A Boy and His Dog

It's been an exciting couple of days. I received some lovely comments about my first entry, my foray into blogging, and my page. Thank you to everyone who visited, even if it was only for a minute or two. It was incredibly exciting to discover I had a visitor from Germany and from New Zealand, although I suspect the New Zealander was my friend Vanessa Lisowski who came here via facebook.

I first started scrapbooking over a year ago. I have so many pictures of my son, and I was trying to figure out what to do with them. It made sense to start working on his scrapbook, and I ambitiously thought I would be able to finish his first year album before his birthday. It was summer after all, and I thought I had so much time on my hands. What I discovered, very quickly, is that I am an obsessive perfectionist when it comes to crafts. I need things to be just right before I can commit to actually taping, gluing, cutting, punching, or writing. And that's just using the blank pages that Martha inserts in her sleeves. Don't get me started on using my beautiful papers.

Before I started, I spent a lot of time looking at different sites, different blogs, different companies. I sifted through countless bins at Michaels. My friend Lesley thinks it's contradictory, but I don't like cute. I don't like flowery (I have a little boy! I have to find alternatives to flowers). I don't like saccharine. But I do like good design, balanced layouts, interesting placements and playing with patterns and colors. I do enjoy a beautiful print or an interesting texture. On occasion, I have been known to include a touch of glitter. And I absolutely insist on good photography. I am always surprised by people who pour so much time and energy into a page but use mediocre photos. It's more than difficult to measure up to expectations when I was raised by a graphic designer, my brother is a designer and professional photographer, and my husband is a fine artist. At times, there seems to be little room for my amateurish pursuits.

However, lately it seems a lot easier not to take myself so seriously. After a long, hard day at work and a short couple of hours with Ben, who has the time or energy anyway? And if I agonize too much about what to post, it'll never happen. So for now, I'm going with my big sister Amethyst's advice, paraphrased from William Stafford's You Must Revise Your Life: when you find you have writer's block, lower your expectations! So for now, I'm going to focus on being consistent instead of being a creative genius.

A Boy and His Dog
I used MS Kids again for my materials, including the main page, the flags, and the zigzag embellishment running down the center of the page. The silver glitter letters are American Crafts Dear Lizzy and the black block caps are from Recollections. I would like to attribute the layout to someone, but I honestly can't remember since I looked at so many sites. I flipped back through my bookmarks, and nothing stands out. Is it possible I came up with this one on my own?

The photo is from my time on maternity leave when it was just Ben and me. He loved lying on his playgym and spent many a morning staring at himself and talking to himself in the mirror. My little man was also quite pensive back them, and he would look out the window and just think all kinds of little thoughts. Our dog Jasper stayed as close as I would allow, and he often tried to sneak even closer to Ben. He just wanted to be close to his boy, and he would sometimes crawl over slowly just to sniff or lick his hands or his feet.