Yolande

So here is my shelf-o-scrapbooks I've made, beginning with my freshman year of college through the present. My Mom gets the privilege of housing my high school scrapbooks [scary stuff, folks.]


One that I absolutely love is our Honeymoon album. I chose a Kolo album in aqua green fabric for this occasion:

When you have a trip or an event to cover, it's so much fun to include ticket stubs, itinerary, magazine clippings, etc. Hence the true "scrapbook" style:

Henry seems to like the smell of our honeymoon. Lots of blue backgrounds used for this.
One challenge I had with this album was the sheer number of photos to include. I think I had 200 or something ridiculous. In that instance, I could never ever have a one picture page or my book would be the size of the Bible [and I'd be burnt out in a day.] So it works to have a bunch of photos scrunched together when they have a similar theme. Then you don't even need a background paper or anything. Just pictures:

The last page of the book had our flight times and a little map of the island. I also included our room tab from the whole week....so that in 20 years, we'll look back on our "cheap" honeymoon and laugh at how much it cost.


Another personal fave: Henry's scrapbook. Yes, he has his own. Mostly just his puppy pictures since, as a new mom, I went a little overboard with the photos. It's super cute to see how much he's grown!

I wanted to show you guys this series. We tried to get the same photo of Henry on Nate's chest to show how BIG he became. The pictures are okay, but not perfect. I still love them, though.


I also made Nate a Spain album for his semester abroad. We had just begun dating at the time, so I tried really hard to impress him with my scrapping skills. It was my first attempt at making an album for someone other than myself. Back in 2002, I was big into ovals/circles for my photos. Now I'm all about squares.

So that brings us to today's album. Here is my chaotic dining room table. We all know how much Nate LOVES when I take the table hostage, right? It's pretty bad right now.

I've been using my pretty papers but not much else. I feel rushed with this album, knowing I have a butt load of pictures to include and I'd like to be done as soon as possible. It's not like that when I made the albums for our families. More on this in a bit.

I mentioned before that I love to handwrite and draw for my albums [I'd miss that with digital.] Here is a fun header for Hannah's shower and B.Party. The little metal tag at the bottom says "bride" and it's too cute.

Hannah's wedding: I had a ton of pictures for this one, and almost made it two pages. But then I kind of liked the collage look for her page. It keeps the eye moving on the page.

Nate's ski trip in two pages. I even found some cute skiing papers to use.

Love this paper so much, and I'm partial to the pictures, too:)

This page was fun. Yes, I showed up for part of my husband's b.party. Only for a few hours and only for one night. Totally G-rated while I was there but I can't verify anything after I left.

One of the first pages in this album: our Packers game. Nate loves this page, obviously. Since there are some good stories behind these pictures, the page includes a lot more journaling. Sometimes I don't journal at all, and sometimes I do a lot. Just depends.

Our rehearsal dinner and some wedding details. This will have to do until I get a REAL wedding album.

And the very first page in this album: Christmas 2005. Again, the ovals were my thing and now they aren't. I didn't even use a background paper for this page [the horror!]

So my thoughts? My best work is definitely the wedding albums I made for our families, pictures in this post. I didn't feel rushed, but I did pressure myself to make them absolutely beautiful and special. When I make my own albums I just want to finish and they don't turn out as well. Another reason I liked my wedding albums is because they were smaller and housed only one photo per page. That helped me focus on the picture and make each page special. But that simply does not work for all albums. Especially when you have a ton of pictures spread out over time [instead of one event only.]

If I go through with this mini-business for scrapbooking, I have a lot of decisions to make. Traditional versus digital. 12x12 size versus 8X8 size. How many pictures per page? How long will each book take me? How much should I charge so that I don't LOSE money, but knowing that I will not make a fortune on this either? And most importantly, would I live up to my own standards? I can be pretty hard on myself and I worry that I'll get frustrated with the results, always wanting it to be better.

Like I said, I have lots of ideas running around my brain right now. Once I sort through some of the ideas I will post on them, and ask for your help making decisions.

In the meantime, hope you liked the little snippet into my scrapbooking world!

June 11, 2009

The Paradoxical First Trimester (aka Deep Thoughts by a Newly Pregnant Lady)


In a few days I will be officially 5 weeks pregnant, which means I've had almost a week to let this news sink into my thick skull.

I can't help but think this whole first tri thing is both amazing and awful all at the same time. Let me explain.

Seeing the word 'pregnant' on our digital test was quite possibly one of THE happiest moments of my entire life. This pure sense of joy is almost palpable as we are entering into the next phase of our lives together: parenthood. It's something I've always dreamed about and words cannot describe how incredibly happy we both are to be in this position. Excuse me while I pinch myself.

Then again, having this immense sense of excitement and joy is fairly ironic when you can't tell a flipping soul. I mean, if I had my way I'd shout it from the mountaintops right now but instead we have to keep this humongous secret until we get official confirmation with an ultrasound. I'm honestly afraid that I'll just be talking to a friend, or a co-worker about everyday life and all of a sudden it spews out of my mouth without warning. Sort of like, "Yeah, we're going to make a chicken dish tonight and add a little side of....HOLY HELL DID I MENTION THAT WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A BABY???!!!???" Whoops. Talk about making a conscious effort to keep a big fatty secret.

