Friday, June 13, 2008

Confessions of an Ex-Scrapbooker #15

The dreaded job of unpacking has almost come to an end...yes, we're in our new house and all 7 of us made it too! That's an accomplishment in its self.

If you've ever moved you know how you get all the big important boxes put away and everything starts to find a home within the home and then there are those last few stragglers. The boxes that were kind of thrown together last minute...dirty spoon, pair of socks, the mess on top of the old fridge, mail...yeah, you know what I'm talking about. You walk by those boxes about 15 times trying to find something else to do, but finally you just break down and go for it. Well, that's where I was today with my unpacking.

With only 3 boxes left i decided i needed to just get it over with. My daughters and I started opening the boxes. The last one was labeled storage/garage/misc. junk. This big old box showed signs of distress and complete neglect. It had to have been one that had been in the attic, then storage, garage...and now finally on this last move made it into the house. I didn't remember this box, had NO idea what was in it. We proceeded to open it up and could not believe what was in it.

Hum...how things have changed. There was a time when I would have actually carried that box from house to house with me, drove it in my own car (shotgun) and never let any strange hands come within 15 feet. What was in it? Oh, about $600 in scrapbooking supplies! Yup! That's it...just $600 in old scrapbooking supplies. Some still in the original wrappers, others still had their over-priced sticky price tags on the packaging, and a few Ebay wins still wrapped in their FedEx packaging.

What does this say about me...about my hobby...about who I am? It says the truth. I got real, and I got Cherish Bound. No more clutter, no more over-spending, no more posed pictures to go with the stickers that I bought on half-price at the scrapbook store...NO MORE! Confession has ended...I got caught with a box full of brand new, never opened scrapbooking supplies.

......You should see the gorgeous cards and stationary my daughters just made. They loved finding that treasure box. ;O)

5 comments:

ShellyH said...

Congrats on your move! I am also a scrapbooker and it has taken over my #3 bedroom...hundreds and hundreds of dollars of new stuff I haven't even touched yet and the other day I went out and spent another $150 LOL

Tara said...

Shelly, I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one. :O)

Chelle said...

I love to read your "confessions" posts. A couple years ago I gave up extremely expensive scrapbooking and now do an annual family yearbook, print one copy for everyone and I'm done. No more mess on the table constantly, no more ignoring the kids to work on the books, but mostly no more excessive costs and time. I have nearly 40 FULL CM scrapbooks and we enjoy looking at them, but we LOVE reading the stories in our CB books.
So, the other day I was playing around with some digi-scrapping stuff (like the cover of your daughter's book) I was surprised by how enjoyable it was. I found that I actually miss scrapping. I miss the creative outlet. How do you find a balance between the "scrapbooker" and the "ex-scrapbooker"?

Tara said...

Rachelle, I love the creative hands on part of scrapbooking, but that was it. My main goal was to get our family stories recorded. I wasn't doing that....so switching for me fulfilled my goal. As for the creative hands on stuff, I still like using scrapbook stuff for card making and stuff like that, but I really have started to love the digital scrapbooking. I'm keeping it in control though...that can get out of hand just like traditional scrapbooking. You can spend just as much time and money doing it that way too. So I started playing with simple digital scrapbooking layouts mainly for my covers, but that's it. I don't want to get so into the designing part of it...I leave that to Cherish Bound's templates. That's the main reason i'm getting so much done too. I'm keeping it simple, but adding a little bit of my own touch too.

C Mommy said...

It sounds like you've got a good balance going on! Can't wait to check out your next book! :)