My husband makes homemade gnocchi. I would never even consider making gnocchi by hand. So I asked him one time why he would bother going through all that trouble when he could simply buy the packaged kind. He looked at me and said “I am willing to make the effort for homemade gnocchi for the same reason you make cards and scrapbook pages by hand.” Touche!
I must say I do enjoy the whole process of creating scrapbook pages, but one of the biggest reasons why I scrap, is to brag. I love my kids, and think they are amazing, funny, beautiful, smart, athletic etc. But people who go around saying things like that to others are a tad annoying, don’t you think 
? So to avoid having my friends run the other way when they see me coming, I scrap and brag to myself, and to my kids. I let them know how fabulous I think they are. They love to read about themeselves and I am happy to oblige. Sometimes the pages satisfy my need to create, but often they satisfy my motherly instinct that just wants to shout- I LOVE MY KIDS!! What better way then, to put it on paper and let them know?
These layouts don’t need to be fancy or uber-creative or have the latest whiz-bang products. They just need to be heartfelt. So go ahead and try it. Grab a couple of pictures of your child. Adhere them to a background page. Write a note to them telling them how FABULOUS you think they are, and put that on the page too. Make a few pages that outline their accomplishments. How about a page showing how cute they were as babies, or how grown up they were as toddlers, or how athletic/musical/gifted etc they are now? Then put those pages in a book, and leave the book on a coffee table. I bet your kids will love reading it! You can brag all you want and still keep your friends . And as an added bonus, scrapbook pages have a lot fewer calories than Gnocchi!!
