Happy National Scrapbooking Day!

Yup, May Day is not just for dancing around a pole with your girlfriends and a bunch of ribbon.  It is also National Scrapbooking Day.  There are lots of great sales on scrapbooking products, but the main thrust of the day is to indulge in our hobby and educate others about scrapbooking.

There are a number of ways you could do this:

• The obvious one is to scrap.  Ideally, one would be able to do this all day long (or all weekend, if you're lucky!), but a lot of us don't have that option.
• If you're out and about, stop by a local scrapbook store and pick up a few items.  Indulge yourself and get something you've been looking at for a while but didn't get because it was too girly, frilly, purple (and you have 1000 sheets of purple paper), blingy, etc...  No, you can not use me as an excuse to spend a ton of money.  I don't want a bunch of angry husbands e-mailing me!
• Organize/reorganize some of your supplies.  I find this very motivating, plus you find things you forgot you had!
• Flip through magazines for ideas... scrapbook magazines, jewelry magazines to see how colors are used together, home-type magazines to see the latest trends in decorating which could also look good in your pages...
• Look at your finished pages for techniques you haven't used in a while or to get ideas of other pages to scrap.
• While you're flipping through your finished pages.... fill in some of that journaling you have been meaning to "get back to later"!
• Clean off your work surface.  Since I posted the other day about Simoon on my desk, it has gotten exponentially messier.

I know a number of my readers are not scrapbookers.  I was going to get back to jewelry today, but National Scrapbook Day just begged to be blogged about!

Here are a few ideas for non-scrapbookers as well as scrapbookers:

• Organize some photos.  Not all of them, of course.  That would be impossible.  Just pick one area - one pile, one box, one basket - and go through them.  Do not label them if you don't have a Slick Writer pen.  Write on a Post-it® note and put it on the back of the photo.  Discard any really bad photos.
• Scan some photos to be saved on the computer.
• If you have a SAFE photo album - "magnetic" photo albums are not safe for your photos - put some pictures into it.  The best kind of album for non-scrappers is one with sleeves for certain sizes of photos.  You can put pictures in some of the sleeves and some written information/journaling in another sleeve.  Just cut a piece of paper to the size of your pictures, and you have an instant journaling box!
• Move your boxes of pictures out of the basement and attic.  This is very important, especially for older pictures.  My mom and stepfather have a number of wonderful pictures that are now mouse-chewed.  Besides being potential rodent-food, extreme heat, cold, and dampness are bad for your pictures.  Photos like to live where you live, so please find a place where they will be comfortable!

And, finally, look through some pictures or finished photo albums and remember.  Laugh if you can, cry if you must, but just take some time to think back on the past - your past or your ancestors' pasts - to remember where we came from and how we got to where we are now.

Pictures and scrapbooks (in any form) are so important for all of us.  We all are important, and our stories are important.  I urge you to take some time today or this weekend (or whenever you can) to jot those stories down so future generations will be able to truly know you.

If, like my husband and me, you have too much going on today to be so pensive and reflective, grab your camera on the way out the door and make new memories!