What is that 'scrapping' thing?

This is what I actually do with all those pictures I take. Pictures do not do this layout justice at all. Much more vivid in real life. You may recognize the pictures from last week's post, I added the poem on journalling strips, added a bit of bling and voila - immortallized forever - or at least until someone 50 years from now finds the old album, says why am I saving this and throws it away. I decided to "take the day off" yesterday....no chores. Play. Feels good. Needed it. Scrapping, creating keeps me sane. Helps me focus more on the positive things in life. Happy times. Even scrapping this 'rocky teen years' topic helps me put it all in perspective. We have all been there and survived. Some better than others. But we made it through. At the teen-age, you couldn't convince my sister with hours of debate that her life was actuallly good. If you had asked her, at the time, her life sucked the big one and she couldn't wait to get out. She has grown. Made some mistakes. Had tons of joy and hardship as an adult, but she made it through, and in the end, has a great life. With all our teeth gnashing and worrying, in the end it will have to work itself out - for good or bad. Things I thought were the worst things in my teen life, turned out looking back as an adult where the best changes in my life in the long run. Hard to keep that in mind though when you are going through it with your own kids.

I do want to do a "what I want her to know" layout. Things I really want K to realize.

Your teen years frankly are hell. Maturing. Awkward. Young love. Hurt. They have this "these are the best years of my life" expectations - they shoudl be fun, yes, but "the best" I doubt. I want her to know her 20's and 30's (and I am hoping my 40's ) were far better! I want her to know no one will ever love her the way she needs to love herself. I want her to know she needs to be able to depend on herself first. I want her to know life will hurt, but you heal. I want to tell her to have fun when she can. There is so much as a parent you want to tell your kids. But they don't want to listen. This kind of teaching comes from doing rather than saying, and honestly that is scary. Am I doing a good enough job? I won't know til 20 years from now and I am thinking, man I screwed that one up! I just share with her what I can. We talk about my teen years, how I felt, how I have grown and changed. And hopefully she sees her potential.

well - Back to reality today - off to work I go.

I would much rather be scrappin'