Weekend Photos & Workshop Input

I bet she will love it when she can see more/sitting up and looking around in the stroller. And I bet they are really similar in size - Anna is 25% weight LOL.

I can't wait to sign up for your class (and I hope there is no enrollment limit:) I really want help with journaling--making things meaningful, and interesting, telling my stories in different ways. I would alos love help with using some digital elements (LOVE the designer digitals stuff.) Thanks for the class-I can't wait!

Happy Day Ali, can't wait for your class to start. Amongst other things, it would be great to learn ways to scrapbook about our past experiences (good and bad) and journal about how these experiences have influenced our life and shaped/made us in to who we are today. Recording what really matters for myself and also for my children so they will know that Mommy's life is a REAL life with ups and down... The perfectly imperfect details of our life.
Thank you for askimg our input.
Have a great day!

I LOVE the first photo listed, they have the exact same smile! Nice to know I was not the only mama at home with a kid-o on the 4th. Our Charlie ran a temp. so we celebrated together at home while Pat + Sam did the fireworks thing. Have a great summer! {Toni--Missouri}

Ali,
I used to teach at a scrapbooking store. One of my most popular classes was one where we would get 4+ years worth of photos organized and scrapped during one intense weekend.There are elements from the organizational side of the class that could be used for your project. If you want to know more, just email me. I am assuming you can see my email from your end but that it is not published online.
I love your blog - thanks! :)
Tammy W.

Is the class a podcast or audio?

i started running almost 3 years ago and today I began my training for my first marathon. i love to run. give it a try, the best thing to do is sign up for a local race and I am always reading about races in your area

Ali, I'm SO excited about your class and I do need some help. My mom (85 years young) allowed me to borrow her banker box full of our old family photos. I scanned them (whew, what a task) so now I have them all. Many of them are from my childhood, in the fifties, and they're in color. However, some of the photos have an orange-y yellow cast due to age. And some of the backgrounds are, well, awful. What to do? Change them to black and white? Leave them alone? Crop them to eliminate terrible distractions in the background? What color pp should I use so the colorful pictures don't get lost? What is a good format for the album that will do justice to all of the photos? I need help!

It's a combination of audio files, pdf downloads, videos, email, etc. You can read more about how Big Picture Scrapbooking works in general here: http://www.bigpicturescrapbooking.com/howitworks.php

'Had to pop in to say
HOW MUCH MORE COULD ANNA LOOK LIKE HER AUNT JESSICA IN THAT PHOTO OF CHRIS HOLDING HER??
Gorgeous family!
I will think about those BPS questions :-)

Hi Ali!
Every time I look at pictures of Anna it makes me want to have children!
What I would like to see in a class is:
*What to scrap if you don't have children?
I've done my cat quite a bit, and there are only so many stories you can tell about a cat! Also, my husband refuses to be in any photos and doesn't have any from his past, so it's like getting water out of a stone there.
*What to scrap if you don't have "history" stories?
All my grandparents have passed and it's hard for my parents to recall without promts their own past let alone anything their own parents may have told them. Also, it's hard to pin them down to record anything as they live 3 hours away and I only see them a few times a year. Plus, I know many people will gasp here, I don't really want to "go back in time too much".
*What to scrap for children/pregnancy?
I am yet to go through this phases of my life, but would like a heads up so I am ready!
I'm pretty ok with what to scrap about myself, as after the cat that's what I have been doing, LOL! I love your ideas for the everyday pages, and this would be good for ideas. I have all your books and read your blog daily.
Could some of the content be digi-related/digi-friendly? I love you desings at DD!
Thanks for this course!

If I were to think about scrapbooking my past--I think it would be to have an honest vision about things--for instance, my mom used to get on my case all the time for having a messy house. Lo and behold--when looking at pictures from my childhood--when she was my age and I was the same age as my children--the background of the pictures showed a bunch of clutter and mess. I've also seen my Aunt look at pictures of her childhood and realize that it wasn't as deprived as she thought it was. I'm not sure if I am making my point well or not--but I'd like to use scrapbooking to honestly represent my life, for the good and the bad, and to eventually realize that I was not as awful as I might have thought I was, or that things were better than I remembered them. I am just stuck on the phrase, "An Honest Vision" of the past.

