We all have this problem as scrapbookers or at least I tell myself that everyone has the same problem as me. The problem is falling behind in your scrapbooking. My son is currently 13 years old and well on his way to 14 as he is more than half way there. I can honestly say that for his first 5 years of his life he has a completed album for each year and then it stops. Life gets in the way and you stop scrapbooking because you just can’t seem to find the time. For me so many things happened in my life. I got divorced, completed a bachelor’s degree in business and then went on to get a master’s degree. In between all of that I gave birth to a little girl who was born preemie. So as you can see I was quite busy! I returned to scrapbooking after my daughter was born and continued to work on my son’s albums but then my sweet baby girl looked at me and said Mommy where is my book. So I have returned to scrapbooking with a vengeance and I have realized that it truly is my passion. I so enjoy putting the pictures in the album, journaling and adding the embellishments to each layout. Scrapbooking for me is a stress relief and it provides my children with a history book of their childhood.

A simple page that only took me a few minutes to complete!

I still have years that need to be completed for my son but the baby’s book has been completed and I have started on the family album for 2010. I am actually about half way through with my 2010 project right now. I order the majority of my photo prints through Shutterfly when they have deals which they do on a pretty regular basis. I also plan on doing the prepaid plan through Creative Memories to have my photos printed. The prepaid plan is $90 for 750 photo prints.

Another simple page added a few embellishments and mounted the photos before I knew it the layout was done!

My point is that catching up is possible. The best way is when you are trying to catch up is to not spend hours on one layout. Get your pictures organized in the order that you want them to be in before you sit down to scrapbook. You can organize your photos just about anywhere and even when the kiddos are awake. My kids usually hang out with me when I spread out everything all over the floor with my sort box next to me and look at the pictures with me as I am sorting them. Then when the little monsters have gone to bed I can sit down and create my layouts. The trick is to not get crazy with your layouts and your embellishments. This will make the scrapbooking go by pretty quickly and before you know it you will have a completed album. Just sitting there saying I don’t know where to begin is not going to get your scrapbooking caught up. You have to just sit down and get started. It is generally easier to start with more recent projects and work your way back depending on how far behind you are. The sooner you start though the sooner you will have your album complete and your story will be told!

Happy Scrapping Everybody

Sometimes all it takes is cropping one photo to add dimension to your layout and you don’t have to journal on every page

This is actually one of my favorite pages and you can see I didn’t add much to it

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