Mommy Love Note

So it was Thursday and time to do a layout about one of my children. I had put aside these pictures of my daughter in my RTG file with an entirely different patterned paper some time ago. I had bought this adorable Basic Grey paper with space ships all over it - really cute. When i laid it down next to the photos on Thursday i thought - ew - nope - that isn't going to do at all. It just was too busy for the photos and not the feeling i had in mind at all. And this is ok in my book. Even though i had ever intention of using that paper for this layout i realized it wasn't going to do. Refile paper and pull out something else. Again it was Basic Grey. But something that complimented the photos and not the idea behind them. Incidentally these pics are from 1998 - a trip downtown to the Smithsonian Air & Space museum (yes, we are very lucky to live so close to such amazing places to visit - Washington DC is a treasure trove of fun things to do for kids and adults). It was Space Day or something - and my daughter got to try on a real space suit - she looked so darned cute. Anyway these pictures are from an "event" however when i look at them - and when i went to make a scrapbook page about them - i had more of a "moments" thing in mind. I don't know of another way to label it - "moments". It is one of those terms that gets bandied about when scrapbooking is discussed. A lot of layouts with one photo and one word or short phrase. And i have to admit sometimes the ones i've seen in magazines had a phoney feeling for me. It just isn't me. Those of you who know me well know how much i detest the "explore, dream, discover" thing - the worst for me is "journey". How i hate that word. Almost as much as "awesome" but i digress. I want my scrapbooks to be me - and real. So i don't do too much of the moments thing. I am proud and happy to scrapbook events. But you know it IS all good. So when i took a look at these pictures of my daughter i thought - look at little miss confidence. You can just do anything you set your mind to cantcha? And truly she can. So - a moments layout was born. But i hate that moments connotation so i guess its more of a Mommy Love Note. When she looks at this page (in the near future or in years to come) she will know that I think she is amazing - that she has this tremendous I-can-do-anything confidence - and i know she'll be a success at whatever she chooses. And that is something i think might come in handy for her to remember on occasion when life gets tough.
Ok - friday is pets or special projects. Hmmmmmm

I'm back

Sorry its taken me a little time to get this stuff posted. Anywho -

Wednesday's pages were to be of Family/Husband.

I originally thought i'd go to my ready-to-go file and pull out a bag with a bunch of wedding photos from my nephews wedding last summer. I decided against that and went for some vacation photos from last summer. There are still a few pictures left in that bag but i did manage to do a 2 page spread of a little side trip we made to Cape May. There would have been even more photos of Cape May but my camera decided to break during our trip. Now that was awful. Me without a camera - and all those gorgeous Victorian homes in Cape May i'd been dying to see and photograph. The trip was in August and for my birthday (in September) i got a new camera. Phew.

On the right hand side you can see i made a pocket out of a page protector. (I always have some kind of memorabilia i want to save, so i do a lot of pocket pages.) I sewed that on to the cardstock after i had put down a photo. For the title block i used some Purple Onion Designs alpha stamps - Pink Flamingo Large. Stamped those in versamark and added some Tim Holtz Distress Antique Linen embossing powder (which looks kinda like sand in this venue). The patterned paper on the left hand side is Karen Foster. I used a Quickutz sand dollar die that i covered in versamark and then dusted with Pearl Ex micropearl.

You know as basic as these are i wish i could say they didnt take any time. I still take way too long doing this stuff. Its my way, i guess, to work slowly. I think of things i'd like to do and then hem and haw about doing them. And end up doing it anyway. Oh well. They are still done and that is the important thing. I need to think less and do more - how bout that!?!?

School Pictures

sorry for the delay on posting yesterdays entry. i had a little technical problem. no matter.

I was going through a ton of photos my mother had given me a while back. Spent part of Monday and Tuesday scanning about 40 of them into my computer. It's not even a small dent in the pile but it's something I want to do for a few reasons. Many of the photos are very old. From the 1920's and some even older. Some of the pictures are newer but not very good quality (think early Polaroids) or are bent or torn. The ones that are a little damaged or fading - it just seems wise to do this so they are preserved. I'd also like to give each of my sisters a cd of the photos. I know they'd like having copies.

The scanning is very time consuming however. I can fit usually 4 photos on my scanner at a time but each photo needs its own entry if you will. I've created little files to cover each category (one for each family member, one for photos that show my siblings and me together - that kind of thing) and i will periodically save them to the external hard drive i got for Christmas. (I'd tried this scanning old photos before only to have all that time and work disappear into the void when i had a computer problem).

