Writing, Scrapbooking & Other Hobbies

Although not as avid a photographer as my husband (you can see some of his pictures on his blog Creative Canvas), I still take my fair share of photographs. When I was still single I would make sure that once my prints were ready (pre-digital camera era) I would stick them in an album and neatly caption each scene or occasion. After a while this neat cataloguing gave way to creating scrapbooks. Now I now that scrap booking has taken over the world, but i think I was one of the early converts to his hobby over here. I would cut out old cards, wrapping paper or keep small bits and pieces of interesting ribbons or lace and kept everything stored up in a box to use for my scrapbooks. Then I travelled to the US, the scrap booking capital of the world, and I was introduced to stores like Michaels and Hobby Lobby. It was hard for me to refrain from filling my trolleys up with hundreds of neat little gadgets which I could use for my scrapbooks. That is not to say that I would walk out of the stores empty-handed but at least I did not get carried away too much. I managed to create a scrap-book full of wedding pictures taken by relatives and I have to say, that although the pictures are not top notch, since they were not taken by professionals, these pictures tell a different story and the wedding scrapbook is one of my favourite creations. It was also my last creation. After I got married I resolved to create a scrapbook for memorable family events. Well, the last entry was our honeymoon. That was 5 and a half years ago. I am full of ideas but finding the time to actually create them is a different story. Digital scrap booking could make things easier for me but somehow, it is not the same as having created a page from nothing a getting everything right the first time. Also with digital scrapbooks I miss the texture that layering different types of paper on top of each other gives.

Which brings me to photographs. Digital photographs are gorgeous and it costs nothing to view them: you just download them and there you have it. But I just love having the actual pictures printed. I know it costs money and they take up space but if I want to share the photos, I find it easier just taking an album over to a friend or relative than having to upload all my downloaded pictures onto a website ... which, of course, means that the friend or relative has to have a computer handy. I am rambling on and on today I know. I guess it has to do with having a constantly runny nose (I am trying to get your sympathy here, dear readers).

This of course brings me to writing. I love to write and I wish I could plug something to my brain so that as soon as I have a plot or an idea for a story, it can be automatically written or saved on some portable hard disc. That would save me so much time since I then would not have to wait to get to a keyboard to write down my thoughts, by which time, most of them would have evaporated or else changed in such a way as to be unrecognisable. At the moment there are 3 or 4 writing competitions for which I would like to enter a story. I am trying to write 2 stories simultaneously. Sometimes I have the whole thing plotted in my head but then, once I start to write, the story seems to take on a life of its own and I sometimes end up with a very different story to the original I had in mind. From what I have learnt from other writers, this is a very common thing but I tend to second guess myself and to wonder if the original story would have been better.

Apart from all that I am really enjoying Blogging and getting to know the community of Bloggers. Naturally, I like to read the blogs that my friends post and I also try to write some articles for Triond, every now and then. I really enjoy doing all this but I wish I could have some extra hours every day ... oh, and it would also be great if supper would cook by itself :)