Are you ready for a Scrapbook Challenge this summer?

I *need* a challenge. Yes. It’s sad, but true. I need goals and rewards to motivate me to get anything done these days. In June, I sent out a Monday Madness plea to my “real life” friends letting them know I desperately (well I must not have sounded desperate enough) NEEDED people to come over to my house to scrapbook. I KNOW myself all too well and knew that if someone else wasn’t coming over I probably wouldn’t actually get around to digging into my messy scrapbook room which also means that I wouldn’t get any scrapbooking done. When I sent out the Monday Madness plea (figuring it would be as good a day as any other) I thought that at least some of my fellow co-op moms might be able to come since we were already accustomed to being out of the house and tied up all day every Monday for co-op. I found out, however, that it sure doesn’t take long to fill up our Mondays with other things (makes me wonder how I’ll ever be ready to start co-op again this fall and have every Monday tied up again – lol) because so far no one has been able to come out yet. Can you believe that we’ve gone through an ENTIRE MONTH of Mondays and I still haven’t scrapbooked one single time this summer? Yikes. That’s not good considering catching up my albums was supposed to be my big summertime “project.” Instead of stewing over the fact that no one has joined me for a day of scrapbooking yet, I decided to offer out a blogosphere challenge.

I’m hoping my blogosphere friends will help me over the scrapbooking slump I currently find myself bogged down in. What better way to do that than offer a Scrapbook Challenge? I want to thank JEN, one of my long time cyber friends & creator of many awesome digital scrapbook pages & word art creations, for making the really KEWL Scrapbook Challenge icon you see above. Stop by Jen’s blog and check out her awesome word art creations. You’ll enjoy them! She did a GREAT job on the Scrapbook Challenge icon! She actually made two of them that I REALLY like which means if there is enough interest in blogging about our scrapbooking progress (or lack thereof) then I’ll use the other icon she created for a 2008 Scrapbook Challenge!

Those of you who have known me for very long will be surprised and not surprised by the following information. Surprised because normally I would have something like this all detailed out with color coded spreadsheets, a months-in-advance plan or list, etc. Not surprised that I don’t have these things ready since I only thought of this idea last January (Jen can attest to the fact that I asked her about the icon thingie MANY MONTHS ago) and normally ideas like this percolate in my head for a year or more while I work out details and before I decide to do anything about them because, after all, I need to know how it’ll all work BEFORE I jump in, right? So whether you’re in the surprised or not surprised category I’m guessing you won’t believe that I’m going to jump into this Scrapbook Challenge having NO idea what the challenges will be (other than this first one), no set rules or instructions, no answers to any questions that might come up, and that I’m actually doing something about this instead of sitting around here still only thinking about the idea, etc. IOW, I’m “winging” this one out of a necessity to JUST DO IT! And some won’t be surprised that I’m FINALLY getting around to it *TODAY* because it’s the first day of a new week and a new month and I’m kind of a “first” type person… always have to start fresh at the beginning of a week, on the 1st, or the beginning of a new month, etc. Today happens to fit the bill for ALL of those things! No. I did *NOT* plan it that way. It just happened this way….coincidental? Probably not….my internal clock seems perpetually set on “knowing” when it’s the 1st…especially when the 1st falls at the beginning of a week *AND* month (LOL).

That’s the VERY long introduction to why I’m offering a Scrapbook Challenge! The rules are pretty easy to follow! You can set your own challenges or particpate in any of the challenges that I’ll suggest now and then. As long as you are setting a goal and working toward it you can feel free to copy the above icon to your computer and then upload it to your blog. Please link back to this entry so others can join the Scrapbook Challenge. BE SURE TO leave a comment in my comment section letting me know that you want to be a Scrapbook Challenge Participant. I will make a list of all the participants so we can easily check out each other’s blogs. Remember there are NO time limits or rules for any challenges that you set for yourself, but the “reward” for setting a goal and working on it is that you get to place a really KEWL looking icon on your blog! Thanks again, Jen, for making the icon.

I see this as a type of game. You know the kind where I challenge you to do something and you challenge someone else, etc., and we all make progress because we’re holding each other accountable to reaching our goals. So, let the games (um challenges) begin!