Scrapbooks and Music

Yesterday I had the pleasure, or anxiety-attack, of entering into the scrapbooking world. I have been asking my friend Angie to help me for a while with making an Abigail album. Up until now, we have been very organized with pictures of Abigail on our computer, keeping folders for each month of her first two years, and then about every six months after that. I figured since she is coming up on that magical number three, it was about time I got those pictures off the computer and into an album of some sort. The problem with me and scrapbooking (or most other crafty projects) is this...I have delusions of grandeur. I get really excited about a project and go at it full-boar with the buying of the necessities and the organizing of the pictures. And that is where it stops. I have yet to make a wedding album for me and Paul. I have yet to finish the album I started for him when we were engaged of his mission trips to Indonesia and Morocco. He has been to Indonesia two more times since that album was started, which only adds to the mounting panic attack of never getting it finished. I have yet to finish the album I was going to make for my friends Allan and April as a wedding gift, and now they have been married a mere eight years.

I have not really been concerned with my lack of follow-through up to this point. I have been satisfied in my decision to be a non-scrapbooker. But now that all of these special pictures and moments have been accumulating for over six years, I feel that something has to be done about it. I don't want to take the chance of our hard-drive crashing and not recovering what was lost. I don't want to take the chance of forgetting. I already forget how Abigail looked as a newborn and how it felt to fall asleep with her in my arms. It's amazing the memories that are really just fleeting. I want to get them into some semblance of an organized book before those moments are too far gone, just pictures stuck in our My Documents folder.

Also, I have wanted to make a small album for the baby we lost. Nothing big or fancy. I can't even choose cute pink or blue paper to adorn it with. But I had three ultrasound pictures of a baby, and what are you to do with that? I need to remember these moments...the relief I felt when I saw that little blinking heartbeat on the screen, the life that was there, even if for a short time. I want to keep the cards, the blogs I have written, the Bible verses that ministered to my heart, the pictures of us next to our little tree.

So yesterday, Angie and I headed to Hobby Lobby, the mecca of all things crafty. Hobby Lobby is usually bad news for someone like me, a fair-weather crafter. Because I see ALL there is to choose from, and I then decide on about eight new crafts that I would like to start tomorrow. Luckily, that was why I had Angie...a true scrapbooker to reel me in and help me choose only the necessities. We picked a beautiful big album and paper for Abigail's first three years, complete with all the little girl sayings. My personal favorite? "Here we see ten little toes, neatly arranged in two little rows." Who thinks of that sugary goodness? We also chose one small black album with a black and white ribbon tying it together for the baby. It had a small picture cut-out on the front where I slipped one of the ultrasound pictures into. It looked perfect there, that grainy black and white picture of a little bean of a baby centered perfectly on the front of a tasteful little album.

Now shows my true colors. How much will I want to make this Abigail album? Will I work on it or stick it away in a closet until it is time for her wedding and I suddenly have to make 32 meaningful, tear-jerking gifts? That is another place where Angie is smart. She told me just to get the album and the paper. She has all of the decorative scissors, pens and markers, stickers, and hoo-ha that go into a fancy album. We are making a "play date" for the kids to play and me to bring this mess of memories over to her house. I guess I can't stand up a date, can I?

As for music, I have been twittering around the house this morning doing laundry, washing dishes, catching up on email, and such. Twittering makes it sound so much more fun than it really is. To make the jobs even more fun, I have been listening to music on my computer that I just adore. Dave Barnes, Matt Wertz, Ross King....all the guys with a guitar or a piano. That is the only music I really love. The less produced, the better. I just like a guy singing about his Jesus or his girlfriend. It makes the laundry go so much more smoothly, and the twittering to abound. :)