Scrapbook much?

I used to. In fact, that's how I got started in all this papercrafting madness. Long story short is that my (es)strange(d) aunt bought my sister a bunch of scrapbook stuff for Christmas around 1996 or 1997 (I got a Fiestaware pot that I still use - that was a good Christmas!) Sis wasn't real into the scrapbook stuff, but it sure hooked me in. I used to make my mom or grandmom drive me over an hour away to the lone AC Moore when I'd come home for break, just to get my 'fix.' I've probably done 10-12 complete albums and have several more 'in the works.' My problem with scrapbooking, as opposed to cardmaking, is there's TOO MUCH STUFF. Really. It just overwhelms me and paralyzes me. All the papers and stickers and embellishments and all that SPACE on a 12 x 12 layout, and of course I really only do double-page layouts so it's really like 2 square feet of space to fill up. It used to take me MONTHS to put together one album. I would work for an entire night on one layout. Once I had kids, scrapbooking went out the window. Who has that kind of time? My space has been cut in half (or more). It's too much effort, and now there's even MORE stuff and more access to that stuff thanks to the internet. And I found cardmaking to fill that creative void. But . . . it keeps calling me back. I've got kids - their lives should be documented. Those trips I used to take before I had kids - that should be documented so my kids see I had a life before they came around. So I still scrapbook. In spurts. And only the 'big stuff.' I'm not into scrapbooking every picture I ever took and documenting every cute thing my kids do. If I tried to do that, well, I'd just be setting myself up for failure. My kids are almost always cute and say cute stuff all the time. I just can't go there. So I've decided to stick to birthdays and vacations and that first year where they change so much and hopefully some sort of school album when they get to that. In honor of National Scrapbooking Month (this month!), I've decided to share two layouts of the most recent album I've been working on. It's my daughter's birthday album. I'm trying to just put the best pictures from each year in, although the first couple years of the first kid are kind of hard to pare down. But I've decided that's okay. Getting things down on paper and into an album that people can actually look at is the most important thing. Not whether the embellishment matches perfectly or the papers coordinate with the stickers that match the flower on my daughter's shirt. Or so I keep telling myself . . .

Top page is from daughter's 3rd birthday and bottom page is from her 1st birthday. Those are the only 2 years I've done so far (she's only 3 so I'm not too far behind yet!) Supplies are from all over. Paper is DCWV Blossoms & Butterflies. That's about as much as I can tell you. If you have a question about something specific, drop me a line and I'll try to figure it out for you.