Blog, scrapbooking, quilting....

I want to thank Shanna for helping me get this blog put together. I was wanting to do one, but didn't really have the time to sit down and start it from scratch not having a clue where to start. I had several people send me information about it all, but I still didn't read the information. Well, Shanna came over to help me one evening. And after that I was hooked. She sat with me for a couple of hours late one night and here I am now. It's been fun.

I am a journaler by nature anyway. I tell all of my friends that when I am trying to get them to journal in their scrapbooks instead of just putting pictures in them. Some just look at me cross-eyed when I say that. But I really do think it is important to document. I know there are a lot of things I vaguely remember as a child or there are things that my mom would tell me and I would just look at her like she was nuts.

That is how I managed to get into the memory albums. Not just scrapbooking, but albums. Something to document everything, but not necessarily all of the "scrapbooking fluff". I want simple and done. I don't care about all of the decorations. You will notice most of my albums have quite a bit of journaling. But you know what? My kids look at these albums constantly and when they are able to read the words, they won't forget. There is a lot of information in my albums. I have one for our annual family album, kids sports albums, kids medical albums, kids school albums, my Creative Memories album, pet album (I am always picking up animals from somewhere), etc. Now I am making heritage books. With this, I am scanning thousands of old photos from both sides of our families, talking to the grandparents and getting tons of valuable information from them. In the end there will be a life story of the grandparent that everyone can enjoy. It is printed and bound and delivered to me. If anyone else wants one, they just order it and I don't have to make a second one. They look just like you went to a bookstore and got a book all about a family member. They are beautiful. I also have 2 wedding ones going. They start from the day the couple met to the end of the honeymoon. Again, anyone can have one. I am so hooked!

Mom and I are also making quilts. We take classes here and there for something new. But I have a ton of fabric and tons of patterns to make nearly anything. So I piece the quilt and now Mom quilts it on her longarm machine. She has been much busier than when she first started. But it's fun. Now the retreats I go on are quilting and/or scrapbooking. This is one of those things that I feel like you can hand down (once again).