Remember when I used to be a scrapbooker? I was even on the cover of a magazine once. This was back in the day when I only had one child who took regular naps, and I was guaranteed a few quiet hours all to myself each day. You can pretty much trace the decline of my scrapbooking to Ella giving up her nap and Claire being born (the two events were fairly simultaneous).
Although I may not be creating layouts anymore, and for the very first time ever I didn't even design my own Christmas card this year, I still feel like a scrapbooker at heart. I maintain close friendships with many people I met through this hobby, and I still follow the blogs of several well-known scrapbookers (like Cathy, Ali & Becky). People may think scrapbooking is just about cutting and pasting photos on a page, whether it be with paper or digitally on the computer, but what it's really about for me is telling stories.
I have followed Ali Edwards' "One Little Word" concept for the past few years, but have never chosen a word for myself. This year, the word story seemed to force itself upon me. I felt the word creeping in as I chose memory books for each of my parents for Christmas. I also heard the word in the back of my head as I decided to start taking a photo every day again in 2011 (here are links to my previous photo a day projects: 2008 & 2009). For me this process isn't so much about the daily photos themselves, although I cherish them, but mostly about using those photos as a vehicle to tell the everyday stories that make up our lives. I've been thinking a lot about this word on other levels too. I'm interested to see where it takes me in the coming year.
I haven't decided how I'm going to share my daily photos online this year, whether it be through the Photo a Day blog that I used in 2009 or some other method, but I do know that in addition to an online photo album I want something tangible as well. Something that my girls can sit with, look at, and possibly even contribute to themselves. I have had the best intentions of somehow printing out all of the photos and captions that I have stored up on my hard drive from 2008 and 2009, but it hasn't happened. So this year I am planning to use Becky Higgins' Project Life kit so that my own family can actually benefit from this process as well.
Here I go, diving headfirst into a year of story.
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