This layout is not one of my prettier ones. The pictures aren't great quality, and they don't look very "Eastery", but these were part of our 2017 Easter memories and a reminder that I scrapbook my blessings, and not a picture-perfect life.
Before having children, I imagined picture-perfect holiday celebrations including elaborate egg hunts where my children would be in adorable, matching Easter dresses and ties. We would be in a lush green yard, enclosed by a white picket fence and bordered with delicate blooming daffodils and tulips creating gorgeous Easter photos and memories.
However, being a blended family and having a child in a wheelchair, makes every day, not to mention holidays, a little more realistic.
First, this year we did not have Alyssia or Alexis with us Easter morning. Alexis was in college and Alyssia was with her mom. So instead of an Easter morning egg hunt, we did a Monday evening after school egg hunt. While the kids were doing their homework, I went out and "hid" the eggs in our backyard. So, all my photos have a yellowish tint from the setting sun.
Secondly, I can say from experience, there are not many easily accessible places to hide Easter eggs where someone in a wheelchair can reach them. Given his muscle weakness through his body, you have to leave the eggs pretty much in plain sight for Caleb. Even though it might not have been too much of a challenge for Caleb to find his Easter eggs, it is always a big challenge for him to simply reach over and pick them up, whether they are on the ledge of the fire pit, nestled in the handle of the grill or on the picnic table in the backyard. We also have to make sure that we put no eggs on the ground where they might be rolled over by the wheelchair! I can’t tell you how many plastic eggs Caleb has flattened.
Regardless of our Easter Eggs Hunt challenges, it was so much fun to watch Caleb roll around the yard looking for eggs while Alyssia and Zach made a mad dash to reach for anything above or below Caleb's hand level.
While I am preparing for an egg hunt, I always think I have made way too many eggs. Shopping for candy, stuffing those little plastic eggs and then hiding them takes a good chunk of time. I'm thinking that it will take the kids forever to find the eggs and that their baskets will overflow! Every year I always forget to factor in I have overachieving egg hunters who find their eggs so quickly and their baskets are never quite as overflowing as I imagined when I was stuffing the eggs. There’s always next year right?
Scrapbooking Tips:
I love to use square photos because they help fill up the space on a layout. You're also able to trim out all the extra unnecessary space in a photo. It was hard to be close to each kid while they were hunting for eggs so I was taking some pictures from far away. I’ve noticed that especially in Easter Egg Hunts and Christmas morning photos, I’m always physically closer to one or two kids than the others. It’s not always easy to maneuver around to get close-ups of all of them, but I can crop photos and by trimming them down to 4" x 4", 3" x 3", or even 2" x 2", I’m able to focus on the kid(s).
Another great thing about using square photos is it’s easy to align them and create a grid. You can make it as big or as little as you need, and then add your design around the block of photos.
I felt the photos in this layout were busy and there wasn’t a lot of bright colors in these pictures. I didn’t want to overwhelm my busy photos, and I had colorful Easter layouts from this year already in the album, so I decided to keep this layout very minimal. I used an Echo Park mini bundle paper collection to create the border across the middle of my page, following an Allison Davis sketch. I used egg stickers from the coordinating sticker sheet and adhered them using foam adhesive to pop them up off the page. I quickly ran out of egg stickers, so I chose to cut Easter eggs out of a sheet of pattern paper from the same collection. I adhered one to accent the journaling square.
So there you have a quick and simple layout using imperfect photos to capture great memories.
Supplies Used:
Cardstock: Bazzill (white) The Stamps of Life (pink)
Pattern Paper & Stickers: Echo Park
Based on an Allison Davis sketch from Scrapbook Generation
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