Why haven't I been scrapbooking?

I've been thinking a lot about why I haven't been scrapbooking much, or paper crafting in general either. A few years ago I was averaging several hundred pages a year. Then life got really, really busy - selling our condo, moving into my sister's basement while we built our new house, working on the new house, moving into the new house, unpacking, having a friend live in my craft room for a few months, babysitting my nephew last year. The list goes on, even leaving off just the normal day to day stuff of homeschooling our boys and running a household. Yet, I used to scrapbook all the time. I like it enough that we set aside a whole room in our new house for me, painting it the color I wanted, setting up the closet so it was more usable for storage and everything. So why am I usually lucky if I get in there once a week to work on anything? For crying out loud, I have stamps I bought a month ago that I haven't even done anything with, not even adding the picture to my stamp index. Let's be really realistic here. I don't know that I've done anything in my scrapbook room since I finished the layout a day challenge at the end of January. I did a few pages the beginning of February, but that was in the living room at the birthday crop I threw myself.

As I read over an organizing article on Two Peas in a bucket (this one), it gave me an idea of why I'm not scrapbooking. The first reason is really, truly simple. I haven't printed pictures since around June 2006, except the pictures of us building our house. The pictures I have left are the ones that I wasn't really inspired to scrapbook in the first place, ones that are left over from when I was scrapping the other groups I got printed at the same time and I picked the other groups first because I didn't know what to do with these ones. I've decided I'm going to pick a sketch for each group and just follow the sketch, using ribbon or buttons or some generic embellishment instead of trying to perfectly match the theme of the pictures with the embellishments. And I set aside $50 to get new pictures printed. It'll probably just barely put a dent in what I have to print, but it'll get me new pictures, up-to-date pictures, and hopefully that will help me be motivated to scrap also.

The second reason, the main reason, is that I haven't found a way to organize my stuff that makes sense to how I scrapbook now. That's the insight I got from reading the Two Peas article. I have 3 paper sticker binders that I have a bunch of stuff in. I used to love them, I used them all the time and they were so great. Now though, I don't even remember to look in them half the time. I was really drawn to the rooms in the article that had stuff organized in bins and boxes, jars and baskets. I don't know why that is so appealing to me, but I think, over the years, my style has changed and with it, my organizing needs have evolved too. I think I'm beginning to be more visually oriented than I used to be. I'm also moving more from stickers and diecuts to stamps and textiles. I think I need to do another purge of my scrapbook stuff, and find new ways to organize what I have left. I think doing that will draw me to my scrapbook room more often. And it'll make it so my desk is hopefully cleaner : ). My desk, right now, has so much stuff piled all over it that it's hard to get motivated to even start because I have to move stuff to even make room for two pieces of paper.

Anyway, just my thoughts for today. I'm going to go exercise and then play around in my scrapbook room, seeing if I can organize it a bit better, get things to the point I can play a little today.

Danielle

Our Cruise

The cruise we went on was great. It was really nice to get away from everything (our kids stayed with their Grandma), not have to worry about much of anything. The Friday before we left, we discovered that the cruise line (Carnival) had upgraded us to a balcony room. The life boat cut off part of our view, but that was fine. We got a great deal on the cruise, and being upgrade to a balcony room, even a partially obstructed balcony room, was just icing on the cake. We sailed on the Carnival Pride. It was a beautiful ship.

We went on a Mexican Riviera cruise for 7 days. We started in Long Beach, California and had ports of call in Porto Viarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas. My favorite was Mazatlan. We spent 45 minutes listening to a time share presentation (didn't buy one), and for that investment of time, we got $50 per couple, a liter bottle of either Tequila or Kahlua (we took the Kahlua), and all the drinks and food we could consume (which was a lot, we averaged four drinks for each of the four of us, and I'm sure these drinks were at least $5 a piece if we would have paid for them). We also got to enjoy their private beach and enjoy the private resort. It was definitely my favorite port!

I had never been on a cruise before. I loved that the price of the cruise included everything except alcohol and soft drinks. I loved going to the nice restaurant for every meal we were on the ship. Dining on wonderful food that I normally either don't have the money to buy or don't take the time to prepare here at home.

I had really needed an adult only vacation and this one was great. Not that I didn't enjoy going to Disneyland with our boys last October, but sometimes it's nice to just get away and enjoy yourself without the pressures of parenthood.

Me enjoying a glass of wine on our friend's balcony as we pull out of the Long Beach port.

A view from our friend's balcony as we pull out of the Long Beach port.

Most nights that we came back to the room our steward had left us an animal made out of towels to enjoy. This elephant was our first animal.

This is my husband playing poker at the new type of table the ship had. Instead of a dealer it was basically a computer controlled game. The shared cards for Texas Hold'em were displayed on the center of the table and each player had their own screen that was touch activated. You'd cup your hands around your cards and touch the screen and it'd show you what your cards were. Definitely new and interesting.

Danielle