A Favorite Project

This week in the Finding Photo Freedom workshop, Stacy encouraged us to take time to enjoy our favorite layouts and projects and then answer three questions: Why did you create this page/project? What did you learn in the process? Where will it be showcased/stored?

I chose a 7 ½” x 5 ½” scrapbook as one of my favorite projects. This album is stored in a basket with several other small albums in our front room.

 

I created this mini-album to document my trip to New York in 2001. (Lest you think from this post and a previous one about my Summer 2001 Trips PAS that all I did was travel, let me assure you that I did teach three semesters at the local college that year, too!) I truly love this project because it contains several firsts in my life:

*The first time I traveled “on my own” – actually, I traveled with a dear girl friend of mine, however this was the first adult trip I had taken which wasn’t a family trip or a business trip. Another friend of ours, who was a truck driver, arranged his schedule so that he would have three days off in New York while we were there, so he joined us on our sightseeing several days. And our pastor (from Texas) had a son who lived in Brooklyn, so he met us several evenings for dinner as well.

*The first time I visited New York City – growing up, we traveled to visit relatives for summer vacations. I never dreamed that I (little ol’ Melissa) would travel to New York! Plus we spent one day in Boston!

*The first Broadway production I attended – obviously this goes hand-in-hand with being in NY for the first time.

*The first mini-album I created – I’d created several theme albums, but none that were this small. I learned that I can fit a tremendous amount of information (photos, memorabilia & journaling) in a very small space.

*The first time I ate fresh strawberries with sour cream & brown sugar – the pastor’s son met us late one evening in Central Park with a bag of strawberries, a container of sour cream, and a sack of brown sugar. I was terribly disappointed because I don’t didn’t like sour cream and there were so many great places to eat in New York – why were we having something from a grocery store. Well . . . it was delicious and I now serve it often as my “Central Park Dessert.” 

I did not complete this album until 4 or 5 years after the trip, and I learned that it is perfectly ok to let photos sit until there’s time and inspiration to scrap them. I pulled out my photos and memorabilia and was thrilled to find the little notebook I had taken on the trip. Each night when we returned to our hotel room, I recorded the things we did that day and the funny stories I wanted to remember. I am so glad I did this because as I read through it there were many many stories that I had forgotten and which were not reflected in the photos. Most of these funny stories are now recorded in this album.

I was also delighted to discover how much memorabilia I had saved. I used memorabilia on 24 of the 40 pages. I especially enjoyed including maps as the background paper.

 

I had a great time sitting and enjoying this album again, remembering that first “big” trip and all the fun we had, realizing that I didn’t even notice there wasn’t a single piece of patterned paper and that the only embellishments were stickers (I just came to that realization as I was typing up this blog post), and deciding it’s time to plan another trip soon.

I’m so glad Stacy encouraged us to take time to enjoy our layouts and projects this week. When was the last time you sat down and truly enjoyed one of your scrapbooks or projects?