Scrapbooking: D.C. Album Finally Done!

Hello, friends!

You may think I dropped off a cliff, such is the absence of anything but Feline Friday posts around here. I get myself so entrenched in work projects that I've found my blog tends to fall to the bottom of the list. Like everyone, I wish there were more hours in the day.

Anyway, I'm happy to report that, after a work- and holiday-related hiatus, I've finally been able to get back into some scrapbooking. Back in November, I started "speed scrapbooking" our family trip to Washington, D.C. and am excited that this trip is now in the books -- or the scrapbook, I might say! It seems like I've been working on this album for a long time, but I really haven't. In fact, if not for the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, it would have been done a long time ago!

 There is nothing left in this project box except a few scraps of cardstock. No more D.C. photos, maps, postcards, or brochures! YIPPEE!

 When Bailey was home over Christmas, we took a quick look through the pages I had done so far, and I asked her what she remembered of the trip. To my surprise, her standout memory was how exhausting the trip was -- probably due to the fact that I had planned every minute of it. In laughing with her about that, I remembered some of the middle school drama that we experienced on that trip and included a little bit of that in my journaling -- keepin' it real, as they say! 

That said, when scrapbooking something that you don't remember all that well, it's always helpful to talk with other people who were there. It jogs the memory AND gives you details to add life to your album!

 

 This is probably the most basic scrapbook I've made yet. I really didn't want to spend much time on it because I know it's not going to be looked at much. That makes me kind of sad, but that's the way it is. Still, I wanted the trip to be documented as part of our family stories. 

I also had to keep things very simple -- and not bulky -- because I wanted to fit the trip into the same album as our daughter's school trip taken the prior year. As such, I had to keep the layers of paper to a minimum and refrain from using my favorite pop dots! Even with these precautions taken, this album is packed completely full!

I worked in as much memorabilia as would fit into this album. For example, I had saved a hotel notecard and a sleeve from a piece of chocolate and added them to this quick page about where we stayed.

 

I also used several postcards which are helpful for identifying pictures. Unfortunately, I hadn't written out any notes at all for this trip and none of the photos had writing on the back, so I had to look up a lot of photos online to identify them. Thankfully, that's pretty easy these days!

 

 In some cases, memorabilia was all l had, so it had to stand in for photos. Such was the case at the Holocaust Memorial Museum and a few other places we visited.

I'm always grateful to have saved memorabilia -- especially when scrapbooking 13 years after a trip! For example, I had saved the ticket stubs from a staff-led tour of the capitol building. Without them, I'm sure I would have forgotten that this was a special tour which took us to places not otherwise accessible!

 

As with the other D.C. trip, I relied heavily on pocket pages and sleeves of varying sizes.  Most of the pages I use are from We R Memory Keepers because they fit in the binders I'm using but I also mixed in a few from Becky Higgins, notably the 6x12 sleeves and the 12x12 sleeves with both vertical and horizontal pockets.

I think the mixed pages make an otherwise-not-fancy album a little more interesting to page through, plus it allows you to include more photos than you would be able to with traditional 12x12 pages only.

 That said, I did make a few traditional pages when it worked with the number of photos and page configurations.

 

One of the best parts of this trip was that it took place over the 4th of July, so we were able to see a parade on Pennsylvania Avenue and attend the fireworks display on the National Mall. Both events were very memorable and I enjoyed documenting them for posterity!

 Any scrapbooker will tell you that it's a great feeling to finish an album, whatever the topic. Even though this album won't be looked at much, it's still nice to have the trip documented and all of our memories (as many as I can remember!!) in one place. 

As I've said before, if you're like me and have fallen behind in your scrapbooking, take heart. You CAN get caught up, or at least scrapbook the most important topics, by keeping things simple. I still have a long way to go, but I can finally see some real progress. 

Next scrapbooking projects: A trip to Seattle/Vancouver, back to the family albums (where was I??) and continuing those heritage albums...

No time to waste!

 jp

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OK, so a couple of hours after I finished the D.C. album, I took a peek into my memorabilia file for 2007 and noticed it was quite full, so I decided to take a closer look to see what the heck was in there.

Oh, look!! A whole pile of memorabilia FROM THE DC TRIP I JUST FINISHED, not two hours before! How can this happen??? Apparently, I misfiled the entire batch of it in my 2007 rather than 2006 file. I should be fired!!

There's not even a sliver of room left in that album, so I sure HOPE there's nothing in here that should have been included. But dang...all of this information would have made my journaling SO MUCH EASIER! LOL 😅