This blog was created in part to document my progress as I organize family memorabilia- lots and lots of family memorabilia. But, I’ve deviated just a bit from that as I’ve found all kinds of other fun stuff to share, like earrings that were in style 30 years ago, and a shoe box from 50 or so years ago (post on this coming soon). The scrapbooking project is still very much in progress and will be for some months to come.

Right now, I am working with photographs and other items dating from the time of the births of my children (the older one is 15, the younger is 11) up until now. I am working with a traditional format, nothing digital yet, as I have many photographs already printed and purchased, as well as things like old birthday party invitations, school play and band concert programs, and certificates that the kids want to save, but not necessarily to frame.

As I go along, I am taking photos of photos and other items, and those are being stored digitally. Taking pictures of pictures seems to work better for me than scanning, and the quality of cellphone cameras has increased dramatically. Having said that, there are probably a few things that will look better if they are scanned. I plan to experiment with digital scrapbooking as we (my husband, kids, and I) have many taken many recent pictures with our phones, iPods, and iPads that haven’t yet been made into photographs. Advice from experienced digital scrapbookers is most welcome.

I keep things very uniform, and this makes things much easier for me. All my albums are 12″ by 12″, and they are postbound albums.  Ring binder albums seem to be the big sellers now, and I see more of them than postbound albums as I peruse the craft stores, but the album pages I buy will work for either type

My children’s baby book albums are strap hinge albums, which were the big sellers back in the day.  I found the straps difficult to work with and are just as glad they have fallen out of favor.  In recent weeks, I have found filler pages for strap hinge albums as there are several pages I’d like to add to each of the baby books.

Glue dots are my favorite form of adhesive.  I’ve tried different methods through the years and the glue dots are the easiest, at least for me.  If I decide to move pictures around once they’ve been placed on a page, the dots are definitely more forgiving.

Sometime in the next few days, I’ll be making a visit to the craft store for more supplies.  I’m rapidly running out of filler pages and need a some other supplies as well.  I also want to check out some newer (at least to me) scrapbooking systems that may make my work less time consuming.  I’ll let you know what I find.