Scraptastic

I used to be a scrapbooker, which I’m sure conjures up a variety of assumptions on your part. It does for me, as I used to watch HGTV and I know how crazy those crafters can be. They have entire rooms filled with craft supplies! Oh the luxury!

*cough* Nancy Jean *cough*

I did not have a room in my house dedicated to scrapbooking, nor did I spend thousands of dollars on paper, tools, and accessories. I mostly bought cast off paper on clearance and slapped things together while I watched American Idol.

I don’t discriminate in my hackery, people. I do everything half-assed.

Every once in awhile we sit down to look through Ruthie’s 1st year baby book, which I scrapped. Notice the subculture language I used there? Scrapped? That means I made her babybook via scrapbooking. Crafters have all kinds of cool lingo like that. It’s pretty spectack.

Every time we go through Ruthie’s book, Thomas will say, “Okay, MINE NOW!” and I have to quickly think of a diversion like, “LET’S HAVE ICE CREAM!” or “HEY, WAS THAT AN EARTHQUAKE I JUST FELT?” or “THOMAS, I THINK YOUR BLANKIE’S ON FIRE!”

I was pregnant with Thomas when I started this blog, and my step father died right before he was born. I spent most of Thomas’ first year slipping in and out of grieving, post partum depression, and sleep deprivation. Writing became a soothing salve that stitched the holes of my sanity back together, and scrapbooking as a hobby fell to the back burner.

And besides, it was in no one’s best interest at that time that I play with sharp objects.

Seven years later, I bought a Groupon for Shutterfly with the intention of finally creating Thomas’ 1st year baby book. All his photos are digital anyway, so it made sense to make use of all these online scrapbooking-like tools.

Some things never change, though. For instance, I’m still a hack. I procrastinated this until the Groupon was about to expire, so it was put together with love around one in the morning.

No one ever accused me of being a perfectionist.

But the coolest part is, I get to over share my son’s first year like I over share everything else about my life. So here you go should you be interested… my son’s first year in pictures:

Click here to view this photo book larger

I should point out that my kids were fascinated by how nice everything looked in our house. Especially the deck. It reminded me that I’ve been saying for about six years that we need to re-seal the deck. It’s so bad now that I make my kids wear shoes so they don’t get slivers.

And the yard? Yeah, we used to have grass. In fact, recently my kids were picking up trash in a patch of grass in Belltown, which is in the middle of the city, and Ruthie said, “Our yard used to look like this. We used to have grass.”

My poor kids. They don’t have grass, but at least they have scrapbooks.