Back to some Old Fashioned Scrapbooking. And Also, Some Musings

I have been dabbling in the full fledged digital scrapbooking, but have been finding it less than satisfying. So, I decided I needed to go back to some hands on paper scrapbooking, but I did use photoshop to do some layout design, and printing some of the journaling. So, that is officially "hybrid" scrapbooking. It's so much more satisfying to me, so I must stick to it. I will continue to use the computer, and keep learning about photoshop to have more tools at the ready, but why make things for myself that I don't really love? Right?

So, anyway, here they are. Ahh, I like them. I even used some colors outside my comfort zone (i.e. not black or brown). I think I will be doing a lot of pages with these nice clean grids in the center of the page. I am influenced by the work of others, but I do think it is a true reflection of my style.

The other scrap issue that I wanted to cover here: I scrapped about a day in which I was tired and cranky, and didn't really have a good time. And that is something that I have been meaning to do for a while. The essence behind scrapbooking is about capturing the small moments in our lives, telling the stories of our lives, and thus appreciating the little things in life. And I have done my share of capturing my kids at play, the things they say, the family rituals, etc. And I love that. I do. But, I have also come to appreciate the messiness of family. We love each other, we have many precious moments together, but we also argue, and have bad days, and we each have our foibles that make us and each other crazy. In the words of KW in Where the Wild Things Are movie, "families are hard." And that is part of the journey-the story of our life together. All those negatives are the things we laugh about when they pass, and I presume we will laugh about them for years to come. So, I am attempting to capture some of those bad days too (without embarrassing the kids too much).

So, here it is: ( You can click on the bottom photo to read th journaling, if you are so inclined.)