My standing Friday-night date.

One of the reasons I became a Girl Scout co-leader was because of Wendy, my BFF and lifelong Girl Scout. She was starting a Daisy troop, and I was looking for a volunteer opportunity. The idea of having a weekly night where I could hang out with her was appealing. You know, because once you become an adult, weekly face-time with your friends is no longer guaranteed. (Well, technically in this day and age you may be able to secure weekly FaceTime, but it’s not the same thing.)

So when I stepped down from the troop after three years, to start writing books again, we were left wondering how we were going to log that regular time. Wendy, who’d wanted to get back into crafting more regularly, proposed a standing Friday-night scrapbooking date. At first, I was like, “Really? EVERY Friday?” Because Fridays were always kind of my bum day – the kind that called for pajamas, Grotto’s pizza, and camping out on the couch to power-watch all of the things that had been building up on the DVR throughout the week.

But I (begrudgingly) agreed to give a go.

Now, 18 months later, I find myself really disappointed on the Friday nights we don’t get together. In fact, when one of us has something else going on (like when Joe and I drive up to Fort Washington to have Shabbat dinner with my family), we’ll often reschedule the Friday for a Saturday.

We have these scrapbooking dates at my house, because I turned the second bedroom into a Tiffany blue office-slash-craft room (really a craft room-slash-office). This was a process in and of itself (another post for another day), but suffice it to say that Wendy was instrumental in whipping the space into shape. This is why she has her own dedicated table and drawer unit. She leaves her work in progress here for the next time we get together.

Currently, we’re working on our scrapbooks for our last birthday getaway, which was to Texas. We have something like 400 photos (the one downside to digital photography), so I’m finding the process completely overwhelming.

The last album I did was a gift – a scrapbook of Sadie’s first trip to Disney World. It took me, like, over a year to complete.

Clearly, I’m not spending nearly enough time scrapbooking. Like right now.

If you’ll excuse me, my “date” is waiting.