Luck of the Irish

We all have our quirks. Our idiosyncrasies. Our oddities. And St.Patrick's Day is one of mine. I know it's not Easter or New Year's; no one gives you any presents or sends cards. But I love it.

My name, of course, is Irish. Actually it's a kind of green even. And my birthday is the 19th, which makes it all fun. Spring begins to sneak up on you, somewhere around in here; you can plant potatoes and stuff now. I enjoyed teaching my kindergartners about leprechauns and spending a day out of the ordinary as we built "traps" to catch them in. I'm even looking forward to attempting to cook corned beef and cabbage this year.

And the point of me telling you all this is that these quirks, these idiosyncrasies, these oddities make us the people we are. So I'll snap a few pictures of my corned beef, but most important I plan to journal on my scrapbook page. I'll leave a story and tell something about me. Someday my kids will read it and learn about mom as a person instead of mom as a maid.

After all, stories are the reason I scrap. What's yours?

Journaling

The great thing about pictures is that they are going to be around for a while. (Provided there is no natural disaster or your two year old doesn't throw the camera into the toilet that is.) And to enjoy your photos certianly you should place them where they will be seen. But if worse comes to worse you can do it tomorrow.

What is much harder to do is journaling.

Before you roll your eyes, let me explain. For a scrapbooker journaling is simply writing enough to remember the moment. And its amazing what a few sentences will do to jog your memory. For example:

I remember Thanksgiving as a child:

setting the table

writing a play

dressing up as a Pilgrim

trying cranberries

eating Aunt Venita's gingerbread

See, nothing fancy or long, but wow! Images, feelings, smells-- all of it rushes back to me.

As the holidays approch, take a few minutes and just write a sentence about what happened today. You can add it later to a scrapbook page, the back of a photo or on the lines of a picture album. At least, you can if you take one minute and jot it down today.