Throwing in the Towel

Since shortly after Alana's birth I've been an avid scrapbooker. I have filled half a dozen books, to the brim, with scrapbook pages documenting her life. I scrapbooked everything. I was privileged enough to go to the scrapbook store at least once a month, to buy stacks of patterned paper and embellishments. I cannot even begin to estimate the amount of money I put into this hobby. If I'd saved that money instead of spending it I probably could've bought a new D-SLR camera years ago. A giant fancy one.

I invested money and countless hours in documenting every waking moment of my only child's life. Then things got different. First: I had a second baby. Less time for scrapbooking. Less money for developing pictures. Less money for monthly trips to the scrapbook store. Second: We bought a new car, so for the first time in almost 4 years we had a car payment. Again, less money for scrapbooking.

For awhile I managed to stay at the top of the mountain that is scrapbooking every event in the life of two children. I managed to scrape enough money together to develop pictures on a regular basis, although getting 3 copies of stuff to go in Ava's, Alana's and the family album was getting expensive. Then something big happened. Disneyland pictures 2010. There were so many that I didn't have money to get them all developed. I seriously didn't get them developed until this February, which was one year later.

The pictures piled up after that, accumulating on my hard drive. Easter. Mother's day. Fourth of July. Ava's birthday. Alana's birthday. I tried to get them developed in small amounts. I even used some Disney movie rewards points to send some to snapfish, but the shipping ended up costing me almost as much as just sending them to Walmart. So scrapbooking was pushed to the back of the closet.

With my tax refund I managed to get all my pics from 2010 developed. Well, most. I just developed pics from holidays and birthdays. The rest got mostly ignored. Then last week I hauled out my stuff to try and catch up. After sorting through my things and realizing I didn't have enough cardstock to tackle even half my to-do list, I came to a decision. A decision that I didn't even wrestle with. An easy decision. I'm throwing in the towel on scrapbooking. I quit.

When I thought about the last year, I realized I hadn't really missed scrapbooking. I had only been to the scrapbook store twice in all of 2010. I still took one-million pictures, but they weren't getting the attention they deserved. I can't scrapbook every single picture, so the extras were getting neglected.

In my decision to retire from scrapbooking, I've decided I'm going to continue to take one-million pictures. Hello people, I just got a brand new fancy camera and I take pictures every single day with it. I take more pictures of everyday activities than I ever have before. I still want to document my kids lives, just through pictures. I don't need all my fancy paper and scrapbook layouts to appreciate all my pictures. I didn't say I'm getting rid of all my paper though. I'll keep it to make the occasional mini album.

The future destination of all my pictures will be on my blog and in giant photo albums. This way every picture can get some attention, and I will spend way less money on paper. Not that I won't ever go back to the scrapbook store to buy some pretty paper once in a while. Or like once a year, when I have money.