Scrapbooking is a gift
A scrapbook is a short story crafted through countless, small moments. Every photograph, piece of paper, sticker, embellishment, quote, and written word is carefully selected and placed. Those meticulously selected items take countless hours of seeing a mental picture come to life before your eyes.
Some may call scrapbooking meticulous, detailed, lengthy, and even monotonous. I would agree to a point. Some may also call scrapbooking a very expensive hobby - umm… it definitely can be. When I tell people that I scrapbook, I usually get a surprised and quizzical look. You scrapbook? I was thinking that’s a hobby for older women. I absolutely disagree with that statement and with that vibe.
I enjoy every second of scrapbooking and I have for years. When you really think about your life, how do you think about it? Do you think about it in terms of mental photographs, music, personal belongings, or stories? Can you clearly remember key highlights from year to year, maybe even month to month?
Now think about how many photos and videos you actually have stored on your phone that you don’t look at. Now think about the concert tickets, backstage passes, airplane tickets, national park maps, water park wristbands, and other paper trinkets you have held in the past - did you throw those away after you were done? Now think about when you have traveled and some of your favorite restaurants, can you actually name the restaurant? These are all, hopefully, happy details of your life. Details that you spent time researching, spending money on, and enjoying.
All of those details are the pieces of my life and my family’s life that I put together in an annual scrapbook. It is my winter hobby, since the weather in Michigan requires some type of indoor activity, and I look forward to it every winter. I am 30 years old and I have made a scrapbook for the past 15 years of my life. I have about 2, thick scrapbooks per year and I love that I have kept up this tradition.
I’ve scrapbooked half of my life, literally. I’m not talking about making a digital photobook on Shutterfly and printing it. I’m talking about real paper, with real stickers, glue, tape, printed photographs… the whole shebang. I am a scrapbooker and I am proud of it.
Each year, I put together a brief story of my life and my family’s life. I literally go through the thousands of photos I have taken for the year and earmark my favorite ones. Ones that have candid moments, ones that spark a happy memory, ones that make me feel like I am back in that moment. I then edit each and every one of those photos on my Mac until they are in the perfect condition for printing. Then I literally upload and select the printed size for each of my photos - 4x4, 4x6, 5x7, 8x10, etc… Each year, I print about 350 photos to put in my scrapbook.
I’m serious. Selecting, editing, sizing, and printing photos takes almost a month.
What a month! I look at photos from the entire year. I am back in each one of those seconds with my husband, my child, my pets, my friends, and my family. I get to clearly remember those moments of my life. I can see the growth, the changes, and the life from each photo. 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.
You may think that just going back and looking at photos is enough. Well.. it isn’t for me. I need so much more. For my memories and the story I want to tell, I need more detail. When I am creating my intricate story in my mind and then I see it come to life in front of me, it is truly magical.
I can see in my head that I want to have the most perfect photo of my son and write next to it his height, weight, and nicknames. I then want a super cute photo of my son eating messy purees and writing down the puree recipe for vegetable medley (which is so gross but my son ate pounds of it). I want a photo of my son wearing his gigantic winter bunting suit, pushing his lawn mower through 4 inches of snow, with his toothy smile because that was his favorite thing to do in the winter. I need to write down the hilarious things that my son says - such as calling his Dad by his first name - Joe Joe - at the age of 2.
For my husband and I, I want the two concert tickets, the restaurant name, and a fancy photo of us when we went to see Eric Church. I need photos and the before and after when we ripped out a ton of ivy in our backyard because that was an awesome project we spent a lot of time on. I want a picture of us just cuddling in bed and the funny chit chat we had because my husband is the best at chit chat.
I want my life’s memories to have richness, to have detail, and to remind myself of who I was and who I am becoming. I also want my life to be one where I can easily remember what happened and when. Have you ever felt like time just flies by and you are just in the rat race? When I take the time to slow down, to reflect, to put together the story of the life I am living - time seems to slow. I can physically see, through a scrapbook, the time I have spent, the happiness I have created, and the life that is unfolding in front of me.
Again, what a gift to give myself. To see, reflect, and appreciate the life I have been given and continue to build.
Putting all of this together, as you can imagine, does take time. It also takes attention. You have to pay attention to your life in order to scrapbook your life. I wouldn’t have anything to scrapbook if I wasn’t present, if I didn’t write things down, if I didn’t keep things in a little folder for the year. As I shared before, I do keep a journal and commit to writing down things as they happen. Sometimes I am really good at this and other times I get really far behind. What is important is that I commit to it and I try the best that I can.
When I sit down in the winter to scrapbook, I re-read my journal for the year. I see the photos from that time, I hear my own voice re-telling me the story, and can feel the emotion from moments long past. I pull out the details I want to add to my scrapbook and truly put together a brief story of my life.
If you have ever considered scrapbooking, then this is your sign to commit to it. You are giving yourself the gift of reflection, of storytelling, and of leaving behind your legacy. As I consider scrapbooking as part of my parenting journey, I get the opportunity of sharing memories with my son. When I pass on, he will have the story of my life, his father’s life, and our family life. He will hear our voices, experience our memories, and be able to feel our love. What a beautiful gift.
Related Blogs:
Don’t Blink - https://www.mamasbookcellar.com/blog/dontblink
The Last Time - https://www.mamasbookcellar.com/blog/lasttime
Journaling Your Life - https://www.mamasbookcellar.com/blog/journaling
