Advice from a Dog - Stealing Life from Death

I have determined that the most beautiful element in the art of scrapbooking, is that the scrapbooks are the stories of our lives.  They are about the beauty, fear, happiness, anger, joy, sadness, and love that we have experienced.  They are an artistic representation of our journey.  They are a pictorial journal.  They are our legacy.  


This morning, my Grandmother is on my heart and my mind.  While I woke up to an absolutely GORGEOUS spring day, she was headed in for surgery while battling pneumonia.  While I was breathing in the fresh air on my walk, she was breathing in an oxygen mask.  While I was listening to the birds chirp, she was listening to the beeping of the heart monitor.  Oh the things in life we take for granted.


I have recently finished a book titled "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein.  This book is narrated by a dog.....a most profoundly deep and insightful dog.  As I read through it I found one enlightening quote after another.  This morning, as I thought of my Grandmother and the moments we take for granted, I was reminded of one of the greatest quotes from the book.

 "To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life. To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to."

Tears of  gratitude filled my eyes as I allowed the words to absorb into my heart.  For this scrapbook page I choose to not include a photo.  I wanted the observer to not be distracted with a photo, but instead be struck by the beauty of the words and what those words mean to them.  I want to live by those words.  I want them to be the story of my life.  I want people to look through my scrapbook, my journey, my pictorial journal, and see that I lived each day as if it had been "stolen from death."  What will your scrapbook have in it?

(As always, please comment or share this on fb/twitter.  I would love to have your feedback!)

Scrapbooking - The Gift of a Legacy

Many people begin scrapbooking or hiring a professional scrapbook artist when they realized that all of their grandparents, parents, and even THEIR childhood photos were shoved in a shoe box in the back of a closet.  The photos had no date, no labels, and worst of all no organization.  How many of us have stood around with our siblings or our parents squinting at a photo trying to figure out if that is your Grandma or her second cousin, Betty standing in front of a lake that may or may not be in Colorado in a summer between the years of 1935-1942?  Can you imagine what it would feel like to have a completed, organized, labeled scrapbook of your grandparents or parents childhood years handed over to you, rather that a messy shoe box?

Aside from organizing the photos another great way to preserve your family history is to conduct an interview with the older generations of your family.  Some great questions to find out are:

1. What is your full name? Why did your parents select this name for you? Did you have a nickname?
2. When and where were you born?
3. How did your family come to live there?
4. Were there other family members in the area? Who?
5. What was the house (apartment, farm, etc.) like? How many rooms? Bathrooms? Did it have electricity? Indoor plumbing? Telephones?
6. What is your earliest childhood memory?
7. What kind of games did you play growing up?
8. What was your favorite thing to do for fun (movies, beach, etc.)?
9. Did you have family chores? What were they? Which was your least favorite?
10. What was school like for you as a child? What were your best and worst subjects? Where did you attend grade school? High school? College?
11. Do you remember any fads from your youth? Popular hairstyles? Clothes?
12. What were your favorite songs and music?
13. Did you have any pets? If so, what kind and what were their names?
14. What world events had the most impact on you while you were growing up? Did any of them personally affect your family?
15. Describe a typical family dinner. Did you all eat together as a family? Who did the cooking? What were your favorite foods?
16. How were holidays (birthdays, Christmas, etc.) celebrated in your family? Did your family have special traditions?
17. How is the world today different from what it was like when you were a child?
18. Who was the oldest relative you remember as a child? What do you remember about them?
19. What stories have come down to you about your parents? Grandparents? More distant ancestors?
20. Are there any stories about famous or infamous relatives in your family?
21. Have any recipes been passed down to you from family members?
22. Are there any special heirlooms, photos, bibles or other memorabilia that have been passed down in your family?
23. When and how did you meet your spouse? What did you do on dates?
24. What was it like when you proposed (or were proposed to)? Where and when did it happen? How did you feel?
25. What memory stands out the most from your wedding day?
26. What do you believe is the key to a successful marriage?
27. How did you find out your were going to be a parent for the first time?
28. What was your proudest moment as a parent?
29. What accomplishments were you the most proud of?
30. What is the one thing you most want people to remember about you?

This information, along with a semi-organized stack of photos is a great beginning to a heritage scrapbook.