Another interesting counterpart to the intense joy we are feeling right now is the debilitating worry of the first trimester. I know that there is only a 25% chance of miscarriage before you hear the heartbeat but omg...TWENTY-FIVE percent seems like a giant black hole that is going to suck me under and suffocate me to death. Honestly, why does it seem like everyone on message boards, TV, and movies miscarry? If I read one more phrase that contains the words 'empty sac' I'm going to barf. (and no I haven't experienced morning sickness yet, which I suppose is rather normal this early on but of course it freaks me out to feel relatively good. )

I know that every woman goes through this sense of worry and I'm positive it won't stop after the first trimester. Heck, I'm sure once this little bumpkin is born (God willing) I'll have to make sure s/he is still breathing all of the time, worried that s/he will fall and get hurt, or whatever. But honestly, I just want to see the evidence that so far everything is a-okay. Then I can take it from there and continue on with new worries, considering it a privilege to worry about my baby. But the thought that something might happen to this pregnancy is such a stabbing thought that I have to consciously make the decision to breathe. I have to believe that this is out of my control, that God knows exactly what will happen at that first ultrasound and beyond. I am struggling to take comfort in the fact that there is nothing I can do to make this a sticky baby. But Dear Lord, I want so badly to experience this pregnancy to it's fullest. Ugh. The sense of worry is definitely a paradox to the sense of joy in these first weeks of pregnancy.

It's almost like this is too good to be true. It's hard to accept that I'm really deserving of this amazing gift when so many people out there struggle for years to be in the same place. You know that feeling when everything is so wonderful in your life that you just have to brace yourself for the bottom to fall out? Yeah, I'm there right now. And I hate that I can't just enjoy this time and push the negativity out of my mind but I'm working on it, for sure.

A very wise friend of mine once told me something I'll never forget. She said that there are really only two prayers we'll ever pray to God. "Thank you" and "Help". Right now I'm praying both prayers with equal gusto. Thank you so much for getting us to this amazing place, and please help me chill out a teensy little bit.

This post has no real point except to document our gargantuan (read: expensive) dreams for this house. Nate and I love to discuss all of the options for the exterior of our home, and you can regularly find us sitting outside after kid-bedtime, going over the same ideas on repeat. I'm sure many of you can relate, especially if you have a house as old as ours, built in 1925 with constant projects in the works. Or at least, at work in our head;)

We've already done plenty of updates to the interior of our house. But now the 'big dogs' remain: windows, insulation, roof, siding, and....possible addition for a fourth bedroom and master bath. YIKES, right? But if we do these updates, we could feasibly stay here forever and we really don't want to change locations. We love everything about the inside of our house, except that we only have three beds and one full bathroom. But the exterior? Not our favorite at all.

So much brown. Wood, painted siding needs a complete scrape and re-paint job. I don't think we would replace the wood siding and cedar shakes with cement board, just to preserve the original look of the house and because the wood is in great shape (paint is not).

The roof is probably never going to leak but with a solid three layers of old shingles, it's a tear-off that needs to happen more for aesthetics than anything.

And our windows? The bottom level boasts original 90 year old windows, the upstairs have some replaced screens but are mostly original, too. We still have to switch out storms in the winter and screens in the summer, something that many people don't even understand as a possibility! Storing a boat load of heavy storm widows, then massive screens in our basement is really not fun or effective. We had an energy audit done to the house and the windows themselves are in great shape and really don't need to be fully replaced, just cleaned up on the inside and we want to get a new exterior storm/screen combo. Bear with me, folks, I know these details are boring! But look at the potential. BEFORE (current):




GLORIOUS AFTER! (a friend's husband did this photoshop version for us, love it).


We might not do a bright door and are leaning more towards restoring the original wood door, staining it dark possibly. But the color scheme of a dark gray roof, lighter gray siding with the upper cedar shakes slightly darker than the lower level, and then white trim are going to happen. I like the idea of keeping the windows darker gray with the trim white, since we love the look of our windows and want them to pop. I would even consider a fourth shade of gray for little accents around the windows and the trim.

It's all so fun to think about and dream about and talk about. Actually DOING these renovations are daunting, and we aren't crazy enough to think we can DIY it all. But Nate and my father-in-law are convinced they can scrape off the old paint on our siding, and repaint it in 'just a few weeks'. Insert major eye roll emoji here, seriously. Tony HAS scraped off all of the paint at his own house, which also has original wooden siding. He has been repainting the house for oh, four years now....but to give him credit, I know he could potentially do this mammoth project at our house. Not sure how he thinks he will have the time, though.

We'd hire someone for the roof, obviously, and would buy the exterior windows somewhere. The dudes think they can hang the new part of each window. Did I mention we have thirty-three windows in our house, and a window company once told us that an average house has thirteen windows to be replaced? Yeah, that's a fun fact. $$$$$$$. Insulation needs to go in around the house, which is a 'hire-out' job, too. Oh, and the garage. We need to repaint and re-roof the garage, too. Sigh.

The addition is a concept that just won't quit in our heads, either. We have a full, walk-up attic with a flight of stairs to the third level right now. To make it functional and not completely pitched, we'd have to re-do the back of the house at the roofline. Then we could have the attic as a master bedroom and bathroom, plus an extra room across the second level of our house where our 'airing porch' lies right now. I would think that if this addition is actually happening in the near future, we should just wait to do the roof and also the siding at that point, right?

This is when I start to space out and just stare at the 'after' picture. Isn't it pretty? Someday! We just need to decide if it's worth it to invest so much money into our beloved house, or if buying a different house makes more sense. For now we talk and dream. Extensively. Who else loves to dream about house projects with us?