365/141 Minimalist.

When you live in a former farmhouse and barn with up to nine other people and you also work from the same site with ten people turning up each day for work, life is pretty hectic and I think you would be be feeling pretty strung up if you tried to be minimalist about much.

And to be fair, in our family we don't do minimalist about conversation or anything. Everything is considered, discussed, explored and informed about..sounds like information overload but it's just the effects of a bunch of talkative analysing people.. that's us!

Minimalist..so that will be somewhat of a challenge for me..as far as photographs go.. so the search began.

I decided on this layout, it's the first 'Just Scrapbboking' class  and first layout I ever did. I pored for almost the whole six hour session on what papers, what ribbons, what words..and I had so few techniques or papers and embellishments I worry to think what frenzy I would have been in given today's stash!

The picture is my Mum & Dad's wedding day, post-war 7th December 1946. He wore a blue shirt, despite Mum wanting him to wear a white one; he was an only son and had a lot of bossy Aunts who thought they knew better.  I did the layout on the first day after Mum went into the Residential home and I think the significance of when I did the layout is almost as important to me than the picture itself..xx

This is the second page, I think I even had to finish it at home I was so bad at chosing elements!    The little violet stickers pay homage to their winter income.  Slightly crass but importantly added at the time! And on reflection that alphabet was also pretty tame, I think most of the elelnts came free with my album from the Works!

The family group makes me smile if I compare it to how say our Lisa's family group would be with four siblings on each side.  Dad was an only child with just his dad still alive and Mum had a brother and sister but neither of them married young or had children. Maybe in the way of things my brother and I have just redressed the balance with our total of 13 children!

(The page boy was Mum's young cousin Chris Jewels who I met unexpectedly last weekend just after speaking about him. We chewed the family fat a while and promised to keep in touch, appreciating that time passes and some things like family connections can't go unmentioned.. xx)