Maybe you need to be a scrapper

So you don’t want to write your story or your family’s history, or you truly believe you can’t write…and let’s face it…it just takes TOO long. Well you’ve heard what they say about things worth doing…you know... are worth doing well! So let’s say you don’t want to WRITE a family history. For thousands of people that means scrapbooking. I’m not one of them, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, if that suits your needs. Regardless it is time to find YOUR way for telling your family stories. With scrapbooking, you can choose to work with paper, scissors and glue or work with Creative Memories (http://www.creativememories.com/ ) or Close to My Heart (http://www.closetomyheart.com/) or a dozen other similar products and websites. There is also a book by my friend Denis Ledoux (http://www.turningmemories.com/scrapbook) to help you write the captions to accompany your family history via scrapbooking. Bottom line here…you can do it! The next question: Where to start? You don’t have to start at the beginning. Begin with your last adventure or your last family get-together. Was it a birthday party, a wedding, a reunion or a trip to the zoo? You took pictures I assume? Lay them out to tell your story. From the myriad of websites and scrapbooking websites, you can find multiple ways to line them up, embellish them with ribbons, lace or stickers or simply apply them to a blank page and write an explanation. Before you know it, you’ll be telling YOUR story. If you get the scrapbooking bug, so be it. Maybe this is the way to tell your story. I’ve been telling people for years…WRITE IT DOWN! So if you don’t want to write it, then show it. It’s a classic rule to writing…Show don’t tell. To use a different cliché, “ a picture is worth a 1,000 words.” Just think how much you’ve written by sharing your pictures. Just don’t forget to identify what you’ve pasted in your scrapbook. If you get one done, grab that box or drawer of old pictures and see what else is waiting to be told. I know I’ve got dozens of boxes and albums, not just from my immediate family, but generations before me. Just grabbing any one can tell a story, or start one. In fact, you may need to start a new box just to collect the pictures to tell the next story. Old pictures can be fixed. If not by you then someone you know will gladly scan your pictures for repair and reprinting. There are services out there for that. And along with it, you may want to turn to your computer for your scrapbooking…there are services for that too. Creative Memories has a digital center now and I’m sure other sites do as well. There are photo services for compiling your pictures into a free online or download-able program and you can make your own books. Follow Heritage Makers (http://www.heritagemakers.com/ ) motto… “Every story deserves a book of its own.” The answer to everything these days is “Google it”. If you can imagine another way to tell your story, it’s out there. I just found another way, albeit time-consuming, and involves technology… for next time you drop by here.