Scraptastic

Being a work-from-home wife has its advantages a plenty! Whenever I have downtime in my business, I have my choices of things to do. Some of these "things to fill my day" include dusting, doing laundry, organizing my digital photos (nearly 5,000), putting paperwork in the file cabinet, washing dishes, sewing my new Renaissance Festival costume, etc.

I've always been the one to carry a camera. I love taking pictures - and when you take enough you capture some of those perfect moments that stick with you throughout your life. I would even venture to say that camera-holics run in my family because in going through Grandma's and Mother's old albums - I have almost 1,000 pictures cataloging the eras of their lives.

Lately I spend a lot of my downtime scrap booking. About 10 years ago I got into the hobby thanks to a co-worker who had Creative Memories parties at her house every month. I purchased a few stickers and a pair of scissors, and was on my way. Over time I've created about 700 scrapbook pages from my birth up through 2002. My latest project is printing digital pictures from the last 5 years since I met my husband. It's fun for me - and I like it more than photo albums because my scrapbooks tell a story.

Looking back through my inherited albums - I know it's going to be a huge challenge scrapbooking the hundreds of old photos because most of the pics are candid shots from when Grandma was in her 20s. She had 14 brothers and sisters - and I only have one family portrait of all of them that tells me who is who. So many names! And then they grew up and had kids and grandkids... The entire project is on hold until I can get everything converted to digital files. The old glue on everything is beginning to deteriorate the back of the photos - and it's too much family history to let go of. (Another thing on my to-do list - SCANNING OLD PHOTOS).

Hopefully that's something I can get off my list in the next week or two :-)