Capturing The JOY of Color

There are a couple of things that have been on my mind lately when I'm thinking about my scrapbooking.  The first thing is not mind boggling or some deep abstract idea about the who, what, when or why of creating but simply how big an impact color makes in all of my design choices.  From the color albums that I use to the embellishments accenting my pages, color is the first and last thing that I think about.  

Color.  Beautiful color.  It sets the stage for how my story is going to be told and in my opinion white cardstock is the perfect partner to a bright, bold and colorful page like this one about one of my sweet girl.....

The other thing I've been thinking about is how I tell my stories.  Or rather how I arrange the stories that I've told in my albums and which stories I have failed to tell at all.  Our family has had some big things happen to us over the years.  Some good, some not so good.  But if I wanted to find the stories I would have to dig through 20 albums and hundreds of pages to take a look at how I documented them.  Yikes!!  

Some really big things have also been happening in the world that I have completely left out of my albums.  To be fair I've only ever made one or two pages to document any world event.  That has to change because the things that are happening in the world around me shape and define who I am and who my loved ones are.  Recently my nieces were visiting and they wanted to know where I was when 911 happened.  It struck me that while I remember that day very clearly right now, I won't always.  What to do?  

It's so easy to answer the question of what to do.  Two albums.  One for family events and one for world events.  

Every month I'm going to look for specific stories to tell and make a page to go into each of the albums.  When there is not story to tell, I won't make a page.  This isn't going to be a mandate but an improvement.  My biggest goal with scrapbooking is to make sure that my kids have answers about who they were, who we are as a family and how we feel about/see each other.  

Because I want the albums to stand out I picked gold ones:)

Album 1 for world events from scrapbook.com

Album 2 for family events from scrapbook.com

My dad and I often have conversations about what things were like when he was growing up and what our family was like when I was young.  Some things I remember but others I have no clue about.  We have photos but my parents moved a lot and many of their pictures didn't make it!  I'm lucky that they kept up with my birth certificate:)  That knowledge gap is going to end for us at least for as long as I scrapbook!  

A long post I know but I'm going to end with a layout share:)  

My baby sister and her family bought their first home!  So happy for them:)

Thanks for stopping by and have a great Monday!