Five Pages | More Romantic Scrapbooking

I mentioned on the podcast that my “Jason and Jen” scrapbook was one of my biggest- it has nearly 50 pages. So clearly I have no problem scrapping about that. But the biggest thing that I took from the Romantic Scrapbooking class was ideas on scrapping the early times in our relationship. It seemed so “big” that I wasn’t sure how to tackle it. It’s a lot easier for me to do present-day pages about our relationship.

Noell gave several ideas for specific pages, and listening to her talk inspired even more for me. I feel like I have a much better grasp of the kinds of stories I want to tell now. I think it’s the kind of class you can revisit over again and still come up with fresh ideas, especially the places, dating and gratitude sections.

I posted earlier that I’ve done several more pages for the Romantic Scrapbooking class that I haven’t shared. I had emailed them to Noell after I made them, but a couple of them seemed too personal to put here on the blog. It’s one thing to be cheesy, but it was a lot harder to pour my heart out about all the things I was feeling in the beginning of our relationship. But I don’t shy away from telling big emo stories. So here we go…

The first two pages go together. They tell the story of the worries I had before our first meeting “in real life”, and how the exact moment when I knew he was The One. I was excited when I saw that journaling card. It was the perfect fit for what I wanted to say!

Journaling reads- Follow your heart and you’ll never get lost. In the beginning of our relationship we were in an interesting position. We knew we had deep feelings for each other. We had even said “those words”. But how can you really know if someone is right for you until you see them in person? How can you tell someone that you love them without ever having touched each other? Was it really “real”, or were we making a mistake putting such a huge investment in this new relationship?

We decided to meet on May 23, 2005. He flew from his home in West Palm to Nashville. We were going to meet at the airport. We were both so nervous! I remember seeing him walking through the airport towards me with the biggest smile on his face. Then he wrapped his arms around me.

They say that “You just know”. Before that day, I thought that saying was nonesense. But when he hugged me for the first time, when I got to touch him and smell him for the first time… I knew.

The next page wasn’t inspired by a specific prompt, but when I was thinking about our early relationship, it made me remember the bad attitude I used to have about marriage so I wanted to add it in here too.

Journaling reads- I always thought getting married would be like living in a cage. I do not like committment. Growing up, Marriage was “the M word”. That, coupled with a few disasterous relationships, really soured me on marriage and relationships in general. But once I met you, all of that changed. Before you, I thought “freedom” was dating whoever I wanted whenever I wanted. But you showed me a different kind of freedom that I’d never had before- freedom to be myself. Freedom to laugh and cry and love. Freedom to tell you what I wanted and needed without embarassment or reservation. Freedom to accept what you had to give. Freedom to give you all of myself. Because you accepted me- all of me. And you loved me. You showed me that committment can be the most freeing thing in the world.

This page was done for the Gratitude prompt. Definitely a favorite, I could do 100 more pages on things about him that I’m grateful for.

Journaling reads- We always say “Life is more awesome with you”. Even when bad things happen, it’s so nice to know we have each other to lean on.

And to bring things back to normal pages, as opposed to super sappy pages, I used the Favorite Places prompt to list out some of the places we like to travel. I have pages on most of these in other albums, but I thought it was a nice addition to the All About Us album. I made sure to add the date in there. I will be curious to see what this list looks like in five years!

Journaling reads- A few of my favorite things (as of Feb. 2014) St. Augustine, New Orleans, The Keys, New York, Tampa, Nashville, L.A., Chattanooga, Titusville, Washington D.C.

I have a couple more pages to share, but this post is getting out of control! Thanks for looking 🙂