A Tribute to Grampa

After several rounds of trips (armed with 40 and 50% off coupons) to Michael's, Hobby Lobby, JoAnn, and Archiver's, I finally have some sort of organization going on in my craft room.


Here's what it looks like now.  Sorry there's no "before" photo - just use your imagination and then multiply it by 10.

The walls are only 2 feet before they hit the ceiling, and those little storage units are expensive (!), so I'm sort of limited.  But I did manage to get a chair!  Now if I can just stop bonking my head on the ceiling, I'll be golden.


Inspired by my newly organized space, I decided to work on the pages for my maternal grandfather.  Here's what I came up with:

Now I only have 5 more pages to work on, and I can start refilling my planners once again! 

My Very First Page

My sister invited me to a scrapbooking party crop (sorry, still working on the terminology) this weekend.  What fun!  The night before, I did a mad scramble to put together something to work on so I could at least look like I knew what I was doing.  Trying to justify tie this new hobby into my genealogy passion, I printed out some old photos, newspaper articles, and other memorabilia of my grandfather from his time in the service during WWII stuffed in into one of the handy-dandy pocket thingies my sister recommended.  (I recommend them too ... makes it very easy to organize your "in progress" pages).


My sister lives 2 hours away, so packing was critical.  I wasn't sure what to bring - and my scrapbooking supplies are quite limited, it turns out - so I just threw a bunch of stuff I knew my sister didn't also have into a tote bag and threw it in the car.


So the crop was being held by one of my sister's neighbors who is a Creative Memories consultant.  I was proud of myself for browsing through the catalog and only spending $20 ... on this.  Purple.  I know, right?


When all was said and done, I managed to complete my very first scrapbook page:

After I got home on Saturday, I decided to work on the second page:

This one is still waiting for one more element,
but I  haven't finished it yet

I was on a roll, so I kept working on yet another page:

For the first two pages, I used a page map book that my sister had.  So thankful that we had that, or I would still be sitting there trying to figure out what to do.  The last page came completely out of my brain.  I really think I just needed to get some "girly" out after working on the Army pages for so long.


Wow.  Three pages in one 24-hour period.  I feel very creative now.  I've started putting my craft area together in the loft upstairs, but it's going to take some serious work.  Right now everything is just sort of crammed into a recycled TV stand and a folding table.  I don't even have a chair.  I think that might be first on my new list.