Scrapbooking

So I recently had an excuse to enter the world of scrapbooking. Now let me be perfectly clear. I am not interested in scrapbooking. Never have been, and after this episode I can definitely say I never will be. This is not to say anything against those who enjoy this past time. To each his own, right? It's just not my thing. So why did I scrapbook you ask? Well, my friend is getting married. And she is really into scrapbooking. And so for her bridal shower we decided to ask all the guests to do a scrapbook page of their memories of the bride, and bring to the shower to be presented in a book as a gift. It seemed like a good idea at the time...So I dutifully made my way to the dollar store to pick up some supplies, as obviously never having done this before, I don't have so much as a sticker or a pair of fancy scissors in my possession. I found myself in an entire aisle of doohickeys for the art of scrapbooking, and realized very quickly that I just might be in over my head a bit. Actually I realized that I was most likely about to drown, but I took some deep breaths and plunged in anyway, because I love my friend, and I figured oh come oh, how hard could this really be? Dear god, if I had only known. I wandered up and down the aisle and found myself starting to just randomly pull items off the shelves and pegs and throwing them in my basket. I had no idea it was so complicated, that so much STUFF was required. Suddenly I started to feel really pressured, I mean, we're talking about me presenting a page as a special gift to someone who is REALLY good at this kind of thing, and I really didn't want mine to look like it came from a complete loser. Anyway. I finally figured I had enough stuff, and headed home. Then I put it all away in the corner of my room and tried not to think about it for a day or so. But since it didn't seem to magically be getting itself done, I hauled it all out on Friday, which was a professional day for the kids so no school, and got started. I would normally not try to to a task like this that requires me to concentrate when the kids are home, but I suspected that I might end up needing them to take over and finish it for me if I got too desperate. I labored - and I mean labored - all day, sweating, hunched over, getting glue in all the wrong places, paper cuts, and a huge headache. Finally I was done, or at least as done as I was going to ever be. And really, I thought it didn't look too bad. Certainly not like something that I had exerted that much effort into, but pretty decent nonetheless. I proudly took it downstairs to show it off to my family, feeling like I had physically actually run a marathon, and they were all suitably impressed. My husband even said it was better than he had expected from me...I know there's an insult in there somewhere but I'm not going to think too hard about it. Then the next morning the girls asked if they could make a page for the scrapbook too. So I said sure, and handed off the bag of stuff to them, found a picture they could use, and sent them downstairs to create. However, a few minutes later my husband announced that he was going off to do some work at a friends house and was going to take the kids with him, since I was heading out to some shopping of my own. I went downstairs to break the news that they would have to work on their scrapbook page later in the day, only to discover that they were nearly finished. I mean it, they were all but done. Just some words to write on one last piece of paper, and that was it. And it looked GOOD. In fact, they had probably twice as much stuff on the page as I had on mine, all nicely mounted on card stock with appropriately placed stickers beside them in all the right places. Well, I thought, so much for my plan of telling everyone that the kids had done my page for me, isn't that SWEET? They had just kicked my scrapbooking butt. Oh well. It's not like I was ever planning to do this again anyway. Not mention that my friend that we were all making these pages for knows me all too well, and therefore will totally appreciate the blood, sweat and tears that went into the page that I created for her. Which is what it's all about after all. So I pack up the pages, and the next day I take them to the shower where they are placed in a book with everyone else's. And when my friend gets to my page, she oohs and ahhs and laughs and then reads the little blurb I wrote and when she gets to the end, her voice cracks and she gets teary, and I feel totally content with my efforts, it was all worth it. And next time a scrapbooking duty of any kind is required of me, I will not hesitate for a moment to hand it off to the much more capable hands of my daughters. This was definitely a once in a lifetime thing for my once in a lifetime friend!