I went over to my friend’s house yesterday and was once again totally jealous of how organized and clutter free her house is. After some word vomit on my part about how I couldn’t possible organize my pantry because it’s full of crap that has no other place to go (like Raptor’s art supplies) she suggested I start in the art room. And I am! January is the month I will tackle the art room. In February, I’ll pick a different room. (Hopefully. There’s a strong possibility that I’ll throw in the towel tomorrow on the whole thing. lol.)
Some background. We have an extra bedroom that we call the art room. Half of it is RaptorDad’s art supplies and half of it is my scrapbooking/ general crafting supplies. About 6 years ago, we went to Ikea and put butcher block countertops along 3 of the walls. The fourth wall has the closet and the door. We also bought some organization stuff and it worked really well for the way I scrapped 6 years ago. Now, my 6 year old supplies that I never use are still pretty well organized. My 3 year old supplies are pilled on top of every surface. And my current supplies are in a rolling cart in our bedroom since that’s where I actually scrapbook. ::sigh:: I’ve been scrapbooking since 1999 and I’ve basically never thrown away a thing. In addition, this room is pretty much our dumping ground for everything.
The plan? Purge purge purge! I’m setting aside of box of stuff for Raptor to play with, and then the rest is going in the trash. I filled up a whole trash bag yesterday and it was so freeing! Among my realizations were that, while I love to hoard memorabilia, I never ever use it on my pages. Even if by some chance I do go back and scrap that weekend in Dallas 6 years ago, I’m not going to put the hotel brochure on the page! This times a thousand. Programs, concert tickets, brochures, all gone! I can’t quite bring myself to start throwing away the post cards yet, but I’m close.
My ultimate goals for the room are:
1. All of my supplies purged/ organized.
2. Move all of the crafting crap out of our bedroom.
3. Put ongoing projects (December Daily, knitting, etc.) in some kind of cases or boxes so I can pull them out and work on them in the bedroom.
4. Create a space for Raptor to craft with me in the art room.
5. Get Raptor’s art supplies out of my pantry/ kitchen cabinets.
6. Wish list: Improve the lighting so I can photograph layouts on my table.
In the past 2 days, I’ve worked on my half of the closet and have started on my drawer system of embellishments. In the bottom of one drawer, I came across my in-progress travel journals. What are travel journals? Let me tell you. 
I’ve done these 3 different times with varying degrees of success. The first was a 2 week trip while I was studying abroad. I basically bought a small sketch book and packed it with a glue stick and a pen. The idea was that every night, I would sit down and glue in any ephemera I had picked up and journal about the day. Of course, I’m a bit long winded (imagine that!) so I ended up finishing 2 or 3 days of the 2 weeks and then just collecting a bunch of stuff to glue in later. It was a lot of fun reading back over those 2 days, but I had to be honest with myself that I was never going to finish this project. I had no idea what any of the papers were anymore (it was 13 years ago) so I kept the finished bit and threw all of the other crap away!
The second time I tried this was a 3 week trip to South America with one of my best friends (7 1/2 years ago). I did better this time, and I had a ton of fun working on the project in the evenings in our hostels or sitting at cafes etc. Still, I was soooooo far behind. I think I had finished a week by the time we came home. I was good though about keeping everything sorted by day and writing notes of what I wanted to write about. After we got back, RaptorDad and I would go hang out at coffee shops on the regular. He would bring his sketchbook and I would bring this project. I *almost* finished it, but then Raptor came into our lives and I’ve been scrapping her ever since. Imagine my delight when I pulled out the final volume (I think I ended up using 4 notebooks?) and realized that I only had 1 day left to finish, our travel day. I sat my butt down and made myself finish it! And it feels great! Talk about checking off a long time unfinished project!
The third time was when RaptorDad and I went to Europe 5 1/2 years ago. I’ll be honest, I don’t think much of this book is done at all. I’ll take a look at it tomorrow, but I imagine it’ll go the way of the Italy one- in the trash aside from the 1 or 2 days that happen to be done. And you know what? I don’t feel bad about it!
Would I do this again if we went on another trip? Absolutely! I love the one that I finished and it was fun to take a look at the few days from the others. I took a few pics of the South America one so you could get a better idea of what I’m talking about.
One of my favorite things to include is post cards! At the time, I was a terrible photographer, but I love pictures. This also helped me to remember what all of the pictures were when I came home.
More postcards. The one on the right is folded over because I wanted to be able to see both sides.
I also love to include receipts! I think it’s fun to look back and see how much stuff cost, especially in different currencies. Ignore the craziness, I was too lazy to pull it into photoshop to blur my name so I used the spot tool in lightroom. 
I also included my boarding pass.
Sometimes I put in really random stuff. This was inside a kinder egg. I fell in love with kinder eggs when I was studying abroad, but you can’t really buy them in the US. I was so excited to find them in South America! If you don’t know, they’re thin hollow chocolate eggs with a toy inside.
I love this spider web/ bat paper!
Blurry phone pic, but I love that I have a picture of Kate working on her October Daily! She only got a page or 2 done, mostly because I fell down on printing pics for her. Next year, I think I’ll just have her do a December Daily for the days that she’s on school break. (So 2 weeks?)
So Kate wanted to be a “purple sparkly witch” this year. Done! 
Extra insert.
So I had to have minor surgery on the 24th, and my surgeon gave me some pics of the inside of my uterus. I wasn’t really sure what to do with them, so my friend suggested putting them in a pocket. Great idea! Or creepy, you know. Your milage may vary. 
I so rarely get a pic of Ninja where you can actually see her and she’s not blending into the background. Love this one of her and Raptor! Also love these thickers. I broke down and used them even though they don’t fit the rest of the book’s color scheme.
Crazy ice cream girl.
Once again, crappy phone pics. Honestly, I don’t mind crappy phone pics in a mini book. Especially if it’s a story I want to tell.
You might be noticing a recurring swing theme. Raptor loves to swing. She seriously swings almost every day.
I liked this paper, especially the back side, but there were just too many colors that weren’t working in the context of the book. I colored the yellow stripes with orange stickles and that helped. It’s still a bit busy for me, but I think it’s ok.
Ninja sleeping on my crafting stuff. She’s such a helpful dog. lol. Also, another insert.
Raptor gets more ice cream. I’m noticing a theme. lol.
This is the only page that I didn’t stick a number on, but this paper had the date on it, so I think it works.
I had lots of writing so I just stuck down a sticker and wrote around it. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I like the way it looks, but it’s a bit hard to read. Thoughts?
And that’s the end! I’m so glad I pushed through and finished this project. 