I picked some school photos of me to work on Tuesday. There don't seem to be too many so i decided one page would do it. At the top there's a handwritten title but what you can't see is that it opens up and there is a significant amount of journaling underneath. I used a piece of Foofala paper for the background, some Heidi Swapp journaling spots (i love those things) to label each photo and for the title block I used the antique ledger background stamp from Purple Onion Designs (kinda gives a library card look to it) and a pen.

Today is Wednesday so the topic is Family/Husband. I have some things to do this morning so I hope to work on that this afternoon. Maybe i'll have a chance to post something tonight.

the weekend was a bust

as far as scrapbooking was concerned.
Are you all laughing at my grand schedule and how i haven't kept up?
well i was going to panic and say - Hey Suzy, this isn't working!
You said Saturday was Heritage - and you didn't do any of that
(well actually i was doing a lot of cleaning on Saturday and uncovered some photos my darling husband just set aside - not with all the rest of our photos - and they were definitely what i would call Heritage :-) Pics of his parents as children. Adorable wonderful copies of the originals one of his sisters had given us. So yeah that's Heritage and they need to get out of the manila envelope they are in. Check that! And put in an album.)
Then Sunday was Miscellaneous - and gosh was it ever - i did everything but any scrapbooking!
So like i said i was about to panic and then i thought -
No - that isn't what this is about.
I'm not going to beat myself up for not getting any scrapbooking done.
I have my schedule and when time permits, I'm going to follow it to facilitate my scrapbooking.
But i have a life - and sometimes it doesn't permit me to do what i'd like to do.
But when i do have time - I won't go wasting all of it.
I'll check my schedule and see what is on the agenda for the day and go from there.
ahh... that feels better :-)
So today is Monday - you know what that means
(for those of you that are old enough - does this remind you of the Mickey Mouse Club - I'm talking the original Mickey Mouse club with Annette, Cubby, Roy.. )
Monday is planning - so i'll go through my file and see what i've got semi-ready so tomorrow, and the rest of the week, time permitting, i'll get some scrapping done.
Have a good day!

My Hollygirl

Since it's Friday it's a Pet page

(actually i'm already tweaking this schedule thing - Friday will be Pets and Special Projects)

I had great expectations - thinking i'd get more than one page done but i'm happy enough with this. And i put the rest of the photos and papers etc in another ziploc into the readytogo file for next week.

if you're wondering, i used paper from a kit by Sticker Studio. I never buy kits - but this one was cute and the store didn't have any of the paper selling by the sheet. I'd bought the kit a few months ago and it was the perfect opportunity to use it. I also used: ribbon and a button i'd had for a long time, heidi swapp journaling spots, and my studio quickutz font and quickutz flower and tag dies.

better late than never :-)

okay so i'm a little late with posting this.

I went to take a picture of it this morning (kinda conked out early last nite) and apparently i had unplugged my camera and it wasn't charged.

Then i had to wait for it to charge.

small sigh.

by the way i'm not going to be scanning pics of layouts.

scanning and then merging etc - too time consuming and definitely not suzy's purpose here.

the purpose again is to get moving and start scrapbooking

with no real concerns about what is hot and what is not

maybe using up some of my considerable storehouse of supplies

and tools

Now normally i would never use the colors i did on this layout of my daughter and driveway chalk drawings. And i bet there was a time i would have never used the patterned paper i did. It's this paper that looks like a driveway with chalk drawings.But one day i came upon that paper in the store and i thought hey that would go very nicely with those pictures. No real need for anything else. its decoration enough. I filed the paper with the pics.
I went to the ready to go file - everything is in large ziploc bags - and these pictures of her was the first available bag with pics my kids (it was Thursday).
So i pulled everything out of the bag and realized i still needed to pick out some cardstock. So i started looking through the cardstock and initially thought - no i don't have what i need. DING! Wrong answer. If i am going to get things done i really need to stop the perfection thing. You know what i'm talking about - theeeee perfect paper and theeee perfect cardstock color and theeee perfect embellishments. Nope. No more. Uh-uh
I remembered something i read in one of my favorite scrapbooking books - by Rebecca Sower. The book is Scrapbooking Life's Little Treasures
here's a link on Amazon for you
http://www.amazon.com/Scrapbooking-Lifes-Little-Treasures-Rebecca/dp/1929180330/ref=sr_1_1/002-9650614-4419251?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174660827&sr=1-1
She talks about "making do" and how she never gets bothered about having the exact shade of cardstock. "It's likely that when you're searching for that perfect shade of blue, at least two dozen other colors or shades will work beautifully".
Now that one stuck with me. Initially i thought - what are you crazy? I was a graphic design major in school. It's all about the color for me. Putting together colors etc.
But, in the grand scheme of things
- remembering my Suzy goals -
i thought you know - she's right.
Who is my audience here?
My daughter.
Will she care?
Not a speck (with this particular child, artist that she is, believe me, she won't care. It's just not her nature. )
So i looked through my stash and i picked the blue and the orange -
a lovely shade of cantaloupe
and orange is my daughter's favorite color.
cool
so there you have it.
Now lets see if i can meet a goal for today
ttyl

