become. Instead of asking for playdates or playing with the neighbors, the girls would ask "can we go outside and play with Chester?" They would go out and literally "play" with him for hours. If I would have let them take the dress-up clothes outside, he probably would have been a ballerina. And I swear my youngest daughter talks to him and understands him. It's a little spooky.

So someday, I'll have the girls help me make this album, telling me what they want to say, what he means to them. That way when they look back they can remember exactly what he meant to them. How he was part of the family. How they voluntarily included him in their prayers everynight. How he made their lives better.

I hope I don't have to make this album for a long time.