Scrapbooking the year: 2018

I recently went on a scrapbooking retreat. I do every January, and this year I completed my 2018 albums for the family.

Last summer I did a big reorganization/purge of scrapbook pages. I took every page out and organized by year, tossing those that were not meaningful. (Some I put aside to redo, either to make more concise or to reduce business.) I'm in the processor making labels and tags for the cover and bindings, and I plan to buy some albums to replace ones I have to make the look more uniform and to occupy less shelf space.

Long story, but last fall I went though my photo files from 2018 and ordered photos to finish telling my stories from that year. I made the pages at the scrap retreat. Here are some of the ones I've finished so far:

This one was perhaps my favorite, an amalgam of all the weekend outing photos I took of me and my husband. I love the bright colors in it.

This is a layout of a vivid maybe not great memory. Home opener series in sub-freezing temps. I couldn't make it to the end of the game, ergo chilly colors. Hopefully you get the title.

More and more I'm liking to print photos I love then figuring out what to do with them. I had photos from a few girlfriend weekends at The Manor, so I put them together onto a page. I'm loving using Project Life cards either in full or punched out.

This is a similar layout but more poignant. We recently lost our dog to a sudden and terminal illness. I took three character shots I'd never put on a page and scrapbooked her personality.

This was the first page I made at the retreat. I used up an old Ali Edwards kit for it because I loved the colors.

This page is an example of one I've been making more of recently, one put together with photos my husband or son shares with me. This was from the time I was in Maine helping my parents with my younger son. Here's what my husband did with my eldest while I was gone. Printing photos in standard sizes like 4x3 made this page easy to put together.

And this is what I was doing while I was in Maine! I used an About Me PL card for the page and picked pretty papers.

Here's my youngest around the same time. Not really a story, just my favorite photo I took while I was in Maine.

Finally, a page about my eldest in one of his last piano recitals. He still plays but is too busy for lessons.

Thank you for visiting! I have some 8.5x11 pages to share next time. I've been doing more of those for my smaller stories.

Blogging again...Finally!

Well, this was an unintentional break I took. Nothing disastrous, nothing monumental, just life taking over a bit and making it harder for me to scrapbook and post. So what have I been doing these past six months?

1. Reading. I set an ambitious reading goal for myself this year--42 books. I read about 15 this summer. Some of my favorites were The Hate U Give, Disclaimer, and Luckiest Girl Alive.
2. Traveling. We didn't do a big family vacation this summer, but we did do several small trips. My first was a big trip to Maine with Dominic, where we helped my parents sort through and cull things in their basement, garage, and RV. Last winter my father had a series of strokes, and though he is less incapacitated, my mother is now his full-time caregiver, so I wanted to make their lives a little easier to manage. This trip helped make that happen. Later in the summer we also went to Maplewood State Park in Minnesota, then later in the summer we went to Holland, Michigan, to spend time with Derick's family. We rounded out the summer with a state fair trip.
3. Participating in a summer musical. Derick and I spent many, many hours late last spring and this summer rehearsing and singing in the choir in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, put on by a local group called Bunce Backyard Productions. It was terrific. The music was wonderful, and we met some terrifically fun and talented people. That occupied a lot of our time this summer!

Some other, smaller things included recovering from injuries that are included in the category of "getting older"--a sprained back, microtears in the meniscus of my knee, and tennis elbow--and getting used to not having my work computer to do blogging and writing on (we changed devices this fall). Right now I am writing on our   V   E   R   Y      O   L   D       and   V     E    R    Y      S      L      O      W   Mac that we will be replacing later this year. Thank goodness.

When I logged into this computer I found several blog posts that I had started but not finished. Heh. I'll be getting back to posting those. (Confession: I thought I had posted them!) Until then, here's some pages I did for Simple Scrapper this very busy summer:

Thank you for visiting today! I hope to see you visit again as I get back into the groove of sharing what I create, even on a slow device.

Back from vacation

Sorry for the hiatus; I spent a wonderful two weeks driving to Maine and back with the family. We stayed on the UP, in Buffalo with family, then with my parents in Maine. A lot of my on-the-road photos look like this:

But mostly this:

We went camping in Acadia National Park, then drove back with an overnight at each of the first three places. This was a vacation where I used my phone to take LOTS of photos, and some of them are my favorites. Here's the shot that is the new wallpaper for my phone:

The only day of rain was our first day at Acadia, most of it while driving. Jordan Pond and the Bubbles were fogged out while we hiked around it, but it cleared when we finished, so I took this photo.

Our most exciting moment, next to hiking 8.5 miles round trip up and down Cadillac Mountain, was blowing a tire 30 miles from home on I35. Some Minnesota Nice good Samaritans stopped to help us put on the spare before it rained, and Tires Plus outfitted us the next day. And I'd like to give a shout out to my husband for reminding me to take a picture. Here it is:

 

(Just in case you wondered, if it sounds like a helicopter is following you on the highway, you've blown a tire. Pull over.)

I have spent the last two days downloading photos, making a mini album for Write Click Scrapbook, mailing a layout to Scrapbook Trends for publication, and making something for Elle's Studio. Once I make another couple things, I'll post some pages that I just about finished before vacation.

A page I made about Derick and I appeared on a post by Diane Payne at Write Click Scrapbook while I was gone; please visit some of these wonderful Summer dailies and get inspired!

Here's a post I wrote for The Scrap Review with my top five CHA picks; I wrote it while I briefly had a signal in Buffalo and Maine. (No signal in Acadia, though I would randomly acquire signals while hiking, alerted to them by text messages. I was so amazed at the random signal that I would stop and text just because!) I do plan on sharing the other 20 picks I had (heh), so if I get a chance tomorrow, I will.