Scrappy Don't

(Did you get the Scooby Doo reference there?)

I am hesitant to admit this. I am pretty crafty. I have quilted. I have embroidered. I have even decoupaged. However, scrapbooking scares the daylights out of me.

Not old school scrapbooks. My parents did what was, at the time, quite creative scrapbooking. Little corners on the pictures, captions, hand-drawn decorations. I love those old scrapbooks. Love them.

Back in the day I even made a scrapbook of the beginning of my relationship with Mike - with captions and hand-drawn decorations. Granted, it ends with the ultrasound photo of Sprout. But I did it.

But scrapbooking as a full-fledged, capital C, C-R-A-F-T...scary stuff. The aisles of stickers, and papers, and cutting devices. The shows devoted to "techniques". The home parties. The planning. The execution. Heeby jeebies...

Don't get me wrong - the finished products are quite impressive. But the idea of making any kind of dent in the accumulated history of my family with that kind of attention to detail and artistry...would make me want to stop doing things worthy of being photographed!

We have 16 photo books. The ones with the little plastic sleeves for the photos. I have all of the photos in these books (except for the past few months...which are piled up on my desk). They are in chronological order (at least mostly) and there are Post-its in there marking the date and some brief explanation of where we are/what we are doing.

This is all I can pull off.

This is partially because I can't bring myself to weed through the photos to edit down to just the best ones. I love them all. Every goofy face and blurry action shot. Every picture where my #$%^&* digital camera took a shot 4 seconds AFTER something good happened. Love them.

The other part of the issue is the performance anxiety I would have working my way through all of the options now available for how to present the pictures. Tags and ribbons and die-cuts and papers and buttons and stickers and rub-ons and....whew...I am getting light headed.

I did put together an excellent book of our trip to Italy last summer. I used the software from MyPublisher.com and the result was completely awesome. I gathered the photos from my parents and my brother and my husband and mixed in my own. Dragged and dropped and cropped and zoomed until the pictures were telling the whole story. Picked templates that fit the pictures (plain black and white). Added captions. And had the whole thing printed in a hard-backed book. It was actually fun and not at all intimidating.

I don't think I would do it for all of our pictures - that might be a little daunting. But for a special trip or occasion, I would absolutely do it again.

No stickers required.