Scrapbook Albums

Sometime after we found out about Emma's diagnosis, Tim's cousin Jamie sent us a pre-made scrapbook album. It was adorable and I loved it (still do)! In the hospital, we were sent home with another pre-made scrapbook album (by pre-made, I mean all the pages are cute and decorated already and they are just waiting for you to put your pictures in). We filled both of them with pictures right away and were able to display them at Emma's memorial service. Pictured below are both of the albums, the one on the left being from the hospital and the one on the right being from Jamie.

About a month after Emma left us, we met with the sweet ladies from Angel Watch again. Two of them had already seen Emma (one was our nurse when Emma was delivered and the other one came in afterwards and helped us bathe and dress Emma, took pictures, and did molds of her hands and feet). However, the third lady had not seen Emma and asked if we had any pictures. I brought out these two albums for all three of them to look at. They loved looking at the pictures and both the nurse and Carolyn, the lady who had not met Emma, were astonished at how beautiful they were. I told them that Tim's cousin had made one and that Heather had given us the other one (Heather being the one who helped us bathe and dress Emma, etc.). Heather then explained that a mother had donated about 100 of those albums and she was able to give them out to families that lost their babies or young children, but that she was almost out of them.

I decided to contact several scrapbook stores to see if they would donate any supplies so that I might be able to make some more books like these to pass on to other mothers. I didn't think I would get much of a response, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to at least try. Well, a sweet lady from amillionlittlethings.com responded to me and told me that she would love to help. She said that she would put a box of things together and send it my way. I received that box yesterday and was completely amazed! There was probably hundreds of dollars worth of stuff in there! Take a look for yourself at the stuff she sent (and I don't think the picture does is justice because you can't see all of the stuff underneath other stuff). There's tons of paper and embellishments.

So now Tim and I are trying to figure out how to best go about this all. The thing we most need now is albums to hold everything in. We've discussed various ways that we could home-make some albums, and we've looked a little online at albums we could purchase. I'm wondering if any of you have any great ideas of what we should do for albums. We like the 8x8 size, but most of the paper is 12x12 so we could do that size as well. Also, we're totally fine with not having everything uniform. If some are 8x8 and some are 12x12 and some are 6x6 and some are 8 1/2x11, we're totally fine with that. But I'm looking for your guys' input on any ideas on the best way to make/purchase albums.

Next thing we're trying to figure out is the process of assembling everything. We talked of offering it to one of the young men at our church who might use it for an eagle project or working with a young woman on it for a value project or discussing it with the Humanitarian Committee, doing it for a mutual (youth group) activity, or just putting something together ourselves and just inviting whoever wants to come and help to do so. Any thoughts? Would any of you be interested in getting together at some time and helping us? Also, if it's something that we put together ourselves and you're interested in joining us, would some time during the day be best or in the evening or on a Saturday? We were thinking that we might just set up some tables in our church's gym so that we can spread everything out and work on it.

As you can see, we're a pretty indecisive couple. So I'm writing this because I'm way excited for this all to take place and because we're trying to figure out the best way to go about it all.

Also, if you're someone who loves to scrapbook, but have switched to mostly digital stuff, we'd love to take any donations of your old stuff that you'd be willing to give. Or if you're interested in contributing in a monetary way to help us purchase albums, that would be more than welcome as well. Or if you know someone who could get us a discount or really anything you can think of. So if you have any thoughts or comments or are interested in participating or helping out in any way, please leave a comment or email me at emmasstory@gmail.com (or my personal email address if you have it).

Thank you!