Creating a Summer Journal, by a Non-Scrapbooker

Over the last few weeks you’ve read (on this blog) about summer bucket lists and all things summery-while the livin is easy in Burlington. Excellent ideas, and if you’re bored…you’re living in the wrong town. But what do you do once you’ve experienced all the experiences in Burlington, or in my case, once vacation is over? Enter the scrapbook.

Ok, hold it right there. Before you tune me out…i’ll confess: I’m not a “scrapbooker.”  Frankly, I find it tedious. I find the idea of putting all my memories in to a well-manicured picture book to be one of the most painful ideas yet. I’m good at a lot of things:  hosting fabulous dinner parties, playing xbox, and raising my children properly (some days).  One thing I’m not good at is scrapbooking.

And Pinterest? Forget about it. I joined Pinterest a few months ago. And that’s as far as I got. I went to the website, created an account, trolled around the site, and promptly shut it down. Every day I get notices that another friend of mine is now following me on Pinterest and I laugh. I laugh because there’s nothing to follow. The sight is an orgy of ideas and it overwhelms me. I’m like a deer in the headlights, a man in the maxi-pad aisle, a horse with no name (what?!).

Anyway, in a moment of dementia I thought it might be a fun idea for my 5 year old to create a “journal” and/or “scrapbook” of his summer experiences.  I went to Michael’s a few weeks ago and bought a smallish scrapbook so that Henry could document some of his summer moments. He happened to get a small camera for Christmas this year, and has begun to take a lot of pictures. While the pictures aren’t professional, it’s really neat to see him walk around and shoot images that he thinks are interesting. Fortunately he has yet to surprise me in the shower.

So far this summer, we’ve hiked Mt. Philo and are now in New Mexico visiting my parents. We’ve taken wildflowers and pressed them. They will be added to the book. Henry attended his first minor league baseball game here in New Mexico, and we’ve saved the ticket stub. While wandering around Taos, Henry took many neat pictures including a puddle, a motorcycle, and one of my husband, daughter and I. All will be added to the book.  I wish I could show you the pictures that he took on his camera, but I forgot the USB cord back in Vermont. Perhaps if I’m organized enough I’ll show you the finished journal later this summer.

In this day and age, (Ugh, I sound like one of those people who talk about how they walked to school up-hill both ways), everything is done digitally. I have no photo albums of my children, all of it is online. I see Henry once in awhile pull out my old high school photo albums and look at the pictures. He loves inspecting them often asking me why my hair looks so silly or why Mommy has her arm around some dorky guy. I’m excited to create this momento for him to have and hold from this day forward. Speaking of weddings, I have yet to get an album from my own wedding, which occurred 7 years ago..despite the fact that we had a professional photographer. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.