Boxes of Old Photos

My mother, who has Alzheimer’s, enjoys scrapbooking, although she hasn’t done much lately. During her last visit to her geriatric psychiatrist, he encouraged her to spend more time scrapbooking, which makes perfect sense to me. In light of that, I’m glad I began to help her organize her work area.

What I’m thinking about now is all of Mum’s old photos that I found in the basement, neatly piled in old boxes but unlabeled. Going through them with her will be time consuming and tedious – but potentially an excellent opportunity to connect with Mum (and Dad too) and more importantly, to stimulate her long term memory. First I must get them into photo safe storage. I’m considering Creative Memories Power Sort Box. I don’t have one of these, but a friend does. The storage I have is from Michael’s and doesn’t have the removable sections that the Creative Memories’ product does.

Reviving this Blog

Much has changed since I put this blog on hiatus. I'm truly glad I didn't entirely shut it down, although I often wondered why I didn't.

2008 was an extremely challenging year for me. I made a life decision to return to New England, where my entire family lives. By God's grace, I was offered the only job I applied for out here, with an excellent salary and generous relocation benefit. This just as the economy turned majorly sour. I do not believe this would have happened a month later than it did.

There have been numerous challenges to be sure, but this was absolutely the right thing. I love New England and feel at home here while still suffering from loneliness and missing my friends and favorite places in California. One event that has underscored the rightness of this move is my mother's diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease two days after I arrived here for good. I write on this in a dedicated blog, Fade to Memory.

One reason I'm reviving this blog is that I now believe I have a real and meaningful reason to scrapbook. Once a month I'll be visiting my mother to help her with sorting through and labeling her photos while she still remembers their details. We'll organize and scrapbook them too, although that part isn't yet clear to me. This will be my main project and I feel good about it.

For me, scrapbooking as a single person has brought about the struggle of finding meaning. The great majority of scrapbookers are married and/or mothers. I am neither. I love to take photos and scrapbook them, but who really cares about my products? Yes, some people enjoy looking at them. But I don't truly believe that they will be terribly meaningful to anyone after I'm gone from this earth. So, I'm on this slow journey to finding meaning for me in this activity I love so much. Slowly, because I have little time scrapbook and in fact have not done so for a year. The last time I scrapbooked was a year ago tomorrow.

I'm doing this project with my mother for her and the rest of my family as well as myself. I admit that and am fine with it. The joy of giving will now be a big part of scrapbooking for me.

No More Posts

The last time I scrapbooked was mid-January, before I started my new job. That day, I returned home, didn't even have time to put my stuff away, and went about my business. The stuff is still there, 2 months later. I see no time in the foreseeable future to scrapbook or even do anything where I would take any photographs. My job is taking up all my bandwidth, a discouraging situation seeing as I don't like it and I'm in a financial bind because of the relatively low pay. So being in the worst of both worlds, no money and no time, I have to reluctantly conclude that scrapbooking will not be a part of my near future. At some point, I may reevaluate, but for now, I'm signing off as I see no point in posting when I have no time to scrapbook or even think about it.

New Photo Printer

I'm so excited! My new photo printer - HP A626 Compact PhotoSmart - has arrived. So cute (read: small), and with its own carrying case that is about the size of my purse. My scrapping area is far removed from my computer, so my plan is to set the printer up in the dining room, where I scrap. I can print out photos directly from my photo card, and the handy display will allow me to view them first. I'll still order prints from Kodak Gallery, but now I don't have to wait for the most important photos if I don't want to.

Next week I've set aside a day or two to set up the printer and organize my materials that are now a jumbled mess in my closet. I can hardly wait!

Creativity and Mental Clutter

I read somewhere that one sign of creativity is the tolerance for clutter. The statement referred to physical clutter, but I believe that also extends to mental clutter, the unrealized ideas and dreams we have and the thought and reasoning that brings them about. This tolerance helps clear the mind’s pathways for the execution of creative actions, tasks, and projects.

I do not suffer from a lack of creativity, as I once thought I did. But because I work fairly equally from my right and left brain, I torture myself with the belief that my clutter can be organized. It can, to an extent. A small extent, I am finding. I need to let go of my belief and face the truth.

What better time than now?

I lost my job a couple of months ago. Along with all the normal anxieties and grief, I also felt relief. Wow, I thought, I’ll have time to organize my life. Not.

My rich and full life did not stop because my job did. In fact, it became even more full. Trying to totally organize it is like trying to boil the ocean, to use a tired analogy. I’m not only not succeeding in boiling it, but beginning anew each day at this impossible and pointless task. A stupid project for such a smart person, and one that keeps me from moving forward.

I could go on and on about setting limits and boundaries, making choices and living with them, accepting what is. All of that is important.

It all comes down to boiling enough water for my cup of tea in the morning. That’s living. The rest of the water stays where it is, doing what it does, creating waves and weather and providing life for the planet. I can look out on it and know it can’t be boiled. Whew. Big breath in and out.

Palette Perspective

Since I'm so fascinated by color, I recently bought a few books on color – Color Index by Krause, Living Colors by Walsh & Hope, and Interaction of Color by Albers. So far I've only flipped through them, but they still got me thinking.

I find myself observing palettes now in just about everything – my dining room carpet, the grungy beach towel that protects my desk from kitty barf, a Kleenex box, a church brochure. Do the colors go well together? Why or why not? Do they work for their purpose? How would that same palette work for another purpose? Do the colors have meaning or enhance meaning?

I haven't really thought of my scrapbooking pages in terms of palettes very much but it's something to try. Since I'm hooked into color more than design, perhaps the palette perspective will help to improve my pages, and perhaps my designs. I find working with layout design somewhat tedious, but working at from a color palette perspective could add interest for me. Can’t wait to try it and see.

Photo Uploading, Selection, and Storage Process

I take many more photos than I can ever scrapbook. Besides the duplicates, similar ones, and those that aren't very good, there are great ones that may not make the cut. I've begun following a process with my photos after a trip or a photo session.

1. Before uploading my photos, I take a quick look while they're still in the camera to see if there are any obvious bloopers or duplicates and delete those right away. I also get an idea of what I'm dealing with – 50 photos or 500? How many different subjects? This gets ideas flowing.

2. Upload the photos to my local drive.

3. I don't usually want to share and print out all my photos, so next I select those I want to share and want prints of – sometimes I have to copy and separate them out to make things easier. Later I delete the copies to save space.

4. Upload to Kodak Gallery.

5. Create albums in KG to share.

6. Order prints.

7. Back to the local drive. If I've made copies, delete them. Separate originals into directories if necessary. Backup all originals to a CD.

8. When I receive the prints a few days later, select the ones I want to scrapbook. Put the rest in an attractive photo safe album – I like the ones with the plastic sleeves that provide room for writing. Label them.

9. Label the ones I selected for scrapbooking, just in case I can't get to them before I forget details. Put them in my photo box for safekeeping.