Scrapbooking Inspiration

Do you ever feel like scrapbooking, but feel stuck creatively?

I love seeing layouts from other scrapbookers online, and I try to bookmark or remember good sites that I can return to when I need scrapbooking inspiration. It can be tedious, however, scrolling through their blogs to find a layout that jogs my brain for the particular photos and concept I'm thinking about. So, I've started keeping a notebook in which to sketch layouts and make notes about pages I should make (or blog posts I should write!) I can even put small embellishments in it as a reminder to use them. For example, I found these tiny ladybug stickers in my stash (which I have had since summer of 2001, I believe) and thought "oh, I should use those on a page commemmorating Kate's time in the Ladybug Room when she moves up!" So, they'll be there as a reminder.

I sketch layouts based on ones that catch my eye. The colors or theme another scrapbooker uses doesn't matter so much to me, but it's mainly the positioning of photos and embellishments--the overall design--that I want to have on file to inspire me later on.

These show placement of papers, photos (rectangles with the X), embellishment (flower/blob shapes), headlines ("WORDS") and journaling (little squiggles). I might make notes beside the sketch about how bold or neutral the papers should be, or what type of concept this layout might be good for (e.g. "large space for journaling, for story or letter")

 

All of us scrapbookers see things we like, but may not be sure how to translate that design into our own work. So, I thought I'd show an example of how I use another layout for inspiration, but make it totally my own.

I saw this pretty layout on Elizabeth Kartchner's blog (she designs the Dear Lizzy line for American Crafts). I was specifically looking for one that used a lot of photos on one page.

 

Then, I drew a sketch to break the layout down into its basic parts--horizontal bar, general arrangement of photos, embellishments, and the headline. (Typically, I wouldn't do a sketch if I was doing my own layout right then, but consider this a "time elapsed" simulation, since a sketch would typically lie in wait for weeks or months until I needed the inspiration.)

While Elizabeth's layout had that nice white background and a patterned bar, the best paper I had in my stash for these photos of Kate (with the odd shade of green in her dress) was this sheet from the Project Life kit. So I reversed things and used a patterned background and solid bar. It worked out well, though, because the flowers on the sheet just became my embellishments, and I was able to use some of the cards from the kit.

When you look at them side by side, you may not see much similarity, but Elizabeth's layout gave me the inspiration and general structure I needed to create a fun and personal layout with ease.

How do you get ideas for scrapbook pages?

Working Mom Wednesday: In Praise of Day Care

Several moms I know (and by “know,” I mean I read their blogs) have just recently started their kids in day care or mother’s day out, and have expressed concern about it.

I definitely understand that concern. During my pregnancy, I actually started crying in my boss’ office while talking about the possibility of working from home because I did NOT want to put my baby in day care. That anxiety lasted well into my maternity leave, and I stressed out about it a lot as the time to return to work loomed closer.

A year and a half later, I have to say I'm actually a big fan of day care. More than just a fact of life, I actually see it as a big positive for Kate, and I hope that maybe my reasons for that will offer a little comfort or hope to moms who aren't so thrilled about dropping their kids off in the morning.

1. Independence. Sad as it may sound, it's actually very important for your child to learn how to be without you. It's inevitable that, at some point, you will have to be away from your child for a time, and if that one hour a week that your child is in the church nursery is the only time she is away from you, it will be harder for everyone involved. Learning to adjust to new people and trust that Mommy will come back is important for a child's development.
2. Social skills. In that same vein, being with other children and adults besides your immediate family helps children learn valuable social skills like sharing, waiting, following directions, and making friends. I'm an only child and was not around many other children until I started school, and I have always had trouble making friends and socializing in groups. A lot of that is probably nature--Kate seems much more outgoing than me anyway--but I still feel like it is really good for her to be around other children three days a week.

3. Organized activities. A lot of day cares now bill themselves as "child development centers," meaning that they are aiming to provide not just babysitting but educational enrichment. Kids learn through play, so it's not that I expect or want teachers to drill toddlers on the alphabet and such, but I think the intentionality and organization of the day encourages learning in ways I probably couldn't if I kept Kate at home myself. The structure and group setting of activities like circle time to sing songs and read books as a group, practicing sign language, and eating family-style at a table are good experiences for her social and cognitive development, I think.

4. Both parents can work. This is the obvious one, since a two-salaried household is the main reason parents put their kids in day care to begin with, but it seems that sometimes we view it as a necessary evil. That's how I saw it when Kate was first born. I loved my job and didn't want to quit, so clearly we had to find some outside child care, but I saw it as a concession or somehow choosing my own happiness over Kate's. Now, I almost feel like I would want Kate in some sort of childcare program several hours a week even if I didn't work outside the home. That's how valuable I think it is for her!

