Scrapbook progress update!

 

This week's update on my album progress:

Catching up on Christmas! It's time to tackle the pile monster!

This week I gathered my files of Christmas cards, photos, and memorabilia.

Then I spread out Power Layout Guides on my pool table (you can use regular pages or pieces of cardstock or cardboard if you don't have Power Layout Guides, which are sadly no longer available through Creative Memories). 

 

 

I do our Christmas album in an 8.5x11" size. I like to include our annual Christmas letter.

Side-loading sleeves work great for that and serve as a marker for me between each year (I'm doing 3 years worth of sorting today):

 

After the Christmas letter I add our family Christmas card/photo we sent that year

 

Then I start sorting the stuff in my file folders onto the appropriate pages. Usually I will group the photos together by Family, Friends, Church Friends, Neighbors/Community, etc.

 

 

At about this time I start to get overwhelmed and go hunt for some good dark chocolate...

 

It is really important to have a recycling bin nearby as more than half of the things I've "saved" end up in the recycling bin. (All part of my decluttering mission in 2013.)

 

 

At this point I don't bring out the decorative paper, stickers and embellishments. I don't even use the paper trimmer or scissors. It is just SORTING today.  Now that I have everything sorted into the order that I want to scrapbook, I pile each year up with the last "page" at the bottom, until I have all 3 years in piles of chronological order:

 

 

Finally I stack these 3 piles with the most recent year on the bottom, add Post-It labels with the year and I'm ready to store them away until Saturday when I do the next step: trimming and embellishing.