Sorry it’s been so long since I posted. I kept starting these long, drawn-out descriptions of the holidays, and they kept sounding whiny for how lovely, if busy and hectic, our holidays were. We hosted 15 for Christmas dinner and there was lots of work, but we also got to go to my cousin Ron’s for their traditional Christmas Eve dinner and gift-game fun; and my MIL made her awesome soup on New Year’s Day.
Lots of wonderful gifts for Julie and us; Joe got me a gift certificate to my favorite fancy salon which I am planning to save till after the new baby comes and then I will treat myself to a fabulous shorter haircut so I won’t feel so bad when my hair starts falling out as it does when pregnancies end. Anyway, that’s another story.
Today I’m going to talk about my semi-secret pleasure of scrapbooking. I don’t know why I am so embarrassed by this little hobby, but it definitely isn’t my “official” hobby. I do my best to keep my pages simple, to get Julie’s pictures into her book and write something down about them before I forget. But I do also like to make the pages pretty, put some paper mats under the pictures, and some kind of headline on the top of each page to make it look put-together or organized or something.
For the most part, I’m pretty happy with the way her baby books are turning out. Yes, I said bookS plural. That’s one of the bad things – she has one for each year of her life so far because we’ve taken that many pictures and I can’t bring myself to leave enough of them out. The one from her first year is about three inches thick, and it’s one of those big 12X12 jobbies that lets you fit quite a few pictures on a single page if you try.
Because I am more interested in knitting, or maybe just because I like to procrastinate, I realized a month or so ago that I had not printed out our digital pictures and gotten them into the scrapbooks for almost a year. This was around the time when I started planning Christmas presents for the in-laws and figured a small photo album with a year’s worth of pictures slid in – nothing fancy AT ALL – hardly any notes even – would make acceptable gifts for the grandparents and the uncle-on-the-other-side of the planet. So I uploaded 100 or so photos to Shutterflyand ordered them all in triplicate. Two of the three sets of copies were given as Christmas gifts and very well received. Mission accomplished.
My goal was and is to get all of my set of pictures into the scrapbook before this new baby shows up. I mean, if I don’t get it done now while there is only one kid to suck my attention – and she’s gotten pretty darn manageable in the last few months – how on earth will I keep TWO scrapbooks up to date?
Now that I’ve mentioned how manageable Julie has gotten, let me just knock on wood before I tell you that she has been going to bed at 8 after 15 minutes of stories and kisses, and staying that way pretty much all night most nights for the last couple of months. Life is SO good when you have a couple of hours to yourself in the evenings and then get a fairly full night’s sleep. Not to mention that she is quite independent during the day and will sometimes amuse herself for an hour or more at a time if I don’t pay attention to the time. It is incredibly fun to listen and watch her make up little stories with her toys and various objects around the house.
Okay, so here’s the punch line of the story. I had a great day today. Joe spent the day with Julie so that I could go to the Mall of America and spend several hours at a scrapbooking store called Archiver’s, where they have a workroom full of big tables to spread out on and lots of expensive die-cut machines and other scrapbooking tools that you can use for FREE. Plus, all the materials you could imagine and many many more are for sale right there in case you need some more paper or cardstock or stickers or miscellaneous goo-gahs with which to overdecorate your pages.
I am embarrassed to admit how much fun I had – a nice quiet day in that workroom, getting much more done than I could at home with less expensive tools (you can make nice letters with some cardstock, a template and an exacto knife at home, but it takes for freakin’ ever and the results aren’t as perfect looking). I had organized all my pictures, matted them and gotten them ready to go on their pages. I stood in front of that die-cut machine for a couple-few hours making stupid paper letters to glue on the pages too, and don’t ask me why because I don’t know, but it was FUN! And I got most of the work done, which will leave me with time to hopefully do some other chores in my evenings at home before this new baby comes and takes over our lives.
I also have to admit that it was fun listening in on the gossip and silly conversations between other scrapbookers working in the room, that I enjoyed a Krispy Kreme doughnut this morning just down the hall from the scrapbook store, and a Cold Stone creamery ice cream this afternoon before I left. I enjoyed taking most of an hour to simply peruse all the scrapbooking supplies, toys and crap at my leisure without worrying about a wiggly little monkey in the stroller trying to grab everything off the shelves and asking for more raisins and Puffins cereal or feeling guilty for dragging her there. Finally, I have to admit that I managed to spend most of the very generous gift certificate that Joe’s cousin gave me for the store as a Christmas present. Thanks, Sarah! Maybe my little secret hobby isn’t such a secret really.
