The Joys of Journals

Ahhh....baby journals. I don't really know how to make one, but Erika
actually has (and uses) the creative side of the brain and made a
shopping list for us on Saturday. We splurged for the Kolo scrapbook,
one that is worthy of gracing shelves of some SoHo boutique
scrapbooking store, but of the up-most quality. I mean, this thing
needs to last several lifetimes, right? And then there were the clear
plastic sleeves, the extra pages, the tape, the acid-free pen, etc.
etc. The idea of buying a $29 journal at Barnes and Noble was sounding
better and better every minute.

And then off to the paper store. We had to have the baby stickers,
right? And the animal pictures. And the lettering stickers. And the
cute patterned sheets to decorate and border the pages. I was not in a
good mood when the pile of sticker packages were getting rung up and I
saw $5 per package. Luckily, Erika likes the clearance stuff as much
as I do and we did find some deals towards the bottom of the pile.

The biggest problem was when we got home and actually opened the
packages and looked at the mess we were creating. Where the hell do we
start??? First, we need to come up with a list of "facts" and
information that we want to put in the book. We decided that a title
page wasn't really an option (considering the cost of page real
estate) and we'd start with a little background. Extended family,
wedding pictures and hearts (add acid-free color laser printing paper
to the list), and memos to the baby from mom and dad (add color
pencils and construction paper to the list). Naturally, it needs a
cute border so we came up with a stinjenius way to not have to buy a
designer exacto knife and god-knows-what accessory to cut paper in
straight lines: a box cutting knife (from my urban tool-kit), a ruler
with a metal edge (thanks PWC), a flattened cardboard box (thanks
Amazon), and two pairs of hands. It works much better than trying to
cut straight lines with a pair of scissors, though it remains to be
seen if we have all of our appendages by the end of the project....

J. Riley, maybe I'll consider making a guide for this project on the
ol' blog...