Welcome to the Your Story Matters blog hop! You should have come here from Alison at Scrapping in Singapore. If not, you can start here and work your way around the circle, or you can go back to the beginning to start with our fearless leader Lain at Layout a Day.

This past summer, I had the pleasure of joining fellow members of ScrapHappy in contributing to the ebook Your Story Matters. It is now available for sale! This is SO exciting!

First of all, this was a collaborative effort of the members of ScrapHappy. ScrapHappy is an online scrapbooking community, where anyone and everyone is welcome. This is really the nicest, most supportive, and funny group of people I know, online or in real life. Of course I jumped at the chance to make an ebook with them!

Second, the subject matter is so important to me as a scrapbooker. The topics covered everything from “How you and your husband met,” to “Your greatest fault (or strength.)” I firmly believe that the most important pages that you can do, the ones that will mean the most to you and your family in the future, are the ones that tell the story of your everyday, imperfect life. I can hear the naysayers, saying their lives are boring, but think about it from the other side of the coin. Aren’t you the least bit curious about what your great-grandmother ate for breakfast on a routine basis? Wouldn’t you love to know what she carried in her purse? You probably can’t ask her those questions now, but you can answer them for yourself, now. Someday, someone will find that information fascinating, even if you think your everyday life is so everyday it’s uninspiring. Use the prompts from this book, look at your life with a new perspective, and you will find your everyday to be inspiring.

I contributed two pages to the ebook. First up, “my morning routine.” Breakfast of course!

Then, since I had recently moved, “the place I call ‘home.'”

Intrigued? Want to see what the other ScrapHappy members contributed? Buy a copy of the ebook for yourself! (It’s an ebook only, so it’s only available for download.) The introductory price is $7, and I have a $2 off coupon code for you: HOP. That’s $5. You will never be able to get it for that little again! (The coupon expires midnight January 21st.)

We also are giving away three copies to commenters who post on any or all of the blogs participating in the bloghop. All you have to do to be eligible is leave a comment here about what story you think is important for scrapbookers to document by January 19th. The winners will be announced January 21st on Layoutaday.com. You will need to claim your prize by January 23rd. If you don’t want to wait that long, buy your book now, and you’ll get a refund if you win!

Now it’s time for you to move on to the next blog, my friend Danielle Hunter’s Ecoscrapbook. She has some great ideas on reducing, reusing and recycling in scrapbooking.

The full list of participants:

No matter if you are just starting to scrapbook, or have been scrapbooking for years, there’s one thing you can do to motivate yourself to scrapbook. What is it?

Think about your “Why?”

Why do you want to scrapbook? Do you have a specific project you want to do, like a wedding album or a family history book? Do you like playing with paper and ink, or pixels and brushes? Or do you realize that time flies all too quickly, and that what is normal today, is all too far in the past tomorrow?

This is the most important thing you can think about if you want to keep yourself motivated and excited to scrap. Every single GOOD scrapbooking class I’ve taken has brought in this idea as part of the class material.

Let me show you some of my reasons (and I have many):

Class assignment from Cathy Zielske’s Design Your Life class at Big Picture Classes

The following few pages are from the class album I mentioned in my previous post about making mistakes.

The title page

Capturing the everyday

Telling my story

Sharing family history

This is such a useful process, I often make pages to remind myself about why I scrapbook. A couple more recent pages :

In short, I scrapbook because there are too many wonderful things, too many everyday things to remember. It’s my creative outlet, my memory saver, and my celebration of life in general (the good AND the bad.)

So if you are stumped, or stuck, or wondering if scrapbooking is really for you, take some time today and think about WHY you want to scrapbook. If you’re feeling really motivated, make a page and share it with me.

I’d love to learn why you want to scrapbook.