Simple Tip Number 3

I love my boys. No, actually I adore my boys. I've doted on them since the moment of their births. First smiles, first steps, first words, first ride on a two-wheeler...they are all engraved lovingly in my memory.

Then they began school. School began sending home drawings and papers and homework. And more paintings and more homework. And more and more. Do you think I could throw any of that away?

Surprise! I actually did throw quite a lot away. Mostly homework, naturally.

I couldn't bring myself to throw away those wonderful, sweet, innocent, lovely kindergarten drawings though. As a result, I stored a map tube on a closet shelf, a tube filled with paintings rendered on yucky, faded, big construction paper.

Then my sweetie needed a home office so I emptied a guest room for him. Recently, son #2 needed a place to stay when he and his puppy lost their lease, so I grabbed my boxes and bins and successfully emptied my craft room/guest room for his use. The tube of children's drawing surfaced but this time I didn't have any good place to store it.

What to do. What to do. Then inspiration struck.

My trusty digital camera and I took a walk down memory lane. I now have photos of each drawing.

I possess photos of the captions dictated by some much-younger kidlets.

I snapped close-ups of some darling little details.

And then I filed the originals in that wonderfully useful circular file. No, really, I did.

(Okay, maybe I cut my favorite into one a twelve-by-twelve piece for scrapbooking. But I'm no longer storing kids' paintings anywhere but my hard drive, backed up by my Costco photo account and a CD.)

And I plan to scrap the best of the photos into scrapbook pages later this summer. I love it when I can have my cake and eat it too.