"Isn't scrapbooking just so much work?"
excerpt from Full of Love

I always tell people I can make 10 album pages in 10 minutes or less and they can too. Now, it definitely helps when you've already got great stories and photos up your sleeve (more on those later), but here are some of the other things I do.

Number one, I make time to make my albums, and it doesn't have to be a lot of time. Whether it's once a week, once every couple of weeks or once a month – I'll just schedule it like it's a hair appointment. If you let boxes and boxes of photos pile up, it's going to seem like it's difficult. And believe me, album-making should not be difficult.

I also multitask. I'll take a few pages with me in my bag so I can work on them between takes at a photo shoot. (You'd be surprised how much waiting around goes on at a photo shoot!) When I'm home, I'm almost always scrapping with my baby girl. It's one of the best ways we spend time together. And the photos let me tell her family stories and even teach her things, from colors to counting: What color shirt is Mommy wearing there? How many flowers are in this picture? Every child loves a storybook. So why not make it a personal one, filled with their favorite things? Pictures!

Plus, I look at making albums as a series of baby steps I can do over time. That way I'm never overwhelmed thinking I have to do it all at once. It starts when I print my photos. I write the date on the back of each one (no ball-point pens!), then I sort them into plain white 8x10 envelopes by how I think I'll use them – usually by event. I'll write myself little reminders on the envelopes about something somebody said that day or the one thing I want to be sure I journal about. Even if I don't get around to making the pages right away, those envelopes and those notes give me a huge head start when I finally do. They almost turn making the album into an assembly-line process.

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