Done & Documented: September & October

So, in my last report, I had finished 2009 totally & completely, an absolutely amazing feat for myself.  So proud yet, it brought to the forefront of my mind a couple of issues with that current style of memory keeping.  First, 8 4" thick 12x12 albums for each & every year of our lives? HUH?! who has room for that??? Definitely not us in a time when we are getting serious about downsizing our house and 'things'. Second, without children of our own to hand things down to automatically, where will these monstrosities go when I am gone? Truthfully, this one bothers me, so much less than the first as I am truly doing 99% of them for me in the moment. I use scrapping as therapy, as my creative outlet, as my me-time, girl-time, bonding time with my mom, Grandma & aunts. Occasionally, I use it to work through some issues, some feelings, and document that not everything is truly as it looks. On that other 1% I use them to send messages to people in my life unsure if they will ever see them or know how I feel, but I feel better getting it all down on paper & put in the stack to someday get put in a book. :)

So when I pulled fresh photos out to scrap, I had an all together different thought process. I knew I needed to cut the pages down in each chapter: 6 pages=3 layouts is going to be my cap for the majority of chapters from here on out. Many are falling in at 2 or 4 pages even.  This is freeing up A LOT of printed photos to hand off to friends & family for their books or trash, whatever they deem necessary.  The best part, I am doing it all guilt free. I am working hard to get the important stories told in those few pages & oddly, not even struggling most of the time.  Come to find out, I am much more of a photographer than a story teller, but I am learning to combine the two. Many less 'here we are at the lake again', '4th of July parade 2013', or 'kids at Christmas' pages more 'this summer at the lake we..... ' & 'a change in the parade this year was.....' and 'this year for Christmas the kids got/did/wanted.....'  all of them with a valid story to tell rather than just fun photos. I am also using Picasa to create collages then printing them in 8x10 or 5x7 to be able to include many more photos when they are needed but still wanting to keep the scrapped page tally down.

Since instituting these changes, I have been on a roll!! I have scrapped so many pages, I have lost track of a count & even quit photographing them all.  In fact, looking back, I haven't photographed any since the beginning of October, but here are some favorites from September & October:

 these are from 2 of the 3 birthday parties I scrapped from January & February 2013.  I have since moved over to 2010 and have scrapped a WiiFest gathering at our house, a family 4th of July dinner, Easter, a road trip to visit an aunt, 2 kids' birthdays & a brother's surprise birthday party. SERIOUSLY this rocks my scrapping world!  I have 2 Christmas celebrations, Christmas program, Father's Day gathering, graduation reception(which may already be scrapped), the January snow (there was a lot of it), adding Sammy to our family as a puppy, and some lake pictures to scrap. That will complete the year! That's amazing to me. My current goal is to finish the 4 pages of Father's Day I have on my desk-less about the holiday & more stories about the pictures. then I will probably take a break from 12x12s & 2010 to work up & do the December Daily I blogged about last week. I might just be sure to have the right photos in the 2010 basket instead of the basket that holds all of the photos that need scrapped, so that in January when I am ready to get back to big pages, I can transition easily.

That said, I never want to be caught up. I never want to be with out something to scrap. I simply want to be less years behind :) maybe some day being able to scrap the current year would be fun.

you can see my January, February, March, April, May, June, July, & August  reports here.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Done and documented is series of monthly posts that highlights Jess's progress completing unfinished travel 
albums from years past. I will be following along by doing my December Daily 2013-CHECK, then plan to finish 2009 (2 chapters)-CHECK & start a new year. Feel free to play along.