scrapbooking!
i have been scrapbooking since Soleil was 6 months old, so i guess that means i have been scrapbooking for almost 15 years now. i was drawn at first to all the pretty. and preserving family history seems wise. 
i can't frame all the pictures i take and i makes me sad to think they'll be sitting on a hard drive somewhere unseen. we take so many photos - even when i started scrapbooking while taking film photos! now we take an exorbitant amount of photos with our digital cameras and now on our iPhones.
we share via facebook, twitter, and instagram. but have you ever tried to go back a year on your social networks? it's hard.
i can pull 2007 off my shelf and look back at our move to Lake Tahoe and back.
i can look at our trip to New York City in 2008.
family and friends that come over can share in the experience and look through the years as the kids have changed and grown.
the most precious reward for me is to see how much the kids love going through the scrapbooks i have made, talking about trips and memories, and family visits, and things they used to do. they pour over them. sigh, this is gold. i love it.
when i lived in morro bay my friends who introduced me to scrapbooking would get together monthly and scrapbook... together. i know! in real life! this was not just scrapbooking, this was building friendships, bonding, creating together. sharing our stories with each other. besides my family pouring over my scrapbooks this is the other beautiful reward that comes with scrapbooking good friends, old friends, new friends, and a lot of laughs! i still go up about once a year to a 4 day scrapbook retreat with those ladies. but i need to get a group going where i live too.
scrapbooking is not dead. i thought maybe it was because i can't seem to find anyone in san diego county that wants to do it with me. but i see women in the scrapbook isle at michaels and my heart skips a beat - oh! they scrapbook, yay! should i go up to them and invite them to my house? yikes, probably not a good idea. and i see a large following for the project life series. and i see tons of gorgeous sites dedicated to scrapbooking, such as studio calico, crate paper, basic grey... with online classes and kits. there is hope, a flickering light of a small candle burning, glowing brighter.
i encourage you to find a way to preserve your photos where they can be seen not just on your walls, and definitely not hiding on a hard drive somewhere. have you had a picture on your wall and had to explain where you were and what the kids were doing and what happened and maybe why you took that photo in the first place? that is scrapbooking, now put it on a page and write those things and thats it. easy as pie and definitely sweeter.
scrapbook images via studio calico
what are you loving today???
xoxo,
krystina