Junk, Treasure, and Scrapaholics!

Wow, has it really been a whole week since my last blog! I can't believe how this past week has just flown by. We have been having unbelievably good weather here and my husband had this past week off from work so we took advantage of the weather and did some major cleanup around the outside of the house. We managed to clean out 20 years worth of 'junk' from our shed. We actually have room on the shelves and can easily access our bikes now, which is fabulous now the weather is good enough for a bike ride. Unfortunately, I didn't find any 'family treasures' hidden away -- nothing but a truck load for the dump and a truck load for the thrift shop. Still, maybe someone will pick up something at the thrift shop and count it treasure. You know what they say, "One man's junk is another man's treasure'.

Needless to say I didn't get any genealogical work done this week but I did get some scrapbooking done today. Today I went to my first scrapaholics crop. Scrapaholics is a meetup group I recently joined made up of - you guessed it - Scrapaholics!! They have a monthly crop meetup and also do swaps. It was great, I did the Birthday Card and Ribbon Swaps this month so I now have 12 yards of different ribbon and 12 wonderfully made Birthday Cards - thank you everyone! I also got a great start on a wedding album I'm making for a friend. Maybe these will become a family treasure one day for her descendants. I've posted a few pictures below.

Oh, I did also manage to find time to go to a local scrapbook store that sadly is closing it's doors in a few weeks. They have everything on sale so I thought I would take a look. I picked up another great book. (Did I mention I love books and magazines ;o)!). It's called Modern Memory Keeper: A New Approach to Scrapbooking Your Family Legacy by Ronee Parsons. We must have been cast from the same mold because her approach to scrapbooking her heritage is the same as mine. Her introduction says "Long gone are the days of accenting precious heritage photos with bland papers and embellishments. It's time to shake things up by honoring your family's life and times with a colorful new energy." Although I love the muted tones of heritage colors I have long believed that the colors of today should also be used in our albums. I like to mix things up and I let the photos decide how. Sometimes those old victorian posed photos call for a traditional style layout with muted heritage colors but sometimes using some of todays brighter colors and fabulous paper choices that we have can really bring out the photo. Especially those ones of the unsmiling, prim, older victorian people - you know the ones I mean. It's amazing what a little color can do to add some personality to these pictures. Try it sometime and you'll see what I mean. As Ronee says "Toss out the rules of heritage scrapbooking and embrace a new beginning."

Here are some of the pages (8'x8') that I did today. Thanks for stopping by.