I just love to scrapbook!!

I made this layout for Bob the other night. It is one I had planned for the retreat but did not get to it. I "shopped" in the scrapbook room and found this great pack of papers and embellishments. I just love brown these days. It seems every layout I just LOVE has brown on it somewhere. I used core'dinations chocolate paper and used my distressing tool on the edges of the mats. Just love it!! Bob was so thrilled when he saw it. This was a great trip and he loved that I scrapbooked the memories for him!!

I guess the retreat got me fired up again. I was able to do several pages and it brought back memories of why I chose this hobby in the first place. I always did some sort of craft, from oil painting, to cross-stitch, to any kind of artsy project. When I discovered scrapbooking, I put all those other things away and narrowed my focus on it. I read everything I could get my hands on about scrapbooking, searched the internet for ideas and techniques, and practiced my skills with the computer and  learned photo editing and word processing. I purchased all the tools and equipment to make these projects professional and worthy of preservation. I constantly thought of projects and pages I wanted to create. Sorting through  my photos brought back wonderful memories of my childhood and then of my marriage and my children's lives. I wanted to preserve all these memories with photos and journaling to share them with future generations. That is why I started scrapbooking.  When I began teaching classes I wanted to share this fun hobby with my friends and help them be able to preserve their memories also. The problem is that they have gotten their pictures scrapbooked and I have not. All those pages, ideas and projects are still floating in my head and my photos are still in the boxes. 

As you know my mother will be getting out of the nursing home in March. I plan to go and spend several weeks with her. I would like to change our class schedule. At the end of February I will no longer offer classes on a weekly basis. I plan to have an all day or a two day retreat type event every month or so. I have been researching how others do this and I think it would be great!! You know how much more you can get done in a long span of time as opposed to getting going and then having to stop when class ends. So be thinking of things you would like to work on and I will be working on  our schedule. Probably the first "retreat will be in May. I will have some time off this summer and we can do a couple during the summer. 


masao kitamuraI