I know that if Mommy feels like she has to work and spends each day wishing she could stay home, or if a child is so shy that she really has trouble in day care, these reasons won't be much of a consolation. But if you're on the fence, I hope these benefits will help you feel better about your decision to put your child in day care.

What has been your experience with day care or Mother's Day Out?

Project Life (Aug. 30--Sept. 5)

This was a crazy week for me. On Monday, I started a new position within my company. Tuesday, I had Kate's stomach bug from last Sunday. Still went to work for most of the day, but felt cruddy. Wednesday and Thursday feeling better, and then Friday I took the day off to start a long Labor Day weekend. But of course, there were more details than that...

Monday 8/30: My new position officially started, but they're still working on getting the offices for our new unit ready. I'm not too disappointed, given how much I'll miss the view from my current office! I have a great view of the "Batman building," the Bridgestone Arena, and the Country Music Hall of Fame. I've also watched construction begin on Nashville's new convention center, right across the street.

Tuesday 8/31: My friend Maria sent me these gorgeous flowers as a "thank you" for photographing her triathlon last week. I had so much fun doing it, no such gesture was needed, but I love them nonetheless!

Wednesday 9/1: Elmo and Abby on YouTube is a new favorite. Since I'm still not totally sold on the TV for toddlers thing, it's nice Kate can get her Abby-fix in two-minute segments, rather than watching a whole hour-long episode.

Thursday 9/2: I was instructed to pick up a stash of Peter Pan Reduced Fat Crunchy peanut butter for my dad before coming to Louisville. Apparently most stores don't carry the crunchy version, but my parents discovered that the Food Lion in Clarksville, Tennessee, does. So, even though I'm generally a Kroger girl, I made a special trip for my dad's PB.

Friday 9/3: After breakfast at IHOP with Daddy, Kate and I drove up to Louisville to see Nala and Popi. We went to the park to play and swing. Kate is learning to say her grandparents' "names" now, so Kate and "Naya" were swinging in perfect harmony.

Saturday 9/4: We happened to be here for the big UK-UofL game, a non-conference rivalry that is a big deal in this neck of the woods. Though we are proud Louisvillians, our loyalty is to UK, my parents' alma mater. Dad got Kate a T-shirt for the occasion, and UK won pretty easily. Go Big Blue! C-A-T-S! Cats! Cats! Cats!

Sunday 9/5: While Nala saved many of my old toys for Kate, she'd still rather run off and climb the stairs. This is a hard house to watch a toddler in! We went to church at Middletown and shopped a little before Mom and Dad started getting the bug and Matt arrived, having driven up after church.

More fun in Louisville Monday and Tuesday. Hope you had a great Labor Day weekend too!

Treasures

I'm spending a long Labor Day weekend in Louisville with my parents, and--as my mom is still knee-deep in cleaning out and taking care of my grandparents' estate after their deaths earlier this year--I am getting to explore some amazing family treasures.

Turns out, my grandfather was a scrapper! He didn't put things in a book, but he liked to save special things, annotating them as to their significance. The coolest (I thought) was the boxers he was wearing when his Navy ship crossed the equator for the first time on May 20, 1935. He wrote on them in neat, capital letters with permanent marker, and carefully folded them in a box.

He also had his high school dipolma, final report card, and a dance card from a high school dance (noted as the first time he ever danced--he later met my grandmother in a dance hall).

My grandmother kept boxes for all of us with all the letters, cards, childish drawings, etc. we ever sent her. In my box, among all the cards and notes, I even found the map of my elementary school that was sent to them prior to Grandparents Day in second grade. Having all four of my grandparents at those Grandparents Day events was really special to me, so I loved seeing that map with the schedule of the day.

Postcards were kept separately in an album, and I went through those last night. There were cards from various relatives from trips they took to Europe and Hawaii, and all over the U.S. There were also postcards us granddaughters sent from camp, choir trips, and college.

The most amazing part of all this, though, were the postcards my grandfather sent to his parents during his first year in the Navy. He was so homesick, and these cards give a glimpse into his heart during that time. After some time at home in Ohio, he took a train back out to the west coast, and apparently was just horribly forlorn the whole way. Here's the "paper trail" I discovered from that train ride in 1935:

Nov. 6, 5:30 pm, Cleveland: "I feel better but still blue..."
Nov. 7, 3 am, Chicago: "Feel absolutely punk... Cried till I can't anymore."
Nov. 7, 3 pm: Des Moines: "The further [away] I get, the worse I feel."
Nov. 7, 6:30 pm, Omaha: "Lonesome as h---."
Nov. 8, 8 am, Wyoming: "Morning finds me here, and wishing I was there. My teeth hurt, my eyes, and my heart."
Nov. 9, noon, Las Vegas: "Still blue as the dickens..."

