Matthew’s Book of Birthdays

This is an album 10 years in the making, literally and figuratively. Ever since I saw Janet’s Phillips Birthday Book I knew I wanted to do one for my kids, especially my eldest, who turned 10 last December. I have never documented his birthdays extensively and never planned to try and get “caught” up (we were never into parties anyways prior to our second child) so this was the perfect album to show how he has celebrated every year – and see how he has grown up!

Deciding to do it was easy but gathering all the pictures I wanted and how I will insert spreads into the numbered pages were hard. What I did was put the project in one folder in my hard drive labelled it BOOK OF BIRTHDAYS.

THE MATERIALS:

KITS & TEMPLATES
1. The template album by Janet Phillips
2. A folder where the birthday kits were stored. I decided on using these kits using kraft paper as base. I decided on using a mish mash of stuff with bright papers.
Jennifer Barrette Totally Rad Birthday
Julie Billingsley Funfetti
Traci Reed It’s My Party
Lauren Grier Birthday Monsters
3. A Lot of Cindy Schneider’s Super Seven Templates – I figured that I would include some tidbits on the celebration itself and these were perfect since I cannot gauge how I can partner page spreads.

THE PHOTOS
It was a good thing I have gone digital since 2004. But organization isn’t one of my stronger points prior to 2005 when I started scrapbooking so I had to manually download pictures from my Photobucket and Flickr accounts for his 4th and 5th birthdays. His birthdays from 1-3 were from pre-digital ages so I had to scan them in. (Tiring see? – all for the love!)

I had the birthdays by year in a folder labelled 1st, 2nd and so on.

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The whole organization, collecting, scanning, deciding which kits and approach to use AND deciding when to start took over a year – seriously. I would start, stop, forget about it and do the cycle again. But thank heavens for sentimentality that I was pushed and motivated to finally sit down and do one (of course the Artscow promos were 90% reason too).

I finished these in 48 hrs. I cannot stress this enough – if everyone was just as organized as they want themselves to be, we would be cranking out albums in no time. Tamad-itis and the lack of time aside, seeing everything laid out in front of you is just easy-peasy! We have templates so it makes it 1000% easier.

I used the little cute animals from Traci’s It’s My Party kit – the animals are more than worth it – it also works for both girls and boys so more value for your buck!

You can view the whole album here.

And a Flickr set.

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Aggie Aviso

Aggie Aviso describes herself as her family’s storyteller and memory keeper. A mom to two kids ages 14 and 8, she is certainly past the age of sleepless nights and adorable pigtails. However, motherhood stays exciting, more meaningful and yes, more challenging. She takes it all in stride, knowing fully well that moments pass by in a blink of an eye. As Gretchen Rubin famously said, “The days are long, but the years are short.” She has discovered how wonderful it is to have those fleeting moments in time documented in their family books and has made it her personal mission and passion to be able to tell their stories for her future grandkids. You can read more about her here.. Subscribe to blog updates and the occasional letter here.

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