This is one of my all-time favorite winter hobbies - scrapbooking! No, I’m not an elderly lady. No, I don’t go to scrapbooking parties on the weekend… yet. I’m in my early 30s and I seriously look forward to scrapbooking this time of year. If you want to see how geeked out I get, check out my previous blog on it: Scrapbooking. 

I feel like I’m on top of the scrapbooking game right now. It usually takes me a month to go back through all of the photos and videos from the previous year to meticulously pick my favorite ones. I have already selected AND even ordered the photos that I want to scrapbook. I did a couple of things differently this year than I have in the past which I think helped my process go quite a bit faster. 

First, I had a tragic incident with my macbook where the screen cracked and I had to get it repaired. Knowing that my mac was going into the shop for a while, my husband setup a dual screen for me so I could upload all of my photos to Amazon photos. So… I went through the process of cleaning out ALL of my photos from my life. Literally. I have photos from when I was 3 years old, all of my sports, my friends, all of the trips I’ve taken, family gatherings, my wedding, etc… thousands and thousands of photos on my computer. All cleaned up and loaded into Amazon photos.

Second, throughout this year I’ve been making little family videos each month to recap what we have been doing to layering in music to them. This also forces me to go back through all of the photos for that month and to prune things. 

Third, we’ve had a significant amount of loss in our family this year. Looking at photos of those who have passed away just helps me grieve and to heal. I’ve been looking at photos of my mother-in-law and of my dog quite a bit and that encourages me to look at other memories and other photos. 

I’ve really enjoyed looking at my life through photos this year. It has also made it much simpler and quicker with picking the photos and the size of the photos that I want to print. Yes, size does matter when scrapbooking! 

I ordered my photos through Shutterfly - they always do a high quality job and I’ve used them for the past 5 years to print my photos. I just learned this year that if you sync your Amazon account with Shutterfly, you get 45% off plus free shipping on orders $35+. That is pretty significant and it saved me a boat load of money this year.

I still need to get my scrapbooking station setup while I wait for my photos to get delivered. With our house in full remodel mode… space is pretty limited. My personal sanity is also limited. I’ll need to get creative, not just with scrapbooking but with how I carve out some time during the day to actually work on the scrapbook. I also need to go shopping for the perfect scrapbook binder. I usually purchase 2, 3-ring binder style scrapbooks, because I put together about 90 pages for the year. Sounds insane… but when you think about the cool things you get to do as a parent, all of the changes your child undergoes, and all the precious moments that you can capture… 90 pages for the year is really not that much. 

Scrapbooking is a winter hobby of mine that gives me something creative to do, helps the cold Michigan days pass by, and is a great way to reflect on the time I spent over the past year. I know I am giving myself a gift each year by just spending time and looking at my life. Instead of spending hours scrolling on my phone, I am looking at my life, my family, and my memories and curating it into a story for that specific year. It’s a great hobby and a great tradition.