What's the one thing/event you couldn't scrap?

I guess the one that springs to mind to me is my children with the chicken pox. I may do a LO with the story of it some day, but I have no pictures and the kids wouldn't let me take any. They had both had the chicken pox vaccine and still got the chicken pox. My kids frequently over the years have said they didn't want their picture take and I took one any ways. This time though they were teenagers and quite embarrassed about how they looked and I decided to respect their decision on this one. Had they been 4, 5, 6 years old they would have been fair game.

I still pine over not having pictures of them all spotted up.

Lynne

I'm firmly of the opinion that a scrapbook is not a photo album. It is a

*memory* book. You can scrap a memory with journaling and embellishments ... even graphics you print from the Web. So don't let the lack of photos stop you from adding this event to your scrapbook.

Gina

K> I guess the one that springs to mind to me is my children with the chicken

I already have Chicken Pox paper from TLC. So, I will do a LO eventually. Thanks for the words of encouragement. I've thought a story would be good, but I also thought maybe having my kids stick some dots of paper on them and taking a picture might be funny too.

Lynne

My family believes in taking casket pictures, I really dont understand it but its a very old tradition. My Grama has one of my Grampa and I really loved him, I could never scrap that. Tammie

When I inherited my grandmother's pictures I inherited pictures of my grandfather in his casket. Like Tammy I could not see adding those to any album. My grandfather's death, on my birthday no less, was one of the most difficult days of my life. His death and my birth are forever linked. There are other events I would never scrap.

M-C

Interesting topic Deb... I interpreted your question in two ways...1) what event can't I scrapbook because I don't want too and 2) events that I can't scrapbook because of a missed opportunity.

One thing don't really get into scrapping events outside my family. For example, I wouldn't scrap the business trip to France. I didn't take a camera but a co-worker did. She sent me the pictures afterward, but I can't see me scrapping them.

One missed event was my first child's nursery in the first house my DH and I ever owned. I worked for weeks stenciling a boarder of rocking horses and teddy bears. My husband painted 5 of his own character animals on the walls. I never thought to take pictures (I wasn't a scrap-booker then). Before my daughter turned one, we had an opportunity to move to a farm. At closing the new owners asked if they could move some boxes into the garage during the 30-day period we had to move out. We agreed because we were mostly in our new home but still had a few items to move yet. The next day we went to the old house to move the remaining stuff and to take a final walk-through. I used my key and walked in on the woman in her robe. They had COMPLETELY moved in!! I missed the opportunity to say "good-bye" to the house. When I started my DD's album I discovered that I had NOTHING of the work we did. She doesn't remember the room or the love that went into it.

I compensated by using rocking horses and teddy bears as the album cover and several background pages. I found ONE picture of DD in her crib and you can just see a corner of the "dog" character. No one but me and my DH would know what it is but I journaled it the best I could.

-- Amy L.

Oops! I just thought of something else...

It took my Dad about 5 years to die. I can't say that we really know what he died from. Every family member has their own opinion.

Some people find it therapeutic to capture the memories of the last few years of a loved one suffering from a terminal illness. I never believed my Dad had terminal illness until he entered hospice. I don't think I could scrap the life journey over those last few years of my Dad's life.

If you know what to look for, you can see evidence of the steady decline in my children albums. The early pictures show Dad at family gatherings. Then I have pictures of the kids sitting on his lap while he sits in a wheelchair in a restaurant parking lot on Mother's Day. I did scrap that picture when I was at the Barn last May. I put a word or two in the journal that indicated we lost Dad later that year (from when the photo was taken).

Ok...I'm depressing myself...I'm going back to work so I can shake myself out of these melancholy thoughts! :-)

-- Amy L.

Amy, We lived in our "old" house as a family for 21 years. Two of my older children left home from there and our youngest was there less than a year. When the house was finally empty I went through and took pictures of every room thinking I would scrap them some day. Now when I look at those pictures it hurts to see the rooms empty...devoid of our 21 years of our lives. I did also take photos of the rooms when we had it on the market and people were coming in and looking. It was much emptier as we had already moved a lot to storage, but we can still see our home and our life there. Those I will scrap.

Sandy