~A Hobby To Be Passionate About~

I love scrapbooking!  If there is a hobby to be passionate about, it would be scrapbooking.  I love to take pictures and have boxes and boxes of them to prove it.  I think I inherited it from my mother.  She took lots and lots of pictures.

In fact, right after I was born, I think she took a picture of me every week until I was about 23 weeks of age.  Why she stopped at that particular time, I don't really know.  But she did continue taking lots and lots of pictures.

Was I her first born child, you ask?  Well, yes I was, as a matter of fact!  In the early years, my mother had the wherewithal to at least write (on the back of the photo) who was in the picture, how old the person was and sometimes what the picture was about or where it was taken.  Yes, I was very fortunate.

Over time, life got in the way and she quit her 'mini journaling' for the most part and she died before I could ask her about the rest of the pictures.  Several years ago, I was introduced to a creative way to scrapbook and chronicle all those pictures...all the ones that she took and all those that I had been taking. Lots and lots of boxes of pictures!

  In those boxes were my family's history; who we were, where we came from, what we had done, etc. etc.  Pictures with no story, most with no notations and no sense of order. I wasn't quite as smart as my Mom and my children would be left with that if I didn't do something about it.

The importance of chronicling those photos; putting them in some sense of order, telling stories and storing them in a safe fashion became very real to me and scrapbooking became my passion.  I became a consultant for C***** M***** and shared the importance of scrapbooking to others while creating my own.

 It became fun to also chronicle places we had been, the things we had done.  It became fun to save little souvenirs to put in the scrapbooks.

This is where the scrapbooks are stored.  Having them available to be pulled out and looked out time and time again; hearing "oh, I forgot about this" or "oh, do you remember when..." or "Mom, your clothes looked so funny back then!"  All things that make my heart swell knowing I am doing the right thing.

  But, unfortunately, I'm not anywhere near done putting those books together!  For about eight years or so, I would work on them from time to time and then life got in the way.

This is my "Scrapbook Closet" located in my Sewing/Craft and Office room.  As you can see, I've got a ways to go.  I've got lots and lots of digital photos on my computer to work with!!!  Fortunately, I've also got a stash of new scrapbooks and pages to use.  I've GOT to get back to work on this hobby...time is getting away from me and I'm not getting any younger!!

I've thought about incorporating some digital scrapbooking in with my traditional scrapbooking.  I had heard that it was alot faster.  Plus the embellishments and papers could be used time and time again.  A bit of a money saver in the long run.  So, I took the plunge and purchased a software program for digital scrapbooking, got totally lost and confused and gave up.

Well, recently, I was approached by My Memories, a company that offers digital software to be used for creating digital style scrapbooks, to try out and review their software program.  I was ecstatic!  A company that was willing to let me "try out" their software and help me with any problems or glitches!  Woohoo!!

Tomorrow, I will share with you what I did, how I feel about this digital scrapbooking and, more importantly, whether or not I like this particular program and what this company has to offer!! And guess what???  They are allowing me to give away one of their products!!!

This will be my very first giveaway!  What better way to get a new blog off and running?!?  But you have to wait until tomorrow.  All I will say is that I encourage you to invite everyone you know, who may be interested in digital scrapbooking, to read tomorrow's post.  Who knows?  They may want to enter the giveaway, too!

Until then, if you are not an avid scrapbooker, I hope that you will give it some thought and maybe you will become passionate about this hobby, too!!

Make a day of memories today ~

~Reminiscing~

That's me.  In 1971.  My senior picture...40 years ago.  Mercy!!  This weekend, the class that I would have graduated with, is having a reunion.  I had to move to another large city in the middle of my junior year and graduated from there.  Something about going back and looking for old friends that I grew up with and new friends that I found during my high school years, friends whom I lost contact with, friends whom I haven't seen or heard from in those 40 years and wondering which friends are no longer with us....it all draws me back.  I look forward to seeing them again

I met my classmates when I moved into the school district of William H. Harrison Elementary in the third grade in the large town of Oklahoma City.  Talk about classroom sizes...37 students in my class!!  For the life of me, I can't remember if there was another third grade class or not.  I'm sure there were, as I have it in my mind that there were two classes for each grade, K-6

My fourth-grade class consisted of another large class of students.  I remember being in an annex building that consisted of four classrooms.  During this year, our room faced out towards the basketball court not far from the entrance into the main building.  It was the only time I was in an annex room.

Each year it was always the same.  We pretty much knew who to expect in our two classes with an occasional surprise of someone having moved away or a new student moving in.  It was during my fifth grade year that President Kennedy was assassinated.  It was announced to us during class.  Even as a child, I remember feeling that this was definitely a sad time for our country.

In the sixth grade, our little family became closer, making and breaking friendships, going through childhood crushes and growing up.  This would be the last year that we would all be together in the same building.  Our seventh grade year would be spent in the extremely large high school with several thousand students where some friendships remained, some broken and some new ones were made.

This is me in my junior year when we moved to the big city of Tulsa. This is how my friends remembered me when I moved away. I remember I was the only junior who had a senior ring...in OKC, we were allowed to have them as juniors. :)   A lot of students thought that was pretty cool.  Being a new student in a large school wasn't easy.  I didn't have the ties with the students there and it just didn't feel the same.  But I made some friends...why wouldn't I in a school of several thousand??  And, I managed to enjoy my time there and made it through graduation.

So, here I am again as a senior.  Thankfully, I didn't wear the real beehive hairstyles that were popular during my school years!!  But they are coming back in a way, aren't they?  Maybe I should start wearing my hair like this again.  Had to sit there and park for a bit about the hair...hehe.

My class here in Tulsa had 429 students who graduated...not quite as large as the graduating class of students at John Marshall High School..  But my OKC school was always home to me.  My heart will always bring me back to where I grew up with my childhood friends   I just found out yesterday that my grade school closed its doors.  The high school that felt so large and intimidating when I first entered its doors is no longer open.  A very bittersweet thought knowing that we can never go back, walk down the halls and say "you remember when....?"  Sometimes, I have dreams about being in certain classrooms or down certain halls in that high school...strange, huh?  But there's something even stronger about the ties that we had with our childhood friends.  Was it because we were growing up together, still in the stages of innocence, in our cozy little school building where everything was the same year after year?  Maybe so.  I look forward to the activities of this weekend hoping that I recognize the faces of the people I see, sharing pictures, sharing memories, renewing friendships.  And then there's the thought...will they remember me? I plan to take lots of pictures and, I'm sure I'll have a story or two to share with you!


Have a great weekend ~