Weekend Warrior

If we are close enough friends, I've let you see my inner geekdom, you know I am a scrapbooker.  I started when Philip was born.  I would do pages every year as a way to document his life in photos.  Every year I work to get photos and put together pages for him.  As he gets older, it gets harder to get him to pose for photos and now that he is a teen, I am not privy to his daily activities but I made a commitment 17 years ago to document and work and glue and cut.  I promised myself I would keep going until he graduates high school.

Fast forward to last year and Nola suggested I start working on pages for me.  I do lots of fun stuff and none of it was documented.  As I was running out of "Philip pages", I decided she was right and I should start so I did.

On  top of that, she got me interested in an online scrapbooking group.  Actually the leader of the site lives in Utah up towards Ogden.  I've never met her though.  These ladies are like friends that you never meet.  We "talk" almost daily and you can really get to know someone well that way.  I've shared real mail with a few of them and I won't  mention names but some of them are my favorites.  We not only share ideas for meals or house projects but also crafting ideas and woman survival strategies.

Every other month, we have what they call a Weekend Warrior class.  This is where over the weekend, she releases two sketches (patterns) daily for scrapbook pages that you copy using your own scrapbook supplies and photos. Then you take a photo of your pages and share them with the group.  We support each other, share ideas, and  we all get our scrapbooking pages done.  Well this weekend is another Weekend Warrior weekend.  So I've been heading down to the basement to work on my pages.  I've been doing a little shopping so I have supplies.  I also set up my cell phone on my favorite Pandora station.  I sit down there and search through my.....stuff....to come up with a respectable version of  each sketch.  This has changed the way I scrapbook significantly.  Two years ago, I would have never dreamed of doing detailed pages or spending more than 15 minutes putting a page together.  But now I labor (one page took over 2 hours yesterday) over them trying to get the details just so.  I search for paper that goes together and embellishment (buttons, crystals, do dads, etc) to supplement the design.  I am under no fallacy that my pages are anything like these other women (some are professional scrapbookers that have been published!) but I am enjoying the hobby and happy to see my books come together. 

I thought you might be interested in some of the pages I've done.

Philip and Tiffany at Junior Prom

Sushi making class with my girlfriends in May.

 

Mary and I when I bought my new car in April.  Isn't this such a frilly
girl page for something so masculine as buying a car?  It even has a lace doily!

New Years Eve.  My friends coaxed me out of the house. 
I was so glad to get out and realized these people really do love and care about me.

My family.  Sorry about the glare on the lower embellishment.

These are my high school friends.  We got together for brunch
before one of them moved to Mississippi.  This one is funny
 because Nola gave me a bunch of "borders" (borders are coordinated
elements to use as part of a scrapbook page) a few years ago.
 This is one that she actually put together.  I added the birds
and butterflies.  I can't wait until she sees it in my class posting tomorrow.
She will be surprised to see her work used.

 

So now you are part of my inner circle regardless if you wanted to be or not.  Please don't tell anyone my secret hobby because it is not sexy and it is not what the cool kids are doing.  Haha.  But it is a great creative release for me and gives me something productive to do on a hot summer or cold winter weekend.