Once upon a time there was a mom of four with a gazillion and a half photographs of her beautiful little children.  Long before there were four children and a gazillion photographs this mom took up scrapbooking.  Over the years, she spent lots and lots of money on cardstock.  Fancy patterned paper.  And embellishments.  Over the years, this same mom became bogged down with the duties of rearing those four beautiful little children and her extensive collection of scrapbooking paraphernalia was relegated to a too-high-to-reach shelf in the closet.

The end.

Well, almost.

One day the mom discovered a brilliant (and simple!) way to rescue those gazillion photos from the depths of her digital SLR memory stick.  (Cue singing angels).  And thus, a new scrapbook was born.

I’d like to share that scrapbook with you today.

Isn’t it purty?

When it was naked, it was but a blank book with hard cardboard covers.  I got it at Joanne years ago (remember that stockpile of supplies?), so I don’t know where you might find such a thing nowadays.

I used paint, chipboard letters and fabric scraps to breath life into it.

And then, I filled it with the absolute best (hence the title on the cover of the book) of all the photos we took in 2008.

I used spare embellishments (and extras purchased from the dollar spot at Joanne) to adorn the facing pages.  It was super easy.  And I didn’t stress about each page being perfect, so it turned out informal and fun.  I highly recommend this method for slacker scrapbookers like myself.

Because an end result like this totally works for me.  I bet it’ll work for you too.