Yesterday was "Memoranza!" - a pleasure as always to sit in a sun-filled room with good juices flowing and good conversation. During the day, I thought a lot about my new adventure by way of this blog and business interest... why something such as this would hold my attention longer than other hobbies I've embarked upon (from the beginning? signing, writing, musical theatre, cross-stich, knitting, stamping, sewing, quilting... need I go on?).

At the end of the day, I believe photography, recording stories and yes, eventually scrapbooking... are all about heritage, family origin, moral teachings and faith. A desire to be connected can range from "don't care" to "live and breathe". I think I reside around the 80th percentile... it's pretty important, but not all I am. In addition, I know from personal relationships that the study of geneology is sometimes painful for a variety of reasons. My suggestion would be that there's value from whatever the past is, as long as there is no bondage emotionally or spiritually. Ahead is an unwritten book and we have every opportunity in front of each of us!



This is a photo of my great-grandparents and their children... my Grandpa Johnson is to the far right. He passed away in 1994 - and it seems like yesterday. I share this as a celebration that my scanner is working... and a celebration of the future: what a handsome lot they are - how blessed I am to have come from these beautiful people. May my boys know their character and experience their dedication, work ethic and family roots.

I'll let you know soon how my own personal family heritage album is coming along!

I’m so excited because tomorrow I have the opportunity to sneak away and scrapbook ALL DAY LONG! My sister-in-law is having a scrapbooking event at a beautiful Catholic church here in the Twin Cities… floor to ceiling windows; every scrapper gets her own table, unlimited supplies and good conversation! Heaven!!! Just heaven, I’m telling ya!



This picture of Gabe is of his first birthday… and when I was immediately panic-stricken that I had not one picture of him in the house. See, we went digital right after his birth… and no printing, no saving, no nothing had taken place. YIKES! I didn’t have a photo to send to daycare the next day (immediate problem) and I didn’t have any plan for how to archive our family memories (future problem).

This brings me back to when I started scrapbooking: when my baby was one year old. This was almost three years ago. What a pleasure it’s been! I went to my first scrapbooking event, much like the one I’m going to tomorrow, and I think it took me like three hours to crop my first picture. Slowly but surely I got used to cutting away unused space, and creating a story from the photos. My style as obviously evolved, and I’m more and more comfortable using all the supplies that are offered these days!

Most of all, I’m thankful for the keepsakes I’m creating for our family… the joy on the boys’ faces when they look at their books… and I’m looking forward to how good I’ll feel in the future, knowing it's all done. :)

The what, where and how of scrapbook lettering is one of the most challenging tasks as a newbie. There are several scrapbook techniques that address this problem but the biggest trick is to take your time.



One way is to stick the letters to small squares of mounting paper, and then adhere the mounting paper to the page. Another is to use a strip of backing paper from your photo tabs or tape runner. Place the letter stickers with their lower half on the backing paper. Move the stickers until you have the spacing as you want it and then gently lay them on to the page. Press down the parts of the stickers not on the backing paper and then ease away the tape and press down completely.

Letter stickers can be tricky to evenly space on a page, but one of these ideas usually produces perfectly placed letters!

oscar.wurdock.com is my most-looked-forward-to "bookmark"... I've been introduced to this blogging world via a website named for the son (Oscar) of the IT guy at work (Tom) and his wife (Amy)... and I never imagined reading about someone else's kid (because I tend to think mine are pretty great) would be such entertainment. But it is - pure joy - "reading candy", if you will...

And now, well, I am Madcap Adventure-worthy!!! If you click on the 'related link' below, you'll see where Amy (a giant in the blogging world, according to me) mentioned Passing On The Memories in her entry today! Successful blogging = traffic, so whoo-hoo! I'm so happy - I'm crying again! Thanks to her, again, for lending her design and techno talent to POTM - and may it grow at even a fraction of Oscar's... :)

On Friday I returned Gavin's baby album to his mom... she teared up, so I consider that success!

This really was my first formal arrangement to do someone else's album for them... and it all started because I was tired of the envelopes upon envelopes of pictures falling out of my friend's armoire when she opened the drawer. Gavin and my oldest, TJ, are 11 days apart - so everything since our first trimester has been a journey together. Well, when the boys were three and TJ's scrapbook was all caught up and Gavin didn't have one... I offered to try to make sense of all the pictures to get something together for him. It was a fun process - there were phone calls to ask which event came before the other, and I loved asking the questions: this layout or that, this color or another... for as good of friends as we are, it was still an even more intimate process to create something she would love.

That's the beauty in the end of having the scrapbook - you get to enjoy it forever!