Life is a scrapbook. Start filling in the pages.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Paper, Scissors ROCK!!

So, some of you may not be aware that I am a HUGE scrapbook fan. I love every tiny spec related to the subject.

I covet magazines...Memory Makers, Simple Scrapbooks and my personal favorite Creating Keepsakes. I read them cover to cover. I even take great joy in perusing the ads in the back. I have found some fabulous treasures this way.

I love and collect paper, whether they fit into our lifestyle or not, I like it, I buy it. I know some of you buy as you go, page by page, but that system never worked for me. I never "plan" to scrap, I just do it when the time presents itself, like at 2am. I have all the supplies I could ever need here in my scraproom/office/exist to the backyard/place for my son and his friends to play, which suits me just fine.

One of the things I have discovered, thanks to Christine (more about her next paragraph) is chipboard and grungeboard. While it may sound like things you would never touch, yet alone place into a scrapbook, these heavy cardboard items are now gracing every page.

One of the most fun things I have recently discovered is this fabulously creative woman who lives in Canada (yes, Virginia, there are scrapbookers in Canada!). Christine hosts her won podcast several times a week. Each episode showcases some new tool, fabulous new line of paper or technique she has learned. I love her for doing this. It helps to educate so many of us who do not have time to spend at a scrapbook store, or to watch those crafting shows on TV. She does not get paid to do this, she does not even own a retail store to sell the items she promotes. She is simply a mother who loves to scrap and enjoys sharing the craft with cyberspace. My local scrapbook store may not really like her as I am always asking them to order things for me, but in the end, I am spending a whole lot more scrapping cash since Christine came into my life!

You can download each minutes-long episode, now more than 200 onto your iPod or you can simply logon to her site and watch, or download to your computer.

http://www.scraptime.ca/blogpage/

After you watch a few, please send her an e-mail and let her know how much you appreciate her time and talent. Tell her Melody sent you.

BACK TO SCRAPBOOKING:

Although I love the elaborate and fancy layouts (scrapbook term for pages) I seldom do them for my own books, as I look at all of my zillions of completed pages, I see a common thread...simple, with lots of journaling detail.

I scrapbook because I enjoy reminding myself of the various trips, activities and happenings of our family, but I also do it to help my son remember all that we have done in his short life of 11 years. I take great joy as he looks at the pages and suddenly remembers something that was once lost in the background of school and skateboarding. I love it when he says "I had a great time there" or "I want to go back there." Somehow I feel as if I am doing my job as a mom, giving him memories for a lifetime.

Supporting Cast

It is amazing how far modern medicine has progressed since I was a child. When I broke my wrist during a Friday night of doing the "Hustle" and slow dancing to "Stairway to Heaven, " the ER doc promptly placed my arm in a cast.

A plaster cast, like the kind you use for art projects, with a reminder " not to stick a coat hanger into the cast, even if you are dying to scratch an itch (hadn't even considered that until the doc told me not too! )"

So we move forward to some 30 years later when my 11-year-old son, while at school, broke his arm under some mysterious circumstances. He swore he was not goofing off, running sideways was the way ALL the guys were running!!

So the ER doc, did x-rays and said " Yep, it's broken. Clean thru." So I am, of course, expecting the big bucket O'plaster to come out. Much to my surprise, the doc splinted the arm and referred us to a pediatric orthopedic. Which of course we could not see until the next day at the earliest! Do you know that from the moment a bone is broken, the body immediately begins to mend the area?? Well I did. This sent me into an absolute panic that his arm was going to heal overnight and he would have a deformed arm, or worse-the doc would have to re-break it to fix it.

The next day we went to the orthopedic, and I was amazed at all of the broken bones in that place, which perhaps explains why the doctor asked my son to disrobe so he could look at his full arm and chest. These doctors see all types of injuries. Looking over the child's body is their way of making sure an accident is truly accidental and not continuation of danger. I applaud them for taking the time to look and care. Many child abuse cases go unreported, sometimes for years.

The tech came in and had my son choose from a plethora of colors and patterned fiberglass. He chose black, with the promise that I would buy him a silver Sharpie so his friends could sign his new attention-getting device.

I had no idea that the cast would go all the way up to his underarm! Neither did he. Then he got the speech. " Do not stick anything into your cast. No money (as if it were a wallet??) no food (what??) and no coat hangers ( they did give a sense of relief..) !! If something drops into your cast and you can't get it out, you must come back immediately as the skin can grow around an object (here is the point my poor son about passed out..) and off she went.

4 weeks later, he got a half-cast, this time he chose red, and begged to get back on his skateboard. Luckily for us the doc was the bad guy and insisted that he wait for another 6 weeks.

Now they have these fun things called CASTOOS!! You know, like a tattoo for your cast!!

The week the final cast came off he came down with pneumonia. 3 miserable weeks were spent with inhalers and nebulizers. After that a sinus infection. The week after that he fractured a bone in his foot ( i secretly think he was running sideways again..) and is still wearing a huge boot thing.

I could sit back and lament over all of the woes and injuries, but the reality is he is a boy and boys are going to get hurt. We are really lucky that he waited this long, as I am such a nervous mother had these happened when he was younger I might not have been able to take enough anxiety meds to survive each incident. The positive note is that he was able to meet the entire family insurance deductible within the first few months of the year.

Whew.