I have no photos of my childhood, so ideas for telling those stories without photos would help... mostly I'm looking for ways to make the connection of photos and stories... I journal on almost every LO, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm telling a story the way I really want to tell it.

What an adorable picture of your kiddos. They look so much alike from my untrained eye. Enjoy watching them grow! :)

Your kids are getting so big! And they are SO cute!

I will be signed up for sure!! I think more and more I just want to document me. I guess because the big 40 is coming up I want my kids to know more about me too at different stages on my like and to document more about what thoughts they are having about their little world(friends, feelings and ddreams)I just want all the quirkiness of each of us to be left behind along with July 5, 2009 went to zoo.

I want to know how to find the freedom to scrap myself and how I feel. Even if my feelings aren't lovey dovey all the time. I feel guilty though and wonder should I put that on a layout? I do know I would love to have things like that from my mom (she passed away four months ago), but it is hard to find the gumption to DO it!

Ali,
Some of us have a long past. I am 57 and am the mother of a teenager (16). I'd like some help in determining what stories I want her to have. I was an "older" mom and started scrapping only four years ago so I feel somewhat pulled in all directions as I go through years of photos to try to tell her the stories that matter. I don't need organizational help. I need to have some kind of barometer or measuring stick to feel comforted in knowing that she will have enough of me/her/us as she gets older.
I'd also like to scrap my own past without it being a traditional "heritage" album, a style I do not scrap. Good design is always evident in your pages and I'd like some help with colors and textures and patterns that are more modern but still reflect my past.
Thank you. I love Anna's story.
Terri

Oooooh. Fireworks. I love them, too. The first time my oldest girl saw fireworks as a young toddler, she called them Bubbles. Sweet memories.
Michelle

Ali - -
to add to your growing list - in addition to scrapbooking the past to the present {such as heritage} how 'bout from First Child to Second Child {to other children} and the changes you see, feel, experience between the two {or more}. .
Can't wait - all of your projects, articles and ideas are fantastic! Thanks for including us in your process.
Jennifer

I would love some tips on how to scrapbook myself. I always seem to forget to include me and I want my boys to remember just how I was. I would also like ideas on scrapbooking the "everyday life" that we lead. It seems that there is a lot more fun that we have during those times. Can't wait to see how your class turns out.

it's kind of overwhelming, scrapbooking my past and present. And the same goes for scrapbooking myself. Which stories and photo's to pick, how to find time to scrapbook the past while keeping up with my present day event-based scrapbooking?
I would want to walk away from this class not so much with a lot of new ideas for pages but some ways to let the ideas in my head come together and having some of these pages done and feel more confident about taking on this huge project (I am taking baby steps but it's hard to imagine all of these albums/pages I'm working on coming together).
Another thing that I would like some ideas for: I have a lot of 'little' memories, stories I could tell in one or a few sentences, with no photo that applies specifically to them. I would like some ideas for pages where I could use a photo from a certain year/period of my life and add a lot of these little stories/facts that deserve to be told but don't all need a seperate page.
I also hope you will not just focus on people scrapbooking for their children, since my husband and I don't have any.
journallingtips would be great to, so many stories to tell, sometimes I scribble something down and sometimes the story just comes naturally, but other times it's hard to find balance between keeping it kinda short and to the point and still complete.

Thanks for the opportunity to chime in, Ali. I would like to know how to scrapbook my past when there are no pictures and no memorabilia. All of my childhood & family stuff was destroyed in a fire after I left home.

Hi Ali,
I can't wait for your class. I want to learn about who I was, who I am, and who I think I will be. I want to learn to slow down and enjoy my journey through life. I want to see myself from mulitple perspectives.

I would like to know more about "hybrid" scrapbooking. When you add digital elements to your pictures before you do a page, do you already have the page figured out in your head? With regular scrapbooking I just get out the materials that I want to work with and begin to fiddle around but somehow you throw in all of the digital stuff and I get a bit bogged down with where to start. I would like more suggestions with how to approach "hybrid" scrapbooking.