What is this?

This is YEARS of hard work.

This is one of my proudest moments.

This is not perfect.

This is boring for most of you.

This seemed like an insurmountable task just a few short years ago.

This shows that I have some kind of scrapbook for my entire life from Jr. High to now. I am caught up!

The reason that I am making such a big deal of this is because…

A few years after Josh and I got married, I started getting down on myself, and thought, “Well I guess I will just never have a scrapbook for High School, College, or the first few years of our married lives. Because I’m sure as soon as I start having kids, I will want to do their scrapbooks and not work on my high school stuff.” So I kind of gave up. I had a scrapbook from Jr. High, and had done a few pages of dances that I went to in High School. Then I did our wedding scrapbook (which was 50 12x12 pages-no wonder I was so behind.)

Then I did a scrapbook for Josh’s football career. (There’s a story for that too. I started getting really down about Utah State football, and I hated some of the things that I heard people saying about the team and the players, so I wanted to do a scrapbook so that our kids could know that Josh worked really hard, and that the Win/Loss column didn’t really show the whole story. So I had to do it quick, while I still had memories about the good stuff.)

I was able to throw a college scrapbook together really fast. But then I was burned out, and started on High School, but just didn't like how it was going etc.

Then, there was Blurb....

Which has changed my life. I think I will try a different Digital scrapbooking program now just to see the difference, but I like that I'm familiar with Blurb, and their backgrounds are cute but not too-super busy or "scrapbooky" looking.

Here are some pictures-which will probably go down in history as the least exciting pictures in all of blog history-because they are pictures of pictures. But I am just so proud. And hope that someone who reads this, will see for themselves that they too could have this joyous feeling of being caught up!! And it's kind of fun to see how my style and technology have changed just in the last 10 years.

This is my Jr. High book, which for the most part, I did in Jr. High and High School.

Every single one of those letters I traced with a stencil, and cut out. Then traced out the little holes (in the E's and A's) and glued them on top. I also cut the frames for the pictures out by hand (GASP).

High School

Another High School-thank goodness for Cricuts, eh?

College-(Never mind the boy that's in most of the pictures. I just liked how these pages turned out. And in my defense, he was my boyfriend for a little while-but one of my best friends for much longer.)

Wedding. When we got married I told myself that I would never scrapbook it, because I wanted it to be perfect and knew that it never would be. But I did. And it is anything but perfect. But it probably took the most blood, sweat and tears of any of them.

Josh's football scrapbook is probably my favorite of the "real" scrapbooks-and it's a good thing, because he's probably looked at it...once.

About a year ago, my friend told me about a really good deal that they were having on Walgreens.com. So I did this one-the first year of our marriage-in about a day. And I can't remember, but I think it cost $7. But that was when I finally realized that I could probably get caught up.

Their program was definitely not my favorite and there wasn't a ton of customizing that you could do, but for a first, it will be just fine.

2008: So now I'm going to try to do one a year, and I think that will probably be manageable, especially if I continue my blog.

This one came by FedEx today, and is what prompted this blog. I was telling Josh yesterday, that I can't believe how excited I am for my books to come in the mail. It's not like it's going to be much of a surprise-I've looked at it a billion times on the computer and when I get them, they will just sit in the basement for years to come. But I do get so excited. I submitted this book last week, and the next day started watching my front door. Hey, you never know. Maybe the Blurb company will decide to print my book in the middle of the night, and ship it in less than a day even though I paid for standard shipping.

And, of course, this is my favorite one of any. Maybe that's because the baby in it is so cute!!!

For anyone who is thinking about digital scrapbooking, and has done the "old-school" scrapbooking-here's my sales pitch.

It usually takes me about an hour to scrapbook one page-the old fashioned way. Which, if you think about my wedding scrapbook that was AT LEAST 50 hours (and I can tell you that it was so far over that it's sickening.) And, like I said, that entire 2007 book took me about a day and all the other ones, I worked at for an hour or 2 at night for a couple weeks-maybe. (However, it does make it easier when you keep up on a blog.)

The 8x10 book that I got today-cost $40 with shipping. Meili's that is 12x12 was about $80 and it has about 50 pages. So if you compare cost: digital vs. "old school" it's not even close. My wedding scrapbook and Meili's first year have about the same number of pictures in them. And I remember it cost us about $40 just to get all the pictures developed for our wedding. So then when you add in the cost of the book, pages, page protectors, glue, stickers, brads, etc. etc. it's a pretty expensive hobby.

The last added bonus is that if you look at that stack of books at the top-that's a lot of space that they are taking up on a bookshelf in our basement. So if I kept up with that, I don't know where I would store them all, and don't really want to store them on a bookshelf in case of a fire or flood. So the digital scrapbooks take up much less space.

(However, I do still have lots of scrapbook supplies and money invested in it, so I'm sure I will do a few more the "old school" way.)

Whew...I'm long-winded...

With all that being said, and in the spirit of full-disclosure, I should mention that my High School one isn't REALLY all done. I have like 10 pages left-but you have to give me a break because High School is 2 GIANT books for me.

Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, I will say that almost everyday I come across a picture or a ticket stub that I wish was in one of my scrapbooks, but it isn't, so I'm sure I will make a "MISCELLANEOUS CRAP I FOUND" scrapbook one day as well.

Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, I would like to mention that my Jr. High, High School, and College scrapbooks have next-to-nothing about my family in them which is kind of a big chunk of my life missing. So I will probably have to do a "FAMILY ONLY" scrapbook someday.

Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, I haven't scrapbooked any races that I've run, because I decided that no one will ever care about any of that besides me, so I am going to do a scrapbook all about running.

So, moral of the story, is that I am not even close to being caught up, but for today, this is a good feeling.