Oct '14
								
							
							
								
																	Wrongwayfeldman
																
							
							
							
							
					
										
					
																 I'm a long time reader, but this is my first post. I need help organizing albums for my family. When I first started scrapbooking 20 years ago, I had this grand idea that I would be able to create and keep up with individual albums for each of my children, as well as a family album. I have four kids, and while that idea worked out well for the first two, I am now so far behind that I feel like giving up. I love scrapbooking, but I've not worked on it regularly in several years mostly due to the fact that I am so overwhelmed with keeping up with it all. To give you a little background, for each child's album, I've historically scrapped every birthday, holiday, school events, friends' birthday parties, and random family events. In the early years, I filled an album every two years for each of my two oldest kids. Then the next two came along, and to keep it "even" and "fair," I tried to keep up the same pace, all the while filling our family albums with pretty much a copy of whatever I put in the kids' books. I didn't want them to take their books with them as adults and not have a record for myself. So essentially, I would sometimes scrap one Halloween page for 5 separate books. That is just ridiculous, don't you think? 
Here is my thought, and I'm hoping you all could weigh in and tell me if you think this makes more sense.
I want to continue, but I have to be reasonable. If I don't make a change that I can actually keep up with, then none of my kids' albums are ever going to be complete and I'm going to end up giving up. I don't want that. SO...
What if I were to "end" each of their childhood albums at a stopping point of, say, 5th grade. That seems to be where my family albums seem to lag as well, and where I'm missing a lot of pages since I have less time to make duplicates for the family book. I could then take every page I've made past that date, for each of the kids, and insert those into my family books. That allows me to have a family book that is more complete, and I would have less to catch up with in the family book. Whatever layouts are left, I could re-insert those into the kids' albums if they seem relevant. At that point, I could create pages for only our family book, and let those kid books just be done.
Have any of you been able to keep up with one set of books per child? This really seemed to be how it was done at all the crops when I first started with Creative Memories so many years ago, and a lot of my friends gave it up for that reason. It is SO HARD to keep up that way.
I really want to start Project Life, and I feel like doing that with my family books only would be very doable. Any advice? Thanks for reading.
Michele
							
							
						Here is my thought, and I'm hoping you all could weigh in and tell me if you think this makes more sense.
I want to continue, but I have to be reasonable. If I don't make a change that I can actually keep up with, then none of my kids' albums are ever going to be complete and I'm going to end up giving up. I don't want that. SO...
What if I were to "end" each of their childhood albums at a stopping point of, say, 5th grade. That seems to be where my family albums seem to lag as well, and where I'm missing a lot of pages since I have less time to make duplicates for the family book. I could then take every page I've made past that date, for each of the kids, and insert those into my family books. That allows me to have a family book that is more complete, and I would have less to catch up with in the family book. Whatever layouts are left, I could re-insert those into the kids' albums if they seem relevant. At that point, I could create pages for only our family book, and let those kid books just be done.
Have any of you been able to keep up with one set of books per child? This really seemed to be how it was done at all the crops when I first started with Creative Memories so many years ago, and a lot of my friends gave it up for that reason. It is SO HARD to keep up that way.
I really want to start Project Life, and I feel like doing that with my family books only would be very doable. Any advice? Thanks for reading.
Michele
 
					 
					 
					 
					 
					 
					 
					 
					 
					 
					 
					 
					




 
   
						 
						 
						