Ahhhhh....it's done!

I had the BEST weekend! I spent 4 days with 22 wonderful friends at a retreat center in Wisconsin. We laughed (a lot), ate, talked, swapped cards & did many stamping and scrapbooking projects. Several weeks before the retreat, I knew I needed to come up with one project to work on this weekend so that I would feel like I accomplished something. I really wanted to scrapbook our Alaska trip, but felt like with 3,000 pictures, the project was far too big. I decided I needed to simplify the project & not worry about doing books and books full of 12x12 layouts. I spent days looking at various stores and finally found some wonderful acid-free picture albums at Target that you just slide the pictures in the slots ~ so I bought 4 of them. Then I researched the best price and quality of developing my digital prints so I printed about 1,000 of my pictures. I organized all the photos in order and slid them into the right spots. Then I worked on journaling all the places we went and things we saw. I also found out lots and lots of facts about each city we visited to include in the albums. Finally, I gathered all my scrapbooking supplies, paper, stamps & ink that I wanted to use. After several weeks of preparation, I was ready to go!

It took many, many hours at the retreat, but because I planned ahead, I actually finished all 4 albums. They aren't award winning pages at all ~ I basically only did journaling blocks, titles and picture mats. However, they are done so now we can sit down and enjoy the pictures with friends and family. I will go back and do some full 12x12 layouts of this trip with some of the fabulous shots we got, but now I won't feel stressed out about scrapbooking so many pictures & IT'S DONE!

Scrapbooking Tip: It's very easy to get overwhelmed with the hundrends of pictures you have laying around. Make your projects manageable and you will get a lot more done!