Information

[SBcrazee]

My girls enjoy looking at their albums but who knows how they will feel about them as grownups. Good thing is I scrap for my own creative outlet & they will be there if they want them.

[koala1966]

I've actually come to the conclusion that I'm not scrapping enough.  I need to really step it up a notch if I'm going to fill the entire historical library that they will dedicate to me upon my demise. 

Seriously, I would have been thrilled to no end if instead of a box full of pictures, I'd inherited scrapbook albums from my grandmother.  The few scrapbooks I did inherit from her, while nothing like the ones we make today (just pictures and handwritten notes), I treasure.

One thing I can understand is the comment made about having 10 layouts with the same generic titles (100% boy, etc.)  I'm constantly frustrated with myself in not having unique enough titles to slap on my LOs for that reason.  That's why I backed off (as much as I love them) from buying quotes, word stickers, preprinted titles, word art, etc. and the ones I do have I'm trying to incorporate more as design elements rather than relying on them for the journaling or titles.  (I said trying, not necessarily succeeding, lol)

But in the end, I would never modify my current scrappy habit just because I think no one will want the books when I'm gone.  I want them now, and that's all the matters.  No one worries if someone will want their super-expensive shoes or dresses or purses when they are gone, or their extensive DVD or CD collections, or their state-of-the-art electronics, they buy them because they want to enjoy them.  Same for me with my albums and my scrappy supplies.

[BeatrizS]

 my kids better keep them if not i will haunt them

[-Tracy-]

 Updated: Sydney would rather have photo albums, Bobby wants to have Scrapbooks and photo albums.

[Kimandasmo]

 I think my girls will....but our entire family is very big into photography and heritage and has been for a long time...so I would hope that it carries on...I do have tons and tons of pages and I will admit I have been trying to journal more stories recently...like I used to when I first started.

[kennabeans]

I am pretty sure that Makenna will want the albums. She loves to scrapbook and understands how special that they are.

[sdwhru]

 As children get older and people are gone (passed away, moved away, etc.) that are in their scrapbooks they will treasure them more.  Even the males    My dh loves pics.  I think he is a picture "whore."  Granted I know he could get them just as easy in a photo book, but he loves the scrap albums, too.

Besides, it is the one thing I do for me!  When I want to unwind/rest.  If they want to get rid of them that's fine after I'm gone.

[Miss Daisy-NC]

 Yes my boys would

[PezKat]

 I've been thinking about this lately too - I don't have children (and am past 40 & don't plan to), but I love doing it and the creative outlet.  So far it looks like all my nieces & nephews will grow up overseas so other than maybe copies of a few pages here & there, I doubt they'd want much.  It's my only hobby that I spend money on, & other than my quarterly minimums as a consultant I really haven't spent much else the past year.  So I don't know.  DH doesn't even enter the room unless he has to, he would be totally overwhelmed if something happened to me & he had to deal w/all my stuff!

[1grandma]

 Hi Tracey,

At least one of my kids tells me that he would prefer just pictures like in a traditional album.  The others say "Oh, Mom, these are so pretty," and "You are so creative!"  Well, what would I rather have?  The truth.  Simple.  I have told my kids that when they put me into a nursing home, I want these albums to go with me.  That way I will remember (hopefully).  After that, they can divy them up any way they want or not.  Makes no nevermind to me.

[stampaholic85]

 I too scrapbook/rubberstamp for me.  It is also my only hobby.  I'm not a high maitanence person, no hair done, nails done, no designer clothes/shoes/purses.  But I do love my scrappy/stamp stuff.  I feel its a me thing.  I also don't neccesarily care what happens to them after I'm gone.  It was the fun of creating them.  But for the record my daughter 20 does her own and likes mine too.  And my sons 15 and 17 look at theirs and will kid about me scrapping something.  Telling me they want it scrapped.  But then they have been around it forever and know what it means to me.  So I say mine will keep them.  Hubby will keep his too.

[Rici76]

 I am so behind on my kids scrapbooks. I have two in progress right now and my ds book is from birth until 3 right now and he is 8 and my dd is from birth to about 1 years old and she is 6....so GO FIGURE! I also have an album of just holidays with the kids and I LOVE it, it is really cool. I am really hoping that the kids will choose to keep the scrapbooks I make for them but I also have little notebooks as well that just tell them stuff about their life...just in case they aren't interested in keeping them.

[Midge]

This is an interesting thread. As of right now, I don't really care if Jax wants the albums since I scrapbook for myself for a creative outlet and a way to keep memories.

