Grandma's Brag Book

So, I'm a terrible daughter-in-law, and didn't get anything sent to my in-laws for Christmas.  BUT, I hopefully redeemed myself by sending out a few gifts to them for Valentine's Day {keeping fingers crossed!}.

Part of that gift was this Brag Book for my Mother-in-law.

I filled it with pictures of my kids, and of our little family.  My Mother-in-law loved it!

If you'd like to make one of your own, the tutorial for the Brag Book can be found HERE.

Accordion Albums

I've been itching to do some paper crafting for a few weeks now, but haven't been able to find the time or the inspiration. Until I saw THESE cute Accordion Albums at eighteen25. I put them on my "To Do" list, not knowing when I'd be able to get around to making them (May is a busy month!). Luckily, it didn't take me too long to find the time to make a few!

The colors in this picture are off for some reason....but you get the idea!

I'm trying to come up with some fun projects for my girls to do during the summer, and this one is perfect! If you have any other ideas for projects, please share!!

I'm linking to these parties:

You're So Crafty Monday @Miss Crafty Pants
Hoo's Got Talent @Night Owl Crafting
Sugar & Spice and Everything Nice @seven-thirty-three
Whatever Goes Wednesday @Someday Crafts
It's Stinkin' Cute Craft Thursday @It's Sew Stinkin' Cute

January 2009 Scrapbook Pages

I debated on whether or not to share the scrapbook pages I've been working on for my kids. The thing that scares me about it is not having any control over the pictures once they've been posted. I remember being sick a few summers ago when I read some mean comments left on someone's blog regarding her kids. Really cruel comments attacking the way one of her daughter's looked. That scared me. I decided then and there that I would never post my kids' pictures because I didn't want something like that happening to me.

With that said, I decided to go ahead and share these pages. I'm more of a visual person, so trying to explain what I'm doing without showing examples would be a mess!! Plus, I trust that we're friends....so no mean comments will be made about my kids. If you don't like my pages, that's a different story!

I am YEARS behind on my kids' scrapbooks. It has been a bit overwhelming for me, so I just didn't do anything about it. Until now. I've come up with a plan that will help me get 'caught up' without being overwhelming and that won't take forever to do! This may not be new to some of you, but it's not the way I've scrapbooked in the past....so it's new to me!

Instead of scrapbooking by event, I am scrapbooking by MONTH. For each month, I do a 2-page spread. Some months have lots of pictures, and some months don't have very many. And another new concept I'm adopting is this: You don't have to scrapbook EVERY single picture you take!! I just pick the best pictures for each month, trying to cover all the events of that month. Am I making any sense?! Here are my kids' January 2009 scrapbook pages to give you an example of what I'm talking about:

I only had 4 pictures for "January" for my 2nd daughter, so her 2-page spread is for January and February.

Another thing that is helping me is keeping the pages simple!! With 5 kids to scrapbook for, I don't have time to spend on all the frilly details! True, they do add a lot to the pages, but I'm more of a simple girl!


I was able to get January-August 2009 pages done for all 5 of my kids in 5 days. Not bad!! The best part is that I'm excited to scrapbook again!! It doesn't seem like an overwhelming, never-ending project anymore.

How about you? How do you keep 'caught up' with your scrapbooks?