31 Days of Things I've Been Wanting to Do, Day 21: Scrapbooking-Part 1

I have been wanting to have a day to spread out all of my beautiful paper and wonderful scrapbooking tools and catch up on a few years of pages that I am behind. I know the photo albums that can be ordered online are slowly taking the place of actually putting the pages together yourself. Call me old-fashioned, but I still love the feeling of gluing a photo to paper with my hands.

Today was supposed to be that day....
I walked into my laundry room (where my stash of supplies is stored) and then realized I needed to reorganize it all before I could even begin filling my photo books with finished pages of memories.

View from my laundry room door....

Looks clean, right? OK, well, just don't shut the door... oh please.... wait!....

OK, you looked and that's fine. Now I REALLY have to clean it. After all, your laundry room is the only room that is 'safe' from company. I mean, who do you have over that has to go into your laundry room? So, the next time you are at my house, and my laundry room door is shut, you'll know I have slipped back into my unorganized-scrapbooking-self.

Since you've seen behind the door, I might as well show you all the horrible before pictures....

In the process....
Growing up at home, my mom used to tell me to clean out my closet. Every time, I did it the same way. Pull everything out, so I know what I have, and then put it all back in a nicer way. I have since learned that you can't put everything back. You have to purge at some time in your life! But, sorry Mom, I still pull everything out first....

And that's pretty much how it sits now. But don't worry, I'll finish it up tomorrow and maybe squeeze an hour or two of actual scrapbooking. :) After-all, I have sooooo many pages of my scrapbook magazines that I have sticky notes on waiting to be duplicated into my albums!

In the mean time, I thought I'd share some of my favorite pages I've done and how I keep them organized...

(Fun in the Sun- Beach trip 2010)

(Reese 3 years old)

 I have an album for every year we have been married. The pages in the albums run from June 5- June 5 (our anniversary) and include everything monumental that happened in that year. (Trips, moves, family reunions, etc.) I'm not good at remembering dates so this has been a great way to look back!   

Our 6th Anniversary Page

(This page is the first page in our 7th book, as it begins our 7th year together)

Our kids each have their own books. Beginning with pregnancy pictures, I made pages for the major milestones of their first 2 years and birthday pages every year after that. I am about to start Reese's school book which will include her sports pictures and special school moments (first day of school, programs, graduation, etc.)

(This is the first page of Graham's book, I was 17 weeks pregnant.)

(One of the pages from Reese's 3rd birthday.)

Making memories is a huge part of our lives! I'm glad that I have the desire to keep those memories fresh in our minds through pages in a book. I can't tell you how many hours I have sat with my kids and flipped through those books!