Day Off

Well, on Wednesday, I finally decided to take a day off. I fought the urge to head back to the school. I was feeling a little worn out again anyway...fighting yet another disease no doubt from hanging out with so many kids lately. I'm sure my immune system isn't quite up to par after convalescing for two months with my previous sickness.

Anyway, while I was stuck at home over the summer, I picked up one of my many unfinished projects. Emily's baby book. Yes, I know she is already almost 8. Better late than never, right? I received a couple of scrapbooks from different people as baby gifts and I had thought I would give it a try. No sooner had I started the project, did I realize that I'm not really the scrapbooking type. It was too much work. It was too expensive and required a lot of creativity and thought. As soon as the baby came, I didn't have any of those resources to give to the project.  After adjusting to having our first baby in the house, we had to deal with colic, teething, mobility...you get the picture. I haven't touched it since.

Now I have thousands of pictures of the kids and to just choose pictures for printing is overwhelming. Christian has been helping me sort and organize my photo files this summer and helping me choose pictures for their albums. Looking at pictures on the computer is nice, but sitting down and looking at the prints every once in a while is just different and I guess I am a traditionalist.

I have several of the shutterfly books and while I love them and will continue to make them for certain purposes, I felt that they lacked a certain amount of warmth that a real album has. (Can you tell that I have always cherished my photo albums? They are my most important possessions). I even considered digital scrapbooking and having the results printed but in the end, it would just be as expensive or more and it still lacks that personal touch. Plus, I didn't want to open a whole new can of worms that that would bring. So I contrived to finish her baby album once and for all but it would just be a photo album with a few cute embelishments instead of full on scrapbook.

I did manage to finish Emily's album up to the end of her first year before the kids went back to school and I have been waiting for some alone time to head to JoAnn's for a few supplies to work on Caitlyn's first year. I have never been so overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time over the supplies available for scrapbooking. First, they are soo very expensive. Second, they are so over the top. And third, did I mention they were expensive?

I wanted some cute stickers and things to embellish Caitlyn's album a bit more (because I'm missing some information about the "second" baby that I kept for the first). So I thought I would cover it up with cuteness but then I realized that I couldn't make it too cute or the first kid would get too jealous of the second. It has to be just cute enough so I had to find the perfect balance (who says having two kids is easier than one?). Most of the stuff I found was just too much over the top or just plain gaudy. I found some embellishments that I liked but they always come in a pack with a bunch of things I couldn't use or didn't want to use. And to use only half or less of that stuff is pretty expensive to toss the rest out.

I had a headache and I was exhausted at the ended of it all and headed home remembering why I don't like scrapbooking.