Each Friday, I write a post about Minimalist Scrapbooking.

A few weeks ago, I introduced the idea of Minimalist Scrapbooking. For me, the goal is to use the supplies I already have instead of buying a new supplies. A month later, I have not bought any new scrapbook supplies. I have, however, gone on a bit of online scrapbooking class binge.

Here’s what my scrapbooking expenses have been for the previous month:
$20 Pro Press Releases from Big Picture Classes
$15 Blogging for Scrapbookers from Shimelle Laine
$15 Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers from Shimelle Laine
$32 Spring Training from Ella Publishing
$14 Scrapbook On the Road from Ali Edwards

I also purchased Lightroom to manage my photos on my computer. I had been using Memory Manager 3.0 from Creative Memories and have been very happy with this program, but it was not meeting my needs anymore. The biggest change was that I bought an Eye-Fi SD card a few months ago and you can connect the card with Lightroom so that my photos will go straight into Lightroom eliminating a step in my process. Lightroom can then be connected to Flickr, too. So, I eliminate two steps using Lightroom over Memory Manager. Lightroom expense:
$94.56 (I got the student/teacher edition because I am a college instructor in real life.)

The only other purchase I made was book binding rings ($4.50) to complete my Scrapbook On the Road project. The book binding rings was an unexpected purchase. I already had book binding rings, but only had two in the size I needed, so I had to purchase more so that my book won’t fall apart.

April’s expenses: $195.06

So, was April a successful month in scrapbooking minimalism? I’d say somewhat. Three of the courses ($50 worth) were business expenses. I already reviewed Scrapbook On the Road and plan to review Spring Training, too. Therefore, all of the courses are currently or could become business expenses.

I would also say that the purchase of Lightroom, though expensive, is one of those purchases that will simplify the process of managing my photos. Moreover, this is a one and done purchase (until they upgrade it). It was a big expense, but I won’t have an expense like that in the future.

What about you? Have you considered how much money you spend on scrapbook-related purchases? I don’t want anyone to feel guilty over how much they are spending or envious over how much other people are spending. If you want to spend $5 a month or $500 a month on your supplies, that’s your business. My point of this minimalist scrapbooking exercise is to focus on making purchases that are really necessary versus making purchases just because. My other point is to get me to use what I already have. This works for me because I have plenty of supplies to choose from. I realize this doesn’t work for everyone

My goal for May is to spend less on scrapbooking than I did in April. Do you think I can do it?

Comment below or join the conversation on facebook or twitter.

What a fantastic idea!

I immediately opened an email account for my daughter. Getting her an email account was on my to-do list anyway. I hadn’t done it yet because I wasn’t really sure what I would do with it besides secure her name attached to a gmail account.

Enter the Google Chrome advertisement.

This simplifies scrapbooking for my daughter. (Minimalist scrapbooking, anyone?)

Right now, I do make scrapbooks for my daughter and for the family. What tends to happen is that I end up taking a million photos, printing half of those, and not wanting multiple pages of the same thing in the family albums. I’ll make one or two layouts for the family album and end up with one layout for my daughter’s album. I know I can’t keep this up, nor do I want to keep this up. I don’t want my daughter going off to college with 18 scrapbooks, one for each year of her life. I also don’t want to make separate digital scrapbook pages for her in addition to the family layouts.

Now, the idea of setting up an email account for and periodically emailing her photos, video, and memories is brilliant. I could even forward her news items (such as Osama bin laden’s death or the earthquake/tsunami in Japan). Then at some point in time, I’ll give her the password and she can look through these emails. If she wants to download the photos and make her own scrapbook with them, then great. If not, that’s ok, too. Either way, going off to college with an inbox full of stories is a lot more portable than a bunch of physical scrapbooks. Don’t get me wrong, I am going to continue to scrapbook whatever stories I want, but now, I will email stories to my daughter and give up the extra scrapbook. Of course, I will probably keep a scaled down version of a scrapbook for her….more along the lines of a school memories book for school photos, report cards, and other items along those lines. I think I’m rambling now, but you hopefully get the idea.

What do you think about doing a “Dear Sophie” style scrapbook for your own children?