the how i'm gonna get this done part

the tricky part.
i have boxes of pictures
tons of photos.
way back - over 10 years ago - my sister had a fire in her house.
and she lost a lot of photos. precious photos of her son.
one of a kind photos
it set me on a tear about organizing my photos back then.
i went thru the house and found every package of photos.
and believe me they were everywhere.
don't ask me why but i never had put them in one place.
we were busy - two little kids. pics got looked at and put down
then swept up in some cleaning frenzy of mine.
anyway my photos are pretty much organized.
at least the ones i've taken are organized. I've kept up with that organization since then.
then there is another box that is just full of all kinds of other photos
but they are all together at least
so right now here's my plan of attack to get going on my scrapbooking.
number one - create this blog
(that's accountablity - i need to have that - it's part of my personality i guess. i need to say i'm gonna do this and here it is everybody so keep a look out)
number two: set up a schedule of some kind so i can look at it everyday and say ok - what am i doing today.
I'm a list kinda girl.
i work off lists every day.
And i LIVE to cross things off the list.
So the schedule is kinda like my list.
I have a loose schedule i think i can keep to.
By loose i mean - if something comes up in my life that has to get done - well that comes first.
I will make time to do this every day but things happen and i'm not going to beat myself up about missing a day or not getting to cross off something.
You following me?
Bottom line is i want to enjoy this but i also want to get something accomplished.
I took a look at what i want to do and basically here's my outline of a schedule
Monday - Planning
Monday, in general is my catch up day around here. I run a lot of errands and such. If i do a little planning to work on things the rest of the week i believe i can get it done. Planning would include picking out what i'm going to work on the rest of the week and making sure i've got supplies to do it. Making copies of pictures if needed. Pulling paper and embellishments and putting them in my ready to go file. That kind of thing.
Tuesday - Me
pages about myself. i have pictures - believe it or not - of myself. i really should work on all those college photos for example :-)
Wednesday - Family/Husband
I have a lot of photos hanging around of all of us - my kids and husband. This is more my family album stuff. Trips we've taken, just everyday stuff. And my husband has lots of photos he's brought home from work - he's been given a lot of awards and things - or his trips that are just sitting around gathering dust. They need to get in an album
Thursday - My Kids
I could work for a month and everyday be a Thursday and not make a dent in pics of them! But i need to get working on baby albums (yes, i never did that!) and catch up on their school albums
Friday - Pets
Even though i have only the two cats - they're my babies and i've got tons of photos of them. I imagine Fridays might end up being a sort of catch all day if this schedule works - i will eventually catch up on their photos and they'd i'd be free to use the time otherwise
Saturday - Heritage
I'll use the term Heritage loosely here. I've got photos of my father and his parents - very old that are definitely heritage. But i'd also use this heading to cover photos of my siblings and parents - old photos from my growing up. I would also be scanning a lot of these old, one of a kind photos - the kind there are no longer negatives available - on this day. I really need to get going on that. I would like to have them scanned to make copies for my sisters and also as a preventative measure. Some of the really old ones that were my grandmothers pictures are 100 years old
Sunday - Miscellaneous
as the name implies. whatever i feel like working on

Like i said its a loose schedule but it is one - and i need that. I'll tinker with a little after i get going if it needs it.
I know it sounds ambitious but like i said its a vehicle to get things accomplished. If things get busy then the next available day i will look at the schedule and say ok - what can i work on today? and i won't be spending a lot of time trying to figure out WHAT to work on.
Oh yeah - my ready to go file - this is key.
When i sit down to work - that planning on Monday should have yielded items that were put in that ready to go file. I will have already pulled out stuff to work on. So i'll just dip into that file - and i'll be ready to go
Sounds good right?
Oh yeah - i'll post what i do. I am not sure if i'll post them here or have a link to flickr or some place like that - still checking that out. But you'll see the results. That's that accountablity thing.
Right now I've got my ready to go - already in progress. So i think we'll get started tomorrow. That's Thursday - my kids. good topic
See you tomorrow!

