Scrapbooking...again

Well, I'm back at it. Gearing up to scrapbook, that is. (It seems funny to me to use the word "scrapbook" as a verb. I think the veterans of the hobby would say "scrap" rather than "scrapbook" when used as a verb, at least some of them.) I think my fascination with scrapbooking began about three years ago, maybe more, but I haven't actually ever "scrapbooked" anything. I've never actually completed a layout. Nope. Not even one. I bought some materials back when my interest was piqued so many years ago, and I started making a really neat mosaic-style layout of pictures from Christmas. It was looking very impressive for a first try, and I would have been proud of it if I had ever glued the pictures down. Back then it was common for us to have to clear off the kitchen table in a big hurry because we were having people for dinner or someone was coming over who wasn't allowed to know how messy we are, so my carefully arranged pieces eventually got shuffled as they were whisked away at some point. Everything ended up in some container somewhere in my sewing room. The reason I took up the effort back then is I knew we would have a child at some point in the foreseeable future, and I wanted to get my practicing years out of the way before I had a child's life to document. Everyone makes fun of her first attempts or says how much better they've gotten at scrapbooking over the years. So didn't want my first baby to have a dumb-looking book and all the other children to have really creative works of art. So I decided to sabotage my general family photos during the childless years. That was all scrapped, in a much different sense of the word, and I have no idea where all my supplies are now.

Back in May 2004, I sat in front of this very computer joining an online scrapbooking community in hopes of learning from the more experienced "scrappers" and finding some inspiration. My firstborn (age six months) was in the next room. I had yet to scrap a single thing. Some friendly woman from the group sent me a box of baby-related scrapbook supplies that she would never need, which was great! But we were on the cusp of a major cross-country move (with a baby), and that was no time to begin scrapping. We have been in Virginia now for six months this week. (Wow...six months already!?) My daughter is just shy of fifteen months, toddling, talking, and sprouting molars like crazy, and yet I have only pictures. Envelope after envelope of pictures. Hundreds of pictures! And not one scrapbook page.

So I have made up my mind that February is the month that the first page will be finished. It probably won't be the mosaic I started so many years ago, as I have no earthly idea where it is now! And it won't be any of Ava's pictures because I don't want to do stupid to anything that will appear in her memory book. My goal is to transfer all the pictures of when we were young and just dating, traveling, getting married, etc. from the horrible, evil, yellowing-already magnetic album into a modern acid-free album where they belong. I have purchased the basics that I didn't already have, and I'm on the hunt for the past purchases lurking around here undiscovered, so I'm almost ready. I even have a scrap buddy lined up. It's time to jump in and get scrappin'! For February, I will settle for getting the ball rolling at long last. I've been touching the water with my toe long enough.