The First Scrap Area

I guess I started out scrapping like most of you did, sitting at my kitchen table with whatever I could carry in from other parts of the house. I had things all over, in bags.....

Piled high on my dining room chairs.....

The drawers in my dining room hutch, usually used for holding things like candles and hardly used entertaining items, now held scrapping supplies stuffed in till they couldn't open!

Of course I had the requisite Iris Rolling Cart. Something I tried to keep in the basement. I would carry upstairs just the drawer up that I needed, but eventually it became a permanent fixture in my dining room.

I kept things on the shelves at the bottom of the basement stairs....

and on a big folding table I kept opened in the basement. Luckily the basement is not a finished basement, it's used for storage, so this mess didn't really bother anyone.

Meanwhile, the computer and printer were upstairs on the second floor, in a little alcove we have outside all the bedrooms, right at the top of the stairs. It was housed on a cheap desk we purchased at Staples. This was where I was scanning, printing, and doing all my journaling, so eventually I spread out up here also.

All said and done it was the worst of all situations and I'm not sure how I continued to scrap under these conditions, but I did, and eventually the running from the basement to the second floor back to the kitchen constantly over and over got to me, so I sat DH down and discussed what to do. It was decided we would make the computer desk a little more functional for me, and add some things to the corner to make it easier for me to scrap.

coming next....

The First Real Scrap Corner

Mommasaurus

A quick post about the name. Mommasaurus. Everytime DH and I would tell the girls a story about "when we were younger" they would counter with "back when dinasaurs roamed the earth". This was and still is a standard reply anytime we tell a story. Eventually DD#2 just started to use Mommasaurus in addressing things to me. I thought it was so much more personal and cooler than just "mom" and of course "mommy" no longer came out of their mouths, so it just stuck.

coming next....the scraproom.....finally!

learning

So I'm still learning how this blog thing works, want to iron out all the kinks before I start blogging about what I'm supposed to be blogging about, the new scraproom!

Right now I want to see how pictures included look, so here's a picture of Cooper playing in his little pool in June.

The Start of Scrapping

I guess I have always scrapped in some form. My photos were all in magnetic albums with cute sayings written on the pages. I got that from my dad's old albums, and I guess he probably got it from his father in law, my grandfather who was into photography, because the old albums all had my grandfather's neat handwriting on those black pages. One day, after my father's death, my brother and I sat all night taking the pictures out of Dad's album, placing them in one of mine, and carefully cutting out all Dad's writings and placing them on the page. Simple, but enough to make Mom cry, and very happy.

When I was very little I actually had one of those big old fashioned scrapbooks, with pictures of all my heart throbs in it! I still have this book and do intend to someday place it in an All About Me album that I started years ago, and only did 2 pages in!

I continued on taking tons of pictures, letting them accumulate for a year or two, and then putting them in albums, then September 11 happened.

I will not go deep into it, it was a hard time for everyone, at that point DH was Captain of L101 and he was home, but his men answered the call, and never came back. DH was never home after that, so I started saving articles, messages from phone calls, and emails that I thought he would want to see. Then came the funerals and memorials, at the first one, DH asked me to please take pictures. I was embarassed, but did it while hiding. One of the widows noticed me, and after that I was asked to take pictures at all the funerals or memorials we had.

I now had tons and tons of stuff I didn't know what to do with, so a friend suggested I do what she was doing and place it in an album. I had material embroidered "7 in heaven" and wrapped a looseleaf book, bought page protectors from Staples, and started assembling. With scissors and glue!

Not one of the best examples of scrapping, but when it was done it brought many a man (and woman) to tears. I will never redo this book for sentimental reasons, but it was the first. My friend that told me to scrap it showed me hers, she used fancy scissors and stickers! HUH?!?!? What was this thing she did? I was so intriqued I decided I was going to do a new scrapbook, of something else, and try all this stuff!

I decided the girls needed a special 21st birthday present. DD#1 was 20 and DD#2 was 18, I would scrap their lives from birth to 21! One of the largest undertaking I ever did in my life. I first had to put the last 3 years in photo albums, then scan and organize all these pictures.

It took me two years to do each girls books, but it was the start! Another friend introduced me to AC Moore, and my first LSS and it was off I went. I have learned so much since then, so much in fact that I promised #1 I would redo just a few of the very first pages in her book, they really are terrible, lol.

Now I scrap everything. My yearly photo albums are yearly scrapbooks, and every vaction or special occasion gets its own book. I am constantly learning new techniques and some pages are way better than others, but I'm still loving it, and still loving that first book I ever did.

coming next..... hopefully..... some scrapbook pictures

The Early Film Years

Wow, is it every muggy out there today! Good day to catch up on here, although part of me really wants to finish this layout I'm working on.

I became interested in photography at a really young age. My maternal grandfather was an amateur photographer and dabbled in all aspects of it. It was him who showed us 8mm movies on the pull down screen at every holiday, and I moaned when it was old films of old people, how I wish I had those films now! It was also him who handed over his darkroom equipment when I was 15 and taking photography classes in school. I set up in my parents home and became enchanted with the 4 x 4 negatives my grandfather gave me of my mom when she was younger.

I took photography in high school, and again in college, although I became a secretary because my dad told me it was a job I could fall back on if anything every happened to my husband. I guess he pretty much figured out I was going to marry the kid I was dating, and although he was headed for Wall Street, he did take that NYC Fire Department exam, so it was good advice at the time!

Years later, when it was time to go back to work, I found a job taking pictures of kids in school. (yeah, the ones that you usually hated the way your kids looked, hey! it wasn't our fault, we had 20 minutes to take 30 kids) I was so excited that I was able to call my grandfather and tell him I had gotten a job as a photographer. A year later he died of a massive heart attack. I retired from that job about 2 years ago, the same time DH retired from the Fire Department (yes, he did switch jobs!)

I still had the same Minolta SR100 that my parents bought me in high school. It was banged up, beat up, and even dropped in Lake George when I was 16, but I held fast to the fact that I was NEVER going digital. HAHAHAHAHA First, the Minolta pretty much was giving me fits (although DD#2, getting her Masters in Photography still uses it from time to time) So I went out and bought a nice 35mm Nikon with all kinds of lenses. Of couse, being new, it was all electronic and didn't really last all that long. It was about then that I realized if I had a digital I could take a kabillion pictures and delete the ones I didn't like, or take all those artsy pictures I was always afraid to take because I had to pay for them to get developed. So I headed to Best Buy and bought my first digital camera, a Nikon, small point and shoot, slow as anything, but I was hooked! I now use a Nikon D50, and all my original lenses fit on this camera, plus I've bought a few more. Unfortunately for me, DD#2 has the D500 or something like that, and I really want it, but can't justify the need!

I also carry a small Canon in my bag, I mean really, I'm a scrapper, you never know when I'll need to document something!

coming next....

The Start of Scrapping

A New Journey

Well, this is it, the start of a new journey, trying my hand at a blog! Not like I don't spend enough time as it is sitting at this computer! I decided to do this because I wanted to record the progression of the designing and building of my new scraproom. Now, this would be an exciting thing to be doing, if only I could actually be doing it! Instead I have to wait for #2 to empty her room completely, an impossible thing to do since she lives in New Mexico at the current time, but I am jumping ahead. Today is just the start of the blog, so I'm typing my first post, going to see how it looks, and then play around with the look. I'll be back in a day or two, tell you a little about myself, and start getting some pictures on here. Join me on my new journey!