Isn't It Supposed To Be Christmas In July? or I Am SO Far Ahead This Year

[Let's Take a Sleigh Ride, 2009]

It used to be that when the July scrapping weekend would roll around, I would be prepped and ready to go with my Halloween and Christmas pictures. Powering through the weekend, cranking out layout after layout of fall leaves and pumpkins followed by green and red overload, I felt so accomplished when I was done and finally looking at January pictures.


[Winter Slide 2008, sketch from PageMaps]

As a pathologically chronological scrapbooker, I measure my level of accomplishment by how far behind I am from the pictures I took TODAY. My standard is six months. It's normal for me to be working on my Fourth of July pictures in January. There are some hiccups that throw me off my game like the year I took so many Christmas pictures I had to make a separate album. That's right - 27 12x12 pages chronicling the endless holiday season of 2005. But check out my sweetie girl in "All Tangled Up in Christmas" and tell me you wouldn't feel compelled to snap a couple of extra photos.


[All Tangled Up in Christmas 2005]

There was also the year I rebelled and did all of my fall and Halloween layouts out of order because I read a magazine article that gave me permission to "scrap what I liked." It was a little disconcerting to scrap out of sequence so I avoid it whenever possible. Yeah, I have issues.

This year was shaping up to fall right along the six month timeline when I was revisiting my summer pictures this winter. Then yesterday as I was finishing up the last of my pre-prepped pages (photos and papers matched up and stored together in a plastic page protector-I know, I already admitted I have issues), that the next stack of pictures I needed to work on sorting were for Easter.

I checked again. That couldn't be true.


[Christmas Morning 2008]


[Ice, Ice, Baby 2009, sketch from Sketches R Us]

I tried to figure out what could have happened. How could I have missed months of photos? Careful review of my pictures (digital and printed), my calendar, and my memory made it clear that I had completely covered fall and winter. First was the realization that I only had four layouts for Christmas. I really cut back on the picture-taking (could be that my camera was being troublesome).


[Hey, Santa 2008, sketch from Cherie's Sketches]

After I got a new camera from Santa, I picked up the pace a little, but the wicked-cold days of Minnesota winter offered fewer photo-ops, and I ended up with just these highlights from January and February.

March was easy, since it was only my vacation pictures (OK, there were 187 of them, but I put them in a mini-album rather than my big album.) I will save that scrapping adventure for next time.

That brings me to where I am now - it's only June and I am starting on my April stash. That's closing the gap to only two months. Hey, it's not really bragging if it's true.


[Cake, Candles & Party Hats 2008]