[Amberpony]

 Oh My Goosh!!! You are so talented!!!
Yeah you may have strayed from the true meaning of Scrapbooking. But the Beauty of your Digi Scrap and Paper Scrap is that you can always change it. Journaling can be added in Creative Ways. You certainly have the ability to do this. Thankfully you have made this choice before you printed them all out. I know when I get ready to print my Memory Pages I usually upgrade them first. Lucky for me I usually has saved my layers.  But by chance if I have only a jpg I still add that special thing I forgot. So all is not lost.
As far as those bulky paper albums go they are a piece of you that Generations To Come Will Be Glad You Shared. Please don't take them apart. If you need to make a thinner album for you to feel better scan in those pictures and pack up those albums & store them away. Then create those new pages in Digi. Remember that those pretty pages where who you where at time. I look forward to seeing the New Digi Memory Page Maker! Journaling Included!!! Maybe next you will be teaching us to add journaling after the fact. LOL

BTW I have printed 300 (8x8) pages in the last 6 monthes. Plus the duplicates I made for my mother, Children and close Friend. Everyone loves them. The repeat smiles is worth it. Everyone prefers the 8x8 digi pages over the 12x12 paper pages better because it is less bulky. But they still ask for paper pages when original photos are still in good shape. Mind you all those memory pages had many thems. If you have seen my LOs you will notice that I don't make many single photo pages. 

[Amberpony]

 I forgot to mention that my Scrapbooks is the reason that I am still married.
When I left my husband he spent hours looking at my scrapbooks. Those Memory Pages made him realize why our marriage was worth working on. My DH still looks at the Albums to inspire him to keep making himself better

[RitaS]

 I haven't done a page for the kids where I did not journal - so I would hope all are found meaningful - even if it includes a scripture and a few lines about that. BUT will my kids keep their albums...depends on how big their house is! (LOL) They do enjoy their pages right now - hope it remains so in the future.

As far as removing photos from pages you are done...my suggestion is no. If scrapbooking and creativity is a part of who you are then the albums will be a treasure for that reason alone.  When I am no longer here on this earth I pray the albums and many pages will be a huge part of my legacy.

[AlwaysHappy]

 Tracy, you had the courage to say what I have been thinking about for a long time.  My Mother died in 1993, but I was blessed to have my Dad until December 2006.  I don't have any brothers or sisters.  Daddy and I were very close and with his passing, I felt like my world had come to an end although I have a wonderful husband and two wonderful children.  It may sound strange, but I haven't been able to go back to the house and start sorting through things until this December.  It just hurt so bad and even now I can't walk into their bedroom without crying.  My husband has been helping me go through all of their things and well I just can't put it into words.  It's heartbreaking is all I can say.  Mother had a lot of pictures and had them stored in boxes.  Some of the people in the pictures I know, others I have no clue who they are.  Daddy was 87 when he died and there are so many questions left unanswered.  I don't know how many times I wished I could ask Daddy a question about something I found.  Where did it come from?  What is the story behind these treasures they have saved all these years.  I little lace hankey tuked neatly away in a tiny box; a dried flower pressed in Mother's bible; a note written on a napkin. That made be realize the importance of journaling.  Even if it's just writing the person's name and their relationship to the family.  I'm not talking necessarly about pictures, but anything of importance to you.  Leave a little note with the item so someday your children will know why you kept it and then they can decide it's importance after your gone.  I love scrapbooking as a hobby, but in all reality, it will be more pratical for me to just put the photos in albums with notes in my own handwriting.  I don't want to overwhelm my children or burden them with tons of scrapbooks.  I feel they will more likely keep a few regular albums than a ton of scrappy albums.  Yes, I will continue to scrap because I do a lot of scrapping for people at work as gifts and I may enter a contest or challenge from time to time.  It's a release for me and I need that, but if I scrap things I can give as gifts, then I don't feel like I'm just contributing to more clutter for my kids to go through.

[bluetulip]

 I think my daughter will because she is an only child.  I'm so far behind is scrapping her memories it isn't even funny!

[BugLover]

 I do my layouts as a story...put a "theme" to them.  Each one is different...and then I try and journal on it, so that way they will never forget.
I think mine will fight over them, because all of the kids love the albums, and love going through them.  One day, i'm going to go through them all, and pick layouts to go in a special album which will be one of my wedding gifts to them, from birth till -...and when i'm done with their wedding album, that will be their first anniversary gift.

I do this because I love it.  I love to turn a regular picture into a story.  It's hard to look at pictures, because you have to "guess" what's going on.  And in my scrapbooks, there's no guessing....because the journaling tells you.  Tells you how they mispronounced words...they're special saying, where they were when the pic was took, what was happening in the world, and so on.

There's no way I would ever stop doing this....because in doing this, I know that part of me will live on...and my children and my children's children will know how much I loved my family. : )

[-Tracy-]

After talking with my kids about it yesterday, I have to say I appreciate my daughter's candor in giving me her opinion.

She told me she likes my older albums because they included the story behind the photo, but she would rather have those photos and stories in a more compact, mangable form (her words).  Sydney has always appreciated my work, being the more artistic of the two kids, but she admitted when looking through the books, the parts that really interested her were the photos and journaling themselves, not all the pretty papers and stuff around them. On my newer lo's, she appreciates the creativity and artwork, but said they were meaningless without the story to go with them.

Bobby was a bit more sentimental I guess. Even though he said the same thing as Sydney about what he focuses on when going through the albums, he'd still like to have both the scrapbooks and a photo album.

I'm thinking this is going to be a fun new project for us. It's going to be a huge undertaking, I have scores of negatives that will have to be reprinted, (and don't even get me started about how many digital photos I have) but with the kids, I plan to go through all of them and record a combination of both what I and they remember about them.

So now I have to find out where I can get pics printed SUPER cheap!