I'M BACK!!! and look what I've been doing...

SURPRISE! It's me! I know, I haven't been on my blog since May. I have no good excuse except that I got lazy and took a very long break! But my New Year's Resolution is to get back to the blog. I really am going to try! My plan is to post samples from classes and swaps, but also add a few photos and blurbs about what's going on in my life! So the first thing I want to share is a scrapbook that I did in 2009!

Scrapbooking is my first love, even before stamping. A friend (hi Carol) introduced it to me about 11 years ago. At first I wasn't interested, I told her I didn't have time. Well thank goodness she was persistent, because it has proven to be one of the best things I've ever done!

Anyway, last year a national scrapbooking magazine was going to offer a kit in which you would put together a scrapbook of one picture every day in the year 2009. I thought that would be so much fun. The kit went on sale January 1, 2009 at 9:00 am. By 9:20 am, they were totally sold out, and I didn't get one. I was pretty disappointed, but then decided that I could make my own kit. And that's what I did. I got a 3-ring scrapbook and specific page protectors for what I had in mind. And over the next 12 months I took a picture every single day. In my house, it was called "Picture of the Day", and after awhile my family just sighed and went along with it. Sometimes they'd even ask me if I'd taken my "picture of the day"! It turned out to be a sort of diary of my year, and what an amazing project it turned out to be!



This is just a random picture from the middle of the book. I am not quite done with it. I plan to stamp on the blank blocks, plus I still need to add my November and December photos. But this will kind of give you an idea of how it worked. In the top left is a block telling what week it was.
Then I took a picture each day and labeled it with the date(number). Then for each day I wrote a few sentences of journaling, dating them to match their photo. I layered them onto card stock, and stuck them in the book. This had to be one of the quickest scrapbooking projects I've ever done. No fancy embellishments, just slide the photo and journaling into the pockets, and it was done. I set aside one night each month to work on the photos from the previous month. It was so easy and so much fun!



Now some days I had trouble choosing which photo to use, like when we were on vacation, or during a special event. But there were a lot of days when I really had to think about what to take the picture of. And that is where the true meaning of this project unfolded. It really gave me a new perspective on all the tiny, yet important, things in my life. And in years to come it will show what my life was like in 2009. For instance, one day I took of picture of Diet Coke and a brownie - 2 of my favorite things! And one day I took a picture of my cleaning supplies, or my vacuum - not my favorite things, but certainly a part of my life. I've taken pictures of things I've baked, my favorite pajama, and my cold medicine when I wasn't feeling well. Do you get the idea?

Why am I going on and on about this? Because today is the first day of the new year, and I am seriously challenging you to start this project! I know it sounds overwhelming, but if you just add "take photo" to your "To Do" list every day, before you know it, you will be underway with this book! You will not regret it! It was such a feeling of accomplishment when I took photo # 365 on December 31! I have been asked if I will do it again this year, and the answer is no. I have tons of other things I plan to work on. But in 5 years from now? Who knows! I just might! Let me know if you decide to do this scrapbooking project. I would love to be your cheerleader!