2021...May Old Acquaintances be Forgot

Recently BFF and I looked up the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne lyrics. It's been a question as to WHY it's sung on New Year's Eve. I can't say I'm sure I understand complete, but the jest of it, for me, is that it's saying a pleasant farewell. 

2021 wasn't a GREAT year, but it wasn't a 2020 year. The big change for this year was a new job. That falls into the GREAT category. COVID still running rampant falls into the NOT so great. 

I only got to travel out of state to Phoenix for a scrap weekend. That was great. The fact Janet and I couldn't go on one of our big Europe trips, Not great. 

I did get away for a couple of weekends to the beach...THAT was great. So much fun traveling with Janet - and especially fun when she basically plans the trips and I basically drive. 

I visited a lot of new wineries this year. Also great. Drank some good wine this year. Drank some bad wine this year. 

Ate a lot of good food this year. Tons of new recipes. A couple of new restaurants. 

Read some GREAT books. Didn't read some bad books. I tried to read all 12 of the book club books, but a couple were just not in the cards.

Health is still, well, fine. It definitely could be better. Will focus on that in 2022...again. No major issues this year, so that's GREAT. 

Finances are solid. Feel good about all that too. 

At the end of the day, 2021 seems just average. Still recovering from the hell show of 2020 in some ways, but by and large, not a bad year. I got to see friends and family (and hug them), we got to start doing Sunday Dinners and Book clubs in person. I am still employed and I still have my health. 

I'm going to chalk this year up to a year that was OK. 

Now, let's see what 2022 will bring us. Honestly, I'm not sure if I should brace myself or go all in without much thought. 

I did it!

That's right! This weekend I finally finished a goal I set 4 years ago. And people say I'm not committed! Hah. 

In 2018 I went to a scrapbook retreat with my friend A. One of the classes was about Traveler's Notebooks. They were becoming all the rage in scrapbook land. They're a smaller format than the standard 12X12 format that most scrapbookers use. Anyhow, we were given a traveler's notebook and an assignment. I took the assignment very seriously and in the process of doing my first traveler's notebook fell in love with the size. 

It's so much smaller than the 12X12 notebooks. And so, I decided that a good way to work through the stash I had in the scrapbook room, that I would convert all my Year 12X12s to travelers notebooks. All 58 of them. It would give me an opportunity to NOT have 58 VERY LARGE scrapbooks that no one looks at because they're so large and it would give me an opportunity to use up my stash. Traveler's Notebooks.

And so the quest began. I was dedicated to this goal. Truthfully I thought I was a little insane to even think about doing this, but do it I did!

So many people in the scrapbook community were stunned that I would dare to tear apart perfectly good layouts to create new, smaller layouts. But that was part of the fun you see. I photographed all the layouts so I have copies of them digitally. I wanted to see if I had improved over the years (spoiler alert: I have). I also really wanted to focus on the stories I was trying to tell. Scrapbooking is all about story telling - my previous scrapbooks I basically scrapped every picture and did little story telling. Now, as I've aged, I am compelled to leave a legacy. A smaller, more compact, more thorough legacy. 

The process was simple really. I took each year's 12X12, photographed the layouts, tore them apart, keeping the embellishments or paper I wanted to reuse, putting them in separate bags, labeling them and then when I finished a full year, I'd start putting them back together in smaller, more purdy layouts. 

There was an expense involved in this goal too. I had to buy all the new traveler's notebooks. I don't even want to think about that cost, or the cost of any new scrapbook supplies I "had" to buy. The point is I had a blast doing it and have turned out some pretty darn kick ass pages if I do say so myself. 

Working in a smaller size does come with some interesting challenges. The first of which is the size of the pictures. The traveler's note book I decided on has a single page that is 4 inches wide by 8 inches long. So a two page layout is essentially 8X8. 4x6 photos don't do well on that size so I had to do a lot of printing of new photos. That part I loved. Having different size of photos 

The next challenge is the size of embellishments. So many LARGE embellishments. I had to make sure that the layout was balanced if I used any large embellishments. Thankfully, scrapbook industry was also shifting to smaller books and so did their supplies. Winning!

You might be wondering, "What now, Jenn?" Well wonder no more. I have decided to redo all the other annual scrapbooks. There's about 10 total through the 1990's, high school and college. I have a couple of my younger years, but am not sure what to do with them just yet. I'm SURE I will convert them, just not sure how I want to do that yet. 

Any of my major vacation scrapbooks are going to stay. There are a few that are smaller trips that I think I'll convert, but those will be later after I finish the next annual ones. 

I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be done with this goal. I really used it to improve my craft and use up my stash (which both happened). It feels good to be done and I'm energized to move on. 

I have this crazy dream of what is going to happen if 1) I use up all my stash and 2) I have nothing else to scrapbook! What then? It has been pointed out to me that I need to leave the scrapbook room occasionally to make new memories to scrapbook, so there is that.