How has scrapbooking changed your life?

By:Kimberley B.

Scrapbooking changed my life in a way that I never saw coming. I first started scrapbooking in 1996 when a girlfriend invited me to a home workshop class. I have been scrapbooking ever since then. I have even gone so far as to organize a monthly scrapbooking workshop for twenty five of my fellow scrapbookers who have no place to go to scrap. The past several years have been full of albums upon albums for friends and family to cherish. Weddings, new babies, anniversaries and going away parties have filled the theme albums I have done.

Then the day came when scrapbooking changed my life. For the first time, scrapbooking became very important to me. March 30, 2002 my father died of a massive heart attack while playing a round of golf the day after he retired from working 36 years with the same company. While this truly tore my family apart the scrapbooking drew us together. I was faced with bringing my mother to my father's retirement party (which was not cancelled) the following week. I spent the entire time between his death and the party preparing a memory album based on my father's life.

From birth to death I scrapped his entire life through pictures and memories. I brought this book to my father's retirement party for all of his friends to see. Many of them didn't know who my father was before he came to work with them. Many others didn't know who he was when he wasn't working. Within one week I laid out my father's entire life in one book for everyone to see and enjoy as much as he did. My only regret is that I did not create such a wonderful tribute to my father before his death. I truly believe he would have enjoyed the walk down memory lane.

This is how scrapbooking changed my life. Scrapbooking allowed me to understand that my father had a wonderful full life even though it was cut so terribly short at the age of 57. Life is too short and too unpredictable to not live today for what it is.... today. Scrap your memories so they, or you are never forgotten.

Tomorrow at dMarie Daily: How scrapbooking changed my life, by Holly H