Excerpts

OUT OF MY WAY! I have an idea, move it! Off they go scattering like dry leaves on a breezy fall day, four kids, a dog, a cat and a husbandwho know those words mean business. Mom is scrapbooking and inspiration has struck! Well, to be honest, inspiration may come at any moment over anything, usually in the shower, which is why I have been known to scrap in a towel, Abandon the computer, don't get near the scrapspace, everyone out, she is at it again! OK, so I am half nutsmy family would say more than half, but when inspiration smacks me in the nose, getting out of the way is the best, and safest, idea. Not moving fast enough has been known to cause frustration and grief. There was the time my toddler did not get away from me with all due haste, and I took a pair of scissors to get a lock of his hair. It would have been OK if he hadn't moved. I suppose the bald spot can be combed over till it grows back. My seven-year-old knows that when I have the camera in hand, he better be on his best behavior or his worst will be caught on film, notated and scrapped. I am certain future generations will want to know all about his fart jokes, really. My poor infant can't crawl yet so he is made the subject of all sorts of odd layouts. All I can say for him is that perhaps he should thank his lucky stars that I have not been motivated to do a layout about a diaper change yet. My husband has learned that nothing is sacred in this house when it comes to his obsessed wife. Duct tape, a screen door repair kit, hinges he bought to fix the bathroom door, even playing cards have all been sacrificed to the scrapbook demon living inside me (who I have named Mo). My poor husband doesn't even ask anymore when some implement is missing from his toolbox; he just heads to my scrap spotwhich is very well organized, I swear. Just because no one else can figure out where anything is does not mean I am not the Queen of Organization. Anything and everything is fair game when I am on a scrapbooking tear. There is not a store I have been to that has not had items placed on my pages. From the grocery store . . . a scan of a bag containing coffee for an Addiction Page. From the hardware store . . . easy, practically every aisle is represented (one of these days I am going to do a layout with a carpet remnant, I just need the right spin). From the Animal Feed store . . . well, in pages about our pets, of course. The rare store that does not have actual product in my books is represented by photographs; after all, what is a book in relation to our lives without pages regarding an average day? Fonts are another problem area of mine. When complaints started registering in my beleaguered husband's brain about the slowness of my computer, a quick peek (OK, OK, it took three minutes for the file to open, it was so large) into my font folder illuminated the problem. I am not sure why four thousand fonts would slow things down so badly. I think Microsoft Word should be able to hand Excerpted from Chicken Soup for the Scrapbooker's Soul: Stories to Remember ... by Mark Victor Hansen, Allison Connors, Debbie Haas, Jack Canfield All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.