Why I scrapbook...

Have you ever stopped to consider why you do some of the things that you do.

I mean really considered it?

Each day is full of so many monotonous activities like washing the dishes, doing laundry, making the beds, picking up toys, etc.

It seems that everyday is the same and we are just going through the motions in order to make it through to the next day when we can go through the motions again.

As I've been pondering these things over the last few weeks getting ready for our second little girl to enter this world, I have really began questioning why I do some of the things that I do. This led my thoughts down the path to scrapbooking, a passion I hold so dear to my heart. 

My passion for scrapbooking began in high school. My mom would buy me the disposable cameras when I would have a special occasion such as a field trip or church event and I would take so many pictures I wouldn't know what to do with them all. We would get them printed and I would immediately stick them in a photo album and stick some on my bulletin board to be admired by all.  Around 9th grade I was introduced to the art of combining the pictures with pretty paper and putting it all together with fun stickers. I'm not really sure how I first heard about scrapbooking, or whether the idea just came to me one night while sitting at home looking through my pictures, but before I knew it I was creating scrapbook albums for mission trips, and for fun trips to concerts. It didn't matter to me at the time if I was using the latest technique or the newest supplies because a.) I didn't know such things existed and b.) I was having fun documenting memories and stories and there wasn't any pressure to make it perfect. 

*These were the days of huge color blocking, flat, speech bubble stickers that said things like "I'm so awesome!" and letter stencils.*

Fast forward a few years and I still get a joy out of putting those pictures and pretty papers together on a page and sticking them in an album. My techniques have definitely changed, and with the plethora of internet inspiration that we have right at our finger tips there is an added sense of pressure to create the perfect page, but at the end of the day my job is still the same: document the memories and capture the story.

You see, my job in my house is a big one. It goes beyond making sure the laundry gets put away and the floors stay swept. It's more than paying the bills and getting everyone where they need to be. My biggest job in my family is that of "memory keeper".

No one else in my house, at this time, spends any time writing down our story. I am the picture-taker, the blogger, the story teller. I am the one who has the responsibility of preserving what our days look like right now, so that 40 years from now our daughters can look back and see how we lived and what we were doing in 2013, and why we were doing it. I can choose to do this anyway I want. I can take picture and put them in albums and stick them on a shelf. Our memories are documented and there for everyone to see, and that is amazing. OR I can go one step further and take those pictures, put them on a page and tell a story behind the picture. How we were feeling, what we were doing, and why. 

For example:

think about some of the oldest family photos you have, and I mean old! We're talking black and white here (before we could edit them to be that way). Wouldn't you love to know why your great grandpa was surrounded by all of his brothers and sisters standing in front of a tree? Was it a birthday celebration? Did someone have a baby and everyone was gathered together for that? What is the story behind the picture? 

Our lives are full of stories that will be forgotten as soon as we are gone. It's up to us to take those stories and make them known.

This is why I scrapbook.

This is why I take my job as memory-keeper seriously.

Why do you scrapbook?