"Everyday" Layouts

I created this layout last year when I took Cathy Zielske's "Design Your Life" class, but I'm sharing it today because I think it's a good reminder about scrapping the everyday moments in our lives, and also simply scrapping our feelings about things.  My younger son is very photogenic (he got that from my mom, who never, ever took a bad picture in her whole life!), and I try to make a point of taking photos of him every now and then for no reason at all.  (Just for the record, I try to do that with my older son, too, but being a teen, he mostly isn't having any of that.  At all.)  I love using "everyday" photos like this to illustrate layouts that are primarily about my feelings about my kids.  In this case, I wrote about something every mother (especially, moms of boys) has surely felt -- that pang of love you feel when one of your kids is affectionate with you, and the pang of gratitude that follows it when you suddenly realize that the time is going to come, and sooner than you think, when they won't want to be so affectionate with you.

I also like using photos like this for layouts that are about everyday activities that might not lend themselves very well to being photographed.  They are also great for documenting special or age-related characteristics about your kids or other loved ones.  I've learned to get those things down on paper, because you never know when they're going to change.

Here's another layout I created (also for DYL last year) that's along the same lines.  Here, I wanted to document a little game that, for several months, Brian and I engaged in almost every Sunday morning when he and I first got up, and everyone else was still sleeping.  And, just to cement how fleeting these kinds of things can be, I have to note that just one year later, we don't do this anymore.  Would the world come to an end if I didn't have a record of this little game down on paper, and I forgot all about it?  Of course not.  But looking back, I'm glad that I thought to document it, and every time I look at this page, warm and happy memories of Brian and I sitting on the couch on Sunday mornings come flooding back.  And that's what scrapbooking is all about, right?

Oh, and just a note about design here.  Both of these pages were made following basic templates that CZ provided to us in class.  While I consider myself a "clean lines" kind of scrapper, these pages are more simple and spare than I would normally make.  But you know what?  I love both of them.  Sometimes it can be great to take a minimalist approach, and not worry too much about papers and embellishments, but simply getting the "everyday" story down.