They may be one of the most special things I've ever come across.

I also finished transcribing my grandmother's autobiography, a project I began last time my parents visited us, and Mom brought the folder of typed pages. Nana liked using the typewriter, and several years ago my parents bought her an electric one. In 2007, apparently, she decided to write a little about her life story. It was only 18 typed pages (a little over eight when I typed it single-spaced), under 6500 words (like a long magazine article from The Atlantic or Christian Century) but contains so many wonderful details and memories.

My grandfather loved to talk, and told his favorite stories of his time in the Navy and at G.E. over and over again. My grandmother was content to let him dominate the conversation, and many of the stories we've heard from her were only because we specifically asked.

Now, we have a written record of her early years in Utah and California, how she and my grandfather met, their life together, and memories of her life's most exciting moments. I'm so glad to have this account of her life. We had so wanted her to live longer so she could get a word in edgewise and tell us more about herself. But, as in life, she followed Grandpa wherever he wanted to go. They have gone on together, and we are left with not just our own memories, but the treasures they left behind.

Shoulda Put A Ring On It

Beyonce's got nothing on Kate!



And now Kate and I are dancing off to Louisville this weekend for a long Labor Day holiday. Bon Voyage!

REVIEW: The Lolita Effect

Well, I finally finished The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It. It took me a while because I quickly discovered it was too heavy to read right before bed. I would read for a while, then turn out the light and lay there thinking about how my parenting choices, including the things I say, the clothes I buy for Kate, and the media I expose her to all affect the way she will think about sex, her body, her self-worth, etc.

It's a heavy read, not in terms of academic language or laborious chapters, but in terms of the weight it puts on a parent's soul, realizing the huge challenge of raising a healthy, well-adjusted child in today's media culture. Still, it is well worth the read for any parent--especially of daughters, but also of sons, as boys play a part in the harmful web of myths the author, M. Gigi Durham, calls "The Lolita Effect."

One of the biggest things I took away from the book is the conviction that I need to be happy with my body. The comments I make about myself in front of Kate will influence the way she thinks about her body and every woman's body. If I reinforce this notion that to be beautiful, a woman must be rail-thin, have no flab or cellulite, have large, perky breasts, flawless skin, etc., she will pick up on that, and learn to critique herself as well. There's a scene in Mean Girls where the popular girls are all critiquing themselves in front of a mirror, and the outsider (oh, Lindsay Lohan, what happened to you?!) thinks this is strange because she had apparently never thought to be hyper-critical of her own body. It was culturally learned. (There's a book listed in the footnotes on this topic that might be worth a read too: Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body.) In the same vein, I am ever more conscious about complimenting Kate's physical appearance to the exclusion of other attributes. (She's a very pretty girl, but is also smart and tenacious, and we should emphasize these things so that she does not equate her worth with her physical beauty.)

One thing that caught me off guard with this book was its very pro-sexuality perspective. Being steeped in Christian media, I realized that (even though I knew this was not a Christian book) I expected this book to couch its arguments in terms of modesty, and a general wariness of sex (or at least leaning toward the flip-a-switch-on-your-wedding-night sort of sexuality). It startled me and even rubbed me the wrong way to see the first line of the preface: "The Lolita Effect begins with the premise that children are sexual beings." That put me off, mainly because that seems to be language that pedophiles use, but the author's point is simply that sexuality is a normal part of humanity, not something that magically emerges at puberty. Durham is definitely not urging early sexual activity, but rather she is making a distinction between sexuality (an aspect of our being, like emotionality or physicality) and sexualization (the valuing of a person based on sexual appeal or inappropriate imposition of sexuality on another person). She does talk about sex in ways that may make more conservative readers uncomfortable, but the insights and tips Durham provides are nonetheless valuable for any parent, teacher, or youth worker seeking to help a child navigate the onslaught of conflicting sexual messages in our culture.

It is important to note that the author is not a psychologist or counselor, but a scholar of mass communication and journalism. Her emphasis is on the way media (particularly teen girl and women's fashion magazines, but also advertisments and various products and their marketing) impact girls' views of their bodies and the way they dress and express themselves--and on the way boys see girls and define attractiveness. Likewise, the guidance she offers to combat these harmful effects are based largely around media analysis. We must help kids understand that Barbies are not realistically proportioned, that models are airbrushed, and how businesses (and by extension, magazines dependent on ad revenue) thrive on making us feel inadequate without their beauty products. The "And What We Can Do About It" part of the subtitle is no ploy--a decent chunk of each chapter contains practical tips for adults, like talking to girls about clothes and the messages they convey, looking closely at advertisements, and analyzing boy-girl relationships (why does the girl care so much about what the boy thinks? etc.)

