I've started a regular series of Sunday blog posts filed under the title of "Scrappy Sunday" and now I think I will try another one out for size. How about "Memory Monday"? Now, I won't go naming every day of the week, I just can't handle that kind of responsibility! lol - but it is kind of fun to have a few regular features here on the blog. After 3+ years of blogging about scrapbooking, it is fun for me to shake things up a bit and try out some new ideas. I hope it's fun for you also!
So what will Memory Monday be? I guess it could be a lot of things, but mostly I just hope it will be something to inspire us all to dig up some of our past memories and record them in some way. That could be a scrapbook page, a blog entry, or even a phone call to tell a good friend about the memory you are thinking about. I hope you will put your memories into a written form of some sort. Of course, it's even more meaningful if you can add a few pictures.
Today's Memory Monday challenge: Take an old photo and journal about it like it was taken today. Don't worry that you don't have all the details written down! Search your memory and do the best you can to fill in the details.
Today I'm thinking about when my kids were babies. They are 12 and 15 right now so it's been a long time since I had any little ones crawling around here. The sad thing is that when they were so young, I was overwhelmed and poor (not too uncommon for parents of young children), so I didn't take as many pictures as I should have. I rarely had their pictures professionally taken. I also had a pretty crappy camera. Although, in my defense, there weren't digital cameras then, and we certainly didn't have blogs and digital scrapbooking. In fact, paper scrapbooking was just barely starting up back then. But, I digress.... it's not about the technology. It was more about taking the time to write down as much as I should have. More about not pulling the camera out as much as I should have. It does me no good to lament these things now, except that maybe I can inspire some of the young parents out there to go take some snapshots of your little ones.
That was then and this is now and while I won't dwell on my mistakes of the past, I will do my best to fix them now. I pulled out this old photo of my daughter when she was only 9 months old. The picture needed some cleaning up in photoshop and it isn't a well lit or even totally in focus picture, but it's a treasure to me.
I decided to make a page with it. Even more importantly, I decided to write about this photo. I didn't get caught up in the fact that this photo was taken almost 12 years ago, I just wrote what I could about it. I will copy my journaling below for you to read.
and I used Jess Gordon's new So Flirty kit which is just so pretty and feminine!
and if you buy the kit right now you get a pack of fancy leaves for free! You can see all the details on Jess' blog right here.
Cookie Exchange Template (Teresa) from Sweet Shoppe Designs (freebie)
Constantia font
Here's my journaling:
At 9 months you are a busy little girl. You love to crawl throughout the house and you are pretty speedy. You always have to be able to see someone and you hate to be left alone. Your favorite person to follow is Alex. I should be taking more pictures of you, but it seems like the everyday challenge of raising a 3 year old (who has autism), and a busy little baby keeps me from the camera more than it should. When I see photos like this though, I vow to take more. You are such a little beauty and your personality just shines whenever you smile. I love you little lady!
Maybe I would have written more if I had journaled this memory 12 years ago? Maybe not. Doesn't matter now. What matters is that I have taken this memory and put it into words. I made a keepsake for my daughter and I got to relive a sweet moment thinking about her cute little baby legs crawling on my old bathroom floor. She was playing peek-a-boo with me when I took this photo.
Dig up an old memory and do something wonderful with it!