Stop the Madness and Start the Scrapbooking

Okay so i said i'd explain why i'm doing this and what kind of scrapbooking I want to do.
I was thinking about why i'm not getting anything done. Anything of real signifcance.
I got distracted.
That's a pretty simple explanation.
I bought a lot of stuff.
I looked at endless books and websites.
Before I got into all the madness that has become scrapbooking - maybe 8 years ago - i actually created a cute scrapbook for a friend of mine. My first "new" scrapbook.
I'd put photos in albums but never wrote things down, added decorative elements. that kinda thing.
I spent maybe a week on it.
Oh and i'm sure if anyone saw it now they'd be horrified at all the Mrs. Grossman's stickers and deco scissors i used.
But you know - I had a ball making that book for her.
We were Brownie leaders together and had become good friends.
I'd taken pictures the whole time - as i am a picture taker.
I really love to look back and remember fun times, good friends. you kwim.
Anyhow, I had the best time making that album
And you know it was one of the best presents i ever gave - she adored it.
We laughed the entire time she looked through it.
I know she'll keep it forever and have great times looking through it in the future.
And if i hadn't made it - well time has a way of fuzzing up the memories doesn't it?
You remember the basic elements but you forget the little things that clear up the edges.
After that i made an album for my mother - that one took much longer.
Course it took in a lot more subject matter but still - it took longer.
Then i made an album for my little sister.
That album took a year to make. And i know why.
It was about that time that i really got into looking at magazines etc about scrapbooking.
Again, I'm not blaming anyone but me.
I just got very distracted by all this pretty stuff in the magazines.
And got very critical of what i was doing in these books i was making.
I didnt just make them anymore - i agonized over every little thing.
And - really i don't know why.
Who else but the recipients were going to see them?
Well - in my mother's case - others did see the book.
She showed my aunt and my cousins when they came by for lunch one day.
They were mesmerized.
And went on and on about how much they loved it.
And let me tell you i was not in full madness mode yet at that time.
So - wow - someone else saw the book - liked it a whole bunch - and i wasn't even going totally crazy at that point.
Hmmm.
Made me realize - as i remembered back on that occasion - even though i wasn't making these publication worthy pages - mine didn't look anything like what i was seeing in the magazines - the recipient and others actually enjoyed it. They loved it in fact.
So - conclusion - i can just go back to making my scrapbooks and stop worrying about every little thing.
So that's where I'm at now.
I've remembered why i was doing this in the first place and remembered that people liked what i made just fine before i got overly involved in all the products and ideas and techniques.
Blah-di-blah
I can still do something a little off beat or try a new technique or incorporate some interesting new product if i feel like it. But i'm not going to obsess anymore.
Well - not anymore than is possible for someone like me
More than anything i just want to make my scrapbooks. So i am going to.
I've stopped the subscriptions to the magazines i was getting. I loved them. But instead of scrapbooking i was reading them - and getting distracted and confused.
Confused?
Well they weren't showing the kind of pages i like to make.
And I'm going to leave it at that. I don't want to digress (yet again) into what is wrong with scrapbook magazines anymore.
I'll just say i am making something different and mine are ok. And to continue looking at magazines that aren't helping me accomplish my goal is just - well a waste of money for one thing. and my time. They're all lovely magazines. I'm just not their target audience.
And that's ok :-)
I'm gonna make things for my family - and for me.
I want to remember stories of my family - past & present.
I want to save some seriously deteriorating photos.
So that's what i'm going to do and i've already begun.
More on that tomorrow - the how i'm gonna get this done part

Not something everone aspires to

being Suzy Scrapbooker.
I think the name has taken on a bad connotation
Not me.
I set out years ago to scrapbook my pictures.
I had seen wonderful magazines and knew people who made these cool looking new kinda scrapbooks.
i said - that's for me.
i have a bazillion pictures.
Pictures of my children.
Pictures of me as a child.
Pictures of my siblings.
Pictures from my grandparents.
I wanted to do this.
Write down all the stories i knew.
The ones that were getting forgotten.
My grandparents are long gone.
My father died and as he was an only child - a lot of his stories died with him.
Then my brother died.
He was the real story teller in the family. He was the oldest and knew all our family stories better than anyone.
And my children - well i was afraid they'd forget him.
So I set out to scrapbook.
And i got very engaged in all of the wonderful products and magazines and books and...
i didn't do a whole lot of scrapbooking.
I've done some
but not near enough.
I bet.... no, I know i'm not the only one in the same boat.
Now i'm not blaming any magazine or manufacturer for my lack of progress.
I'll say they were enablers :-)
But the blame falls on me.
And a busy life.
But i'm here to say i would love to be suzy scrapbooker.
Just your regular old garden variety scrapbooker who is actually getting some scrapbooking accomplished.
And the kind of scrapbooking that i want to do.
More on that next... the kind i want to do and the purpose of this little blog place :-)