Summer Captured

Tonight I took a few random pictures. It was an assignment. Really, it was.

Talking during the mini-scrap booking party, some of the ladies told me about Big Picture Scrapbooking. So I logged on and clicked on free classes almost immediately. Who knew? I was draw to the word "free" - One of the Free classes is called "10 Summer Photos to Take Right NOW"

I was intrigued. How can I take pictures of an entire season now? I taught journalism where you took photos of an event- a moment in time. Your photos told a story. But as I read, I realized what a sweet idea this was - capture your favorite things about summer now while they are out, fresh, current - remember what you love about those summer months all year long.

One of the things on the list of 10 is about favorite summer time food - I took pictures of the garden vegetables that we got from a friends garden and I took a picture of the fridge - look at the sideways picture (it's late and I'm too tired to flip it now) closely and you'll see the fruit bowl under the sippy cup. It's that already cut up mix of really great fruit. My kids love to just chow on that fruit right out of the bowl in the summer. No science experiment fruit to toss a week later at our house. It never has time to go bad!

It was fun to start a dialogue with my kids about things that they liked about summer - food, places, colors, clothing...Addison loves her sunglasses. Although she wears them upside down most of the time that was her first and loudest answer.

Log on. Check it out. Capture your own summer.

Let me know how it goes -

Photo "System"

I went to a little photo album party last night. A friends daughter came in from Dimmit - yes, that's a real place - to show us how to make the cutest scrapbook out of those little cheap $1 album.s It was a really cute idea. And I like the idea of scrap booking, but ask me how many books- no pages- I have made since Clay was born almost 6 years ago. I have paper and embellishments and kits - and good intentions.

I made an album for my little sister of her 29th birthday party at the park. It's done. It took about an hour and a half and it's done. I still need to journal some more and get some others to do the same, but really it's done and it's cute.

That sprint to the memory making finish line got me to thinking. I used to teach photography. I love my photos. I keep them all catalogued at Kodak.com and I have an album of the disks, but it occurred to me that that is exactly was I hated about my mom's photo "system" - I'm using that word lightly, as it was just one huge box with pictures dumped into it. One weekend I got so tired of it I bought her some photo boxes and tried to organized them. I started with black and white versus color photos and went from there. It just drove me crazy. I could never find anything.

But neither can my kids...unless they can spell, log on and remember my password!

So I've ordered more prints and I have even picked out some paper for a few more albums that I am going to whip up with my new easy scrap booking ideas - mini-books that are low stress.