Good morning, everyone!
Marie and I are so excited to be co-hosting this week—since we are sisters, we thought it would be fun to share all kinds of family projects this week; some you can tackle independently, but lots more are designed to get family members involved whether they scrapbook or not. We want to emphasize that everyone has memories, funny stories, and heartfelt wishes to share—don't let a little thing like "not being a scrapbooker" get in the way of creating a family history that can be enjoyed right now and for generations to come.
Before we get started, we need to preface our week with two pieces of information:
1.) We often refer to ourselves as Willis Sisters, because Willis is our maiden name. There are three of us; me, Marie, and our youngest sister Katherine. Katherine does not consider herself a scrapbooker, but we think that's silly because a.) she is an excellent blogger/documentarian, b.) she takes fantastic photos, and c.) she likes family stories as much as we do.
2.) We have a reputation for occasionally being collectively... crazy. : ) We already know, so no need to point it out again, thankyouverymuch.
First up today: a little album I made that collects all our funny (and crazy) sister stories in one place. It doesn't exactly fit the description of a typical scrapbook, but we're working on broadening that definition this week anyway. This is more a gussied-up anthology.
Here is the opening page (I apologize for the sorry state of my scanner's cleanliness.)
I saw a Venn diagram posted on Tumblr not long ago and it inspired me to make my own. Perfect as an introduction for this collection of stories!
I collected already-written stories from my blog, Marie's blog, and Katherine's blog and reformatted them in a way that unified the album. We all had fits of giggles re-reading all these stories. These are some entries about our shared ridiculous startle noises that more often than not, becomes fodder for blog entries (and now albums). Sadly (or happily?), there are many more—this is just a sampling!
A little caption of black paper with white text pulls it all together and makes it easy to add more stories that will inevitably happen in the future!
There are sections for our funny startle noise stories, our vigilant consumer advocate habits, and other stories that we find hilarious (though others have accused of being eccentric or downright weird. Hmph.) Like this one, in which the small Willis sisters sold Girl Scout cookies to dead people. (You can read about it here and here. It's not quite as bad as it sounds...right?)
••••••••
A few years ago, Marie and her husband BJ created a little book to give for a gift that included some creative poetry, family songs, and other funny bits of family lore.
It's a small paperback book created through Apple's iPhoto photobook service. What a treasure to have some of these things both from our family growing up and our own individual families collected into one place! Marie recently created a page using one of the poems included as her journaling:
Now these rules might not make sense to all of you, but to us? Priceless. Of course, our rules aren't necessarily supposed to make sense to all of you—the point is, it's really fun to get together with your siblings or parents or cousins or aunts and uncles (or all of them!) and make up a list of the funny family rules that apply in your family and turn them into a page. Collaboration is not only good for the soul and the funny bone, but it's also a priceless way to document more than just one angle of the story.
Marie thought it would be fun to turn some of those rules into some décor for her children (my niece and nephew) to enjoy; each sign is printed and framed near the play area in her house. And I know you are wondering, yes, the first and last of the signs are actual rules in our house growing up. And the middle sign was some advice I gave her after she prematurely told her four-year-old that she didn't have to have quiet time anymore. That has since changed.
Tomorrow Marie will share a few ideas for why two (or more) memories are better than one! Thanks for stopping by today.
