"when i'm gone you can have all this stuff"

So, after all these months, I finally decided to tackle this box of Dad's scrapbooking supplies and start putting them away. I can still hear his voice, "When I'm gone you can have all this stuff..."

Hey Dad, would you be surprised to discover that the most treasured item amongst the stickers, stamps, rub-ons and embellishments is an old receipt from Archivers? Funny how a seemingly insignificant bit of ephemera can generate some of my most treasured memories.

You see, a few years ago, when I was a stay-at-home mom and the girls were in school, Dad and I would enjoy shopping trips together: we would clip Michaels and Hobby Lobby coupons from the Sunday Denver Post, grab our JoAnn mailings, and head for the craft stores. I'm pretty sure my 80+year-old dad was a rarity amongst the young female scrapbookers there. It became a regular routine, until he had amassed enough "stuff" to cover the ping-pong table in their basement. He "got" the part about collecting supplies. You fellow artists know what I mean.

Dad got interested in scrapbooking when he saw what I was doing. I soon found myself teaching my retired Dad the ins and outs of this passion of mine. He always was an artist at heart anyway, so it was pretty easy to teach him.  I always loved to show him and Mom my latest layout; Dad would always ask how I did this or that technique. I would teach him, share my supplies with him, and then we would shop together so he could build his own stash. He loved to master new techniques and then apply them to his ongoing geneology/scrapbook project.

Stay tuned for a peek at Dad's pages...