Miss Kitty and the Bears: Scrapbooking On the Go

I decided for our big road trip coming up that I needed to put together a scrap book travel kit like I did for my trip to New York back in February of 2012, which is when I ended up getting engaged AND married in the same week. I was really happy that I took the time to put together a book and brought along a bunch of stamps and stickers so I could collect things and make notes along the way. I got to capture a really special and unexpected time in our lives. It's really nice that I have the menu from the breakfast spot we went to the morning of Valentine's Day. I look at it and think, "I had no idea that a few hours from then we would be engaged!"

I really haven't done any scrap booking in a long time! It's definitely the fact that all my stuff is in the closet stacked up and packed in big containers. I don't want to drag them out and make a huge mess in the closet that is already full. I worked on an album with some film photos we took with our Nikon, but haven't really gotten past the first few pages. Quite frankly I'm also not super happy with how it turned out. There is an element of style missing that I really want. Since this is going to be our "babymoon" I know I will want to have a nice scrapbook to look at again one day. and I want it to be perfect.

While I have the tools to make a journal from scratch, I didn't have the energy to pick out brand new papers, cut them up, and bind them with my Bind-It-All (which is awesome, by the way.) I cheated and bought a SMASHbook, which actually looks really neat and has some cool papers inside. I wasn't too happy that I can't remove or rearrange the papers in it because I don't want blank pages when I'm finished, however after comparing it to the other kits I thought it would be the most convenient for travel. The Smashbook was a convenient size, included all the paper I needed and didn't require me to purchase specially sized three ring punches. I have a Crop-A-Dile Big Bite that I could use to make the papers fit into the other kits like the SN@P, but I really don't want to carry that thing around in the car. I checked out the Heidi Scraps kit and I really like the photo inserts, but it didn't look like there were any extra papers or additions to add to the binder, which sucks because it looked very cute. I took a look at the Project Life kits as well but I wasn't sure where to start with it. It seemed like the kits were all holiday themed or themed specifically for things that didn't really apply to my road trip. Not to mention I can't fit a 12x12 scrapbook in my bag for on-the-go scrap collecting! So after spending a ridiculous couple of hours in Michaels weighing my options I finally purchased the Smashbook with only a couple of extra embellishments.

To start off my kit I dug out a 12x12 container and emptied out the old papers that I won't be using again. I filled it with the essentials: