As many of you know if you follow me on YouTube, I recently lost my last little Doxie.
Thirty-three years ago, when Jeff and I got engaged, I gave him our first Dachshund, Sampson. He was the sweetest, easiest dog anyone could ever ask for and lived to be 18 years old. When he passed away, our girls were about 10 and 12 years old, and all four of us were heartbroken.
My daddy, who loved animals as much as anyone I’ve ever known, gave me some advice I’ll never forget: “There’s nothing better for a broken heart than a new puppy.”
At the time, getting another dog was the last thing we wanted. Our hearts were still so sad. But we took his advice and brought home not one puppy, but two—a brother and sister from the same litter.
Hokie and Gracie.
Let’s just say these two were VERY different from Sampson.
Looking back, we probably should have researched the breeder a little more because from day one they were a handful! They kept us on our toes and tested our patience more times than I can count. In fact, we eventually hired a dog psychologist. Yes, really!
But despite the chaos, the chewed-up belongings, and the shy aggressive tendencies that led to BITING CLIENTS AND U.P.S. DELIVERY PEOPLE, we fell completely in love with them.
This blog is dedicated to those two little rascals who brought us plenty of headaches—but far more joy.
To honor their lives, I created a Scrap Journal using the Green Apple Scrap Journal from Creative Memories.
It turned out to be the perfect size for a coffee-table album. Truthfully, while I was making it, I could only work on a few pages at a time before tears would send me walking away. But now that it’s finished, it has become one of my favorite books to revisit.
And that’s what got me thinking about something important.
As scrapbookers, we often focus on preserving photos. But sometimes the most precious memories aren’t actually captured in a photograph.
Would I have remembered that Hokie once lifted his little leg and PEED on me while I sat at the curb waiting for the school bus?
Would I have remembered how he would POOP in my shoe whenever he was mad that I went out of town?
Or when little, agile , 9 pd., Gracie leaped from the FLOOR to the KITCHEN CHAIR up onto the KITCHEN TABLE to devour the left over CHICKEN THIGHS ,BONE AND ALL, when we forgot to put it in the fridge before going to bed?
Or the day Hokie and Gracie tore into multiple boxes packed up with goodies for my next weekend retreat and ate like, 50 chocolate kisses each? (At least they didn’t also eat all the Caramel Cremes or else, they would have really been in trouble because those are my FAV!)
Those stories make us laugh today. Yet none of them exist in a photo.
And that’s why I believe journaling is one of the greatest gifts we can give our future selves and our families.
Photos remind us what happened.
Journaling reminds us how it felt.
The funny habits.
The nicknames.
Things they did that drove us crazy.
Quirks that make them uniquely ours.
Those are often the first memories to fade with time.
In this album, I filled every space I could with stories. Sometimes there wasn’t room for a journaling box, so I simply wrote wherever I could. The stories mattered more than perfect design.
Of course, I still packed in lots of photos! Peekaboo Pockets and the Cascade Spacers allowed me to include multiple photos in a single space, and the Scrap Journal Templates made it easy to create mosaic-style pages with many pictures.
I also used the Photo Trimming Templates often because with this smaller size album, I needed to crop more off the photos than I typically do, and it allowed me to do so confidently that I was not cutting off anything that would ruin the magic of the photos.
But when I flip through this album today, it isn’t the layouts I treasure most.
It’s the stories.
The stories are what bring smiles instead of tears.
So here’s my challenge for you:
What story deserves to be told before it’s forgotten?
Maybe it’s a beloved pet. A grandparent. A childhood memory. A family vacation. Or simply the everyday moments that made someone special.
Whatever project is on your heart right now, don’t just save the photos.
Save the stories.
Years from now, those words may become your family’s favorite part of the album.
Thanks so much for reading my blog! Be sure to check out the page layouts I’ll be adding under the Getting Started tab, and don’t forget to follow me on YouTube at Scrapbook with Beckie.
Also, if you do not have a Creative Memories advisor and you would like to be on my VIP facebook group, please send a request to join to Beckie’s Creative Memories Scrapper group on Facebook.
Blessings,
Beckie Belote
email me with any questions 😉 beckie@scrapbookwithbeckie.com
Shop the fun items mentioned at www.creativememories.com/user/beckiebelote
