WFMW - Scrapbook on a Wall

(hosted by Shannon)

Once upon a time I was a single student / young professional and I dreamed of being a scrapbooker. My visions of grandeur included volumes of memories meticulously and creatively documented in beautiful 3-ring binders that I would regularly pull out and peruse with my children and other people who visited and cared to see actual pictures of first slobbers, first steps, first kisses, and all the other "moments" of our life.

But then I had actual children, whose lives I wanted to preserve in all their die-cut and beribboned glory, but we decided we would rather eat than buy the pretty paper and other necessary accoutrements, and the time it took to create became hours of frustration because little hands kept grabbing the scissors or bumping the unglued layouts, and the fact that my scrapbooking table was also the breakfast, lunch and dinner table just meant chaos. So I packed it in, and this is what I do now, instead:

The inspiration was this, one of those photo mats around our engagement photo that everyone signed at the wedding reception. We look at it all the time, notice names, remember the people, and love the photo, whereas if the guests would have signed a pretty little book with a silk ribbon bookmark, that book would be gathering dust in our spare bedroom turned extra-large-closet-of-stuff-I-don't-need-to-unpack-therefore-I-won't.


Anyway, later I rescued an acid-eaten photo of David as a sleeping baby and put it, together with a poem (slightly adapted) from a love letter he wrote to me, and hung it in Calvin's first bedroom. Very sweet and memory-provoking on a lot of different levels...I cried when I made it, David cried when I showed him, Calvin cried lots of times while lying in his crib under it, and I think David's mom really liked it, too.



Another time, I gathered some favorite photos after Henry was born (I was feeling nostalgic for Calvin's lost babyhood - only nineteen months and already a big brother...sniff, sniff!), happened upon Michael's twice yearly 50% of frame sale and bought six identical frames with mats, put my little pictures in and hung them on a wall in our living room. I change the photos out every now and then as other special moments happen, so it's like an evolving scrapbook, and we see the cute moments more often than if they were in a book on the shelf...or in a box in "the room."


And last Christmas, I made these out of my favorite Christmas pictures of the boys and they are now part of our holiday decorations...Henry eating wrapping paper on his first Christmas and Calvin methodically opening a gift with those too cute PJ's (50% naughty, 50% nice).

Documenting memories this way helps me get a creative "fix" every now and then, they are visible and accessible, less expensive and leave me time to spend with my kids making actual memories. And it also doesn't seem like such an endless project either, because sometime I'll be out of wall space. Of course, then I can work on filling the Grandmas' walls.

It does look better in person than it does in these pictures. I was in a hurry to post before this became W-F-M-Thursday. Same excuse for the number of times I used the word, "moments."

Scrapbook on the wall works for me!

(Um, could someone tell me how to get the cool WFMW header on my post...?)