Keeping it real - that’s what I do. It’s who I am, how I live my life, and what my scrapbooks reflect. I scrapbook because I want my kids to know life unscripted. I want them to be able to look through the pages of our albums and see glimpses of their childhood – the good and the bad. I want to preserve the imperfections along with the victories, celebrate our successes and comment on our failures. I want future generations to hear my voice in the pages of my scrapbooks. The only way to accomplish that is to document the good and not so good.

It’s tempting to only showcase the positive side of our lives. We shy away from our frustrations and imperfections, but more often than not, it is through our mistakes and imperfections that we learn. Future generations will be inspired by our failures and trials as much as they will be inspired by our successes. They will be inspired by our lives – our whole lives… if we put them in our albums.

More than that, I want my kids to have a record of their childhood. I want them to have a visual reminder of our everyday lives from the constant mess in the kitchen made by 6 kids fixing their own after school snacks, to the perfectly mismatched flower garden they helped plant in the yard. I don’t know what will trigger their memories, so I want to capture it all. I want to give my children permission to live an imperfect life. I love the idea of my grown kids not feeling the pressure to maintain a perfect home for the sake of appearances. I don’t want a false view of our home to create a feeling of inadequacy as they get older and move out on their own.

Instead, I love that they will remember our house wasn’t always perfect. Sometimes it was cluttered and unkempt. And that’s okay. Because when it was that way, chances are, we were all out in the yard, riding bikes and enjoying each other. While I will be certain to scrapbook those fun family bike rides, I’ll also be sure to document the flip side as well. When we come in from playing, dirty and happy and tired the way only playing can get you - and our house sits as it is… I’ll snap a few photos to show the kids that sometimes it’s more important to play than it is to clean. Sometimes it’s okay for things to be messy.

I feel like scrapbooking and documenting life unscripted is such a liberating way to approach this hobby. I am allowing myself to use the not so great photos. I am giving myself permission to take pictures before I clean. I am celebrating the fact that real life – dirty, messy and imperfect – is wonderful. And as I do this, because of my personality, the readers of my albums will hear my voice. My children will flip through the pages and smile as they remember the messes they were so helpful in creating. All of them will likely be tied to a memory. And in the end, that’s what I’m doing… preserving memories - even the ones with a little dirt on them.