Back in my senior year of high school we had an assignment to create a Scrapbook. We did two different ones. The first was our whole lives up to our senior year and the second was of JUST our senior year. I took mine very seriously and spent a TON of time (and money) making them both perfect! I thought that from then on I’d continue to scrapbook.
Well time passed and I did a couple little scrapbook projects, the most recent being a scrapbook of Zach’s freshman year of football. But it turns out my love of scrapbooking was more of a love because I HAD to do it. It’s not something I sit around thinking,”I really want to be scrapbooking right now.”
I tried to get back into it while I was pregnant but it just made me depressed. I tried to scrapbook my wedding but I was SO thin for the wedding and was SO hugely pregnant that I just couldn’t do it. It felt like a chore and I didn’t enjoy it. Here lately I’ve been giving it another shot and have gotten pretty far into our wedding scrapbook. I’ve gotten all the pictures printed, organized, and several pages done. I still wouldn’t say that I actually HAVE FUN doing it though. It still feels more like something on a to do list than an actual hobby.
Since I got pregnant and read Rachael’s blog I started blogging myself. While keeping the blog up-to-date IS sometimes a pain, overall I truly enjoy it. For as long as I can remember I’ve LOVED writing. I used to write stories just for fun and as a kid was even published a couple times and won some awards. I used to dream about becoming an author one day. While I’m not some awesome writer as an adult, I have always expressed myself best through the writing process.
Now that I have Kye I have a decision to make. I’m VERY big on thinking long term. I always look at the big picture and how my choices now will affect that future. What to do with Kye’s firsts? What to do with ALL these pictures I’m always taking? My original idea was that I’d scrapbook each of my children’s first years of life and then do chronological scrapbooks from then on. Once I start doing a scrapbook for Kye I will HAVE to do one for all 4 children. Do I want to start something like that? Do I enjoy it enough to commit to that?
I’ve been debating this a lot and even though part of me feel like I’ll never be able to win “Mom of the Year” awards without scrapbooking, I just don’t really want to. I know by kid #4 it will be a SUCH a chore! It’s expensive, takes a lot of patience, time consuming, and the end result is that you have a book filled with your love, time and energy that NO ONE EVER LOOKS AT!!! My scrapbooks sit in a shelf and never get opened. Even Zach’s football one is up in the attic somewhere I think. I did ALL that work for basically nothing.
Since blogging is something I really enjoy doing I’ve decided that instead of scrapbooking I will create Blog books. I downloaded a program called Book Smart and it automatically generates your blog into a book and you can edit it etc. It includes all the pictures too!!! It’s VERY user friendly, will be a LOT faster than scrapbooking, a LOT cheaper, and I think more interesting. I know if I were Kye I’d rather read a whole book on my life someday than just browse through some pictures. Plus, lets be real, no one looks at the scrapbooks and no one will probably read the blog book either but I’ll have it and it’ll be memories to hold on to for that rare moment when someone wants to see it. It will be a hard cover book and will cost around $100! Not bad AT ALL when you consider that one sheet of paper for scrapbooking is $0.50 and you do 100 pages so that’s $50 right there plus the scrapbook itself, all the pictures you print, and all the little do-dads to decorate the pages.
I talked to Zach about the idea and he loves it! He is mostly concerned with his other seasons of football and wants to make sure I scrapbook them someday and I will. I plan on scrapbooking the past (pre-pregnancy, pre-blog) but blog book the now and the future. I am doing my first book that will cover the posts from my pregnancy. Then I think I’ll do one of all Kye’s posts then chronologically from then on giving each child their own book of their first year. Any thoughts on that organization idea???
I haven’t decided yet if I will scrapbook anything else other than just the past or not. Part of me thinks it’d be cool to have a Parker Family Christmas scrapbook that I do just a couple pages for each Christmas. Or one filled with our travels or something but like Zach said I could always do that as a blog book too! And he even made the point that just because I don’t plan on scrapbooking now that I may decide I want to do it when we retire someday. I find that unlikely but hey it COULD happen!
Even though that desire to be a #1 Mom in me feels guilt for deciding not to scrapbook the sane part of me knows it’s the best choice! I love all this new technology and love keeping up with the blog so I’m sure I’ll also enjoy making my own little books!!!
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Do not feel guilty for not scrapbooking! If you do not enjoy it, then do not waste your time. I love the idea of a blog book, but have you looked into shutterfly/snapfish books. I LOVE THEM! They are a great price, super easy, super fast and they look great! I absolutely love mine ( I think it was 24 bucks?) And I printed two extra smaller books (paperbacks) for Gregs mom and my mom and they take them everywhere. Look into it, I love snapfish!
Don't feel bad, I would rather do anything than scrapbook. I like the idea of doing it online because you can share with everyone what is going on. If you just made it at your house then none of us would be able to see all of Kye's cute pictures!
Have you checked blurb.com? Or is that where you downloaded Book Smart? One of my old coworkers used blurb to book her blog and it looked AMAZING.
You know, I read this post from you last week and it really got me thinking. And as surprising as it is, I totally agree with you! I've talked with M about it, and I'm going to continue to make LL a scrapbook for every year of HER life, but I'm no longer going to do a "family book" for every year, I'm just going to get the blog printed out. Why do the same thing twice?! So thanks!