I feel I can barely scratch the surface in this review of all the insights I gleaned from this book, so allow me to share just a few more tidbits:

• We have a strange relationship with sex in our culture. We glorify it in the abstract, but can't talk intelligently about the issues surrounding it. Case in point: Seventeen magazine ran an article on vaginal health that was pulled from newsstands for being indecent and "too graphic," while articles on how to please your guy are unquestioned.
• The Barbie ideal would require size 4 hips, size 2 waist, and size 10 bust. Girls (and grown women--who's with me?) are seeking an unattainable standard. Teenagers are begging for Botox and boob jobs. Due to the globalization of media, even women in cultures that have historically had very different standards of beauty are striving for the western standard--Indian and African women bleaching their skin, Asian women having leg-lengthening surgery, etc.
• As we've long known, women dress for women, but they do it based on men's presumed standard. This one is ironic, because women really do seem to care and notice more what other women are wearing, but we are judging each other's looks based on what we think men want. Durham points out how layouts in Cosmo and Maxim often don't look that different--both men and women are being inundated with the same ideals of female sexiness.
• Female sexualization often bears the imagery of sex work. Durham describes a little girl who came to her door on Halloween dressed in a tube top, miniskirt, and fishnets, proclaiming herself a Bratz doll (worst kids' product EVER) and the author notes how similar the child looked to child prostitutes she'd seen in Cambodia. Sexy clothing for kids, like thong underwear, T-shirts with suggestive sayings on them, or the costume described above may seem innocent because the child herself is not trying to be sexy, but it normalizes a darker side of the world, where children are sold for sex--and not as far away as you'd think. Atlanta is a huge hub for child sex trafficking today.

This book had a bigger effect on my own thoughts and words than most books I've read lately. I have become more sensitized to the cultural norms and pressures surrounding sex and beauty, things that we often take for granted because they are so ingrained. I've started to self-analyze why I wear certain things like makeup or lingerie. Is it to please men? Women? Is it because it's what is "normal," and I simply don't question it? I was quite pleased to see in Durham's conclusion a description of her daughter playing dress up. The child wore a gauzy dress, a tool belt, high heels, and a cowboy hat... but Durham's final point was not to pick apart what is stereotypically feminine or masculine, as if all feminine things had been co-opted into this culture of sexualization. Rather, her point was that her daughter  was experiencing the innocent "joy of self-adornment"--dressing a certain way because it made her happy, not because anyone expected her to.

Overall, that is the message of The Lolita Effect: free girls from media-perpetuated expectations about sexuality so they can be themselves, nurture all their gifts and strengths, and be healthy, self-confident young women.

Working Mom Wednesday: Mommy's High Heel Shoes

I started a new position this week at work, so things are very busy. Exciting changes and opportunities, but leaving the "known" of a job I have loved for three years and moving into the "unknown" of this new venture is a little stressful. Lots of meetings, and then I got sick in the night Monday (probably the bug Kate had Sunday) and felt icky all day Tuesday. So, all that to say I'm going lazy on this week's Working Mom Wednesday and rerunning a post I wrote about a year ago.  Enjoy!

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Remember a couple years ago when every network had a show about powerful corporate women? There was "Lipstick Jungle," "Cashmere Mafia," and--the marker of any legitimate trend--an SNL spoof sketch called "Lady Business." Matt had a term for the leading characters of those shows: "Power Chicks."

Ever since then, "Power Chick" is Matt's term of endearment for my work persona. When I emerge from the bedroom in the morning dressed in a professional outfit, he says, "Look, Kate--Mommy's a Power Chick," and he encourages Kate that she can be anything she wants to be, including a "Power Chick like Mommy."

When, at two months postpartum, I started feeling really down and anxious about returning to work, I looked on Amazon for books about working motherhood. Amidst the titles for the working mothers themselves was a children's book called Mommy's High Heel Shoes. It's about a little girl playing in her mommy's closet after Mommy leaves for work, and thinking about all the different shoes Mommy wears for all the different things mommies do: going to work, making breakfast, working in the garden, walking the dog, going grocery shopping, going out with Daddy, etc.

Since discovering that book, Matt and I have referred to it often when discussing my working motherhood and our childcare arrangements. For my birthday, Matt even bought me a high heel shoe charm for my Pandora bracelet. I'm sure the charm is mainly intended for ladies with a shoe fetish, of which I am not one, but upon opening the box, I immediately knew the meaning of the gift from my wonderful, supportive husband.

As the author intended, my hope is that it will help Kate understand why Mommy goes off to work every day, and that "Power Chick" is just one of the hats (or shoes) that women can wear.

Judging from her playtime the next day, I think she gets it.