Where I’ve Been.

Sorry gang. I’m sure you’ve all been checking here to see if I’ve updated lately, right? Uh huh. That’s what I thought. Well, I’ve been busy. And, as per usual, not busy with the things I should be doing, but instead the things I want to be doing.

I signed up for a free online class that Jessica Sprague is offering. The class is called “Stories in Hand”. It started yesterday and registration for it was closed last night. But those of us that did sign up are having a blast! No one was even really sure what the class was about. Jessica simply said she was going to teach us the system she developed for telling her stories, organizing her thoughts, etc. It sounded intriguing and it was free, so I figured what the hell.

I’m SO glad I signed up! It’s fantastic! We had been given a list of a few supplies before the class started, so I had picked those up last week. Yesterday, for the first day, we were given files to print out for the cover and the tabbed pages for the binders we had bought. Here’s the cover:

And here are the tabbed pages we printed out and put into the binder. There’s one for “Roots”, one for “Self” and one for “Family”.

This is what they look like:

Within the Family tab, she told us to create sub-tabs for each member of our family. So I have one for Steve and one for each girl:

So that was it for day 1 of the class. Today, I got very excited when I saw what the next part was. We were given more files to print out for in the binder. And on these files are hundreds and hundreds of questions to ask yourself and then write/scrap/video/etc. about. Whatever way we decide to document it is up to us. The class is more about teaching us how to keep track of what we want to document, prompts for possible things that will be forgotten if someone doesn’t write them down, etc.

These are the contents and questions we were given for each of the tabbed sections:

There are at least 20 pages of those questions for EACH tab. My god, I’ll be writing and scrapbooking forever. LOL! I’m sooo excited though! I really DO think it’s important to document the things in your life. The things that will be long forgotten after your gone unless someone takes the time to record it forever. Think of how cool it will be for my kids to have the stories behind these types of questions. I wish I had one of these from my mom!

Jessica also gave us these pages to print out for the binder:

We were told to put at least one of those in each tabbed and sub-tabbed section, to write down the stories you want to eventually document. So cool!

I’m not sure what we’re doing tomorrow, but I believe Jessica mentioned making a small notebook or something. After that, we’re going to begin actually using the system, doing exercises, etc. I’m pretty pumped! I wish I would’ve posted about the class here before registration was over so some more of you could have signed up. It’s NOT for scrapbookers. There’s certainly a lot of us there, but many haven’t scrapped a day in their lives. The pages and files are as easy as clicking Print, cutting them down, and punching holes in them. So no comments here about me being creative. This is ALL Jessica this time. LOL!

If she ever offers this class again in the future, I’ll make sure to post about it here and I URGE all of you to sign up for it. Even if you don’t want to actually scrap/write/etc., it’s cool just having the hundreds of questions at your fingertips. I can see it being fun for your kids to pick one of the questions and let you tell them the story. Just awesome stuff.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been the past few days. Printing, cutting, and punching holes. I’ll be back later though. I NEED to post the photos of my evil sister-in-law and my mother-in-law sliding down the ginormous slide at Bounce U over the weekend. Their facial expressions are simply priceless. LOL!

Later gang! :)