Family gatherings (and a little Tim Holtz)

I love those gorgeous tags that Tim Holtz is always sharing on his blog. So today, I tried to channel a little Holtz into my scrapbooking. Okay, I'm no tag genius, but I do think these two turned out pretty cute.

That blending tool works some real magic, doesn't it? I love how softly it pushes the colors against one another. Of course, I probably should have done a better job of figuring out ahead of time whether my creations were going to fit on the page I was making them for. I barely squoze (squeezed?) everything together!
Sometimes scrapbooking is just about having fun "making pretty pages." But sometimes, as I put picture to paper, and think about what the photographs represent, I get a smidge more introspective. For example, this photo got me thinking about family:

I love getting together with my extended family. Which makes me wonder why we, as a family, don't make an effort to do it more often. I don't live all that close to the majority of my family, so I end up seeing them one or two times a year, max. And yet, it's always a happy occasion. There are those family members that I chat with year after year, even though I get confused about their exact relationship to me. I mean, I learned about the difference between 2nd cousins and 1st cousins once removed a long time ago, but promptly forgot again. And really, does it matter? They're kin. They're always glad to see me, even if I'm not a part of their everyday life. And the best part of these kind of gatherings by far is the stories.
In this photo, my grandmother, one of her sisters and neices are looking at some old photos and reminiscing. And, as usual, I learned something new about my grandmother. She made her own clothes, and, apparently, she also made a lot of the clothes her younger siblings wore as well. And back then, they didn't use patterns. She would just look at clothes that she thought were pretty, and if she could get her hands on them, turn them inside out to see how they were put together. And then, she'd make her own outfits! Now that, to me, is a truly impressive skill! All too often, I find myself too busy thinking about the future, or worrying about the present, to take the time to ask my grandmother for stories about her childhood. Resolution: make a point of asking about her younger days at least once each time that we visit.