dream big.

Writing the hard stories.

Let’s face it not every story in life is an easy one tell.

Moment 33 can only be told with honesty. And sometimes honesty can hurt. Now since I am not one who willingly signs up for self induced pain, I am all for being truthful with as little pain as possible.  How I do this is as different as every story my life has to share.  

It is difficult to write a past story about a moment  that involves someone I am close to. I do not want to open old wounds, my  intention is to be honest and share how I feel today, to share how my eyes and heart see this moment now that time has passed and wounds have healed.  I don’t know if I am very successful at this, but I do know that my intentions are to do no harm.

I have chosen to use phrases in my writing to show how I felt at the time. When I was a child I always identified Sandy as my step-mother.  We were not close and I needed distance between her and my mother. Over time and much honesty Sandy and I have bridged the step-mother gap and I simply now call her my mother. It feels right now, but we both know that it didn’t always. So, in my story I decided to use the term step-mother when I am telling the story from my perspective as a child. When I begin telling how I see things today I call her Sandy, simply because I don’t see her as a step mother any longer. Honestly it is hard to write stories about the past when they involve Sandy and I. We have simply come so far since then. I feel if I hadn’t lived through this life changing moments I wouldn’t be who I am today. And I like the person I have become.

So, before I post my story tomorrow. I want to say thank you. Thank you to my parents, because no matter what we managed to struggle through…I wouldn’t be me without you. I love how far we have come.

Some stories take a lot of words.

Some stories take time to write.

That is what I am finding with moment 33 on my 100 moments that changed my world list.

This story marks such a pivotal time in my life, that it needs details. Details take words. Words are powerful.

It is my intention this week to share this life moment over several days. This story is not yet complete, but I am over half finished with it, but have found that I need to let it sit for a moment to decide how to best end the story of how I found my voice and started to stand up for myself.

I have no idea yet what photos I will use to tell this story, but I am leaning towards photos that illustrate who I was before this moment and who I became after. Maybe a series of photos with captions? I simply haven’t decided yet. The story is ALWAYS what I focus on first, because I know the rest will fall in line easily.

Is there a story in your life that  caused you to begin to stand up for yourself, or what you believe in? Moments like these are HUGE! I would suggest adding a moment like this to your list if you haven’t already.

Oh, and my class starts at BPC tomorrow! It is not too late to sign up! I hope to see you there.

 
I LOVE fall!

It is more than just the crisp morning air that has caused the love I have for this season. Actually it is simply a lot of LITTLE reasons that has created this passion I have for fall.

I LOVE the colors, of the leaves and and deep tones of fall. Fall food makes me jump for joy as well. Fall breads and pies are some of my favorite foods to make, because they remind me of being with my grandmother.

Honestly, I think the most important reason I love fall is the feeling of family. It is this feeling that home is the BEST place to be, and without it life would be cold, empty and positively lonely.

What do you LOVE about this season?

Reviewing the final week of my new workshop atBig Picture Classes!

I am SUPER excited to be starting this class.

As I was reviewing the class today, I thought...WOW, this is a GREAT class!

• Ways to organize your holiday creativity
• Projects for cards and home decor
• FUN gift ideas to celebrate ANYseason
• FANTASTIC ideas for simplifing holiday scrapbooking pages
• FABULOUS holidy mini album

So many choices of projects and fun to help make this holiday season one that will help save your sanity!

There is still ONE week before class begins, so you can still sign up and join me next week for tons of holiday fun and inspiration!

Hope to see you in class!

This week we have a lot going on:

My mil had heart valve replacement surgery last night.
Still trying to get into my back to school groove with homeschooling my girls.
Scanning and scanning and scanning more heritage pics for my 100 moments project.

So this week I have decided blogging without photos is OKAY...because I have a lot going on.

Enough said.

Happy Tuesday!

Mondays are always...

busy
a fresh start
a new school week
a new beginning
a bit tough to wake up
harder to find my groove
a time to start something new

How are Mondays for you?

As the holiday season quickly approaches I have been giving a lot of thought to my piles of holiday photos. And by piles I really mean computer piles of photos, because I still have not printed a lot of my holiday pics. {blush}

 

I spend some time on how to handle recording holiday memories and photos in my new class Saving Your Sanity: Throughout the Holidays. And I think that if you are struggling to record or find a new way of recording the same holidays year after year, I provide a LOT of very useful information in this class. Since creating this class I am now looking at all of the leftover photos from past holidays. Wow, there are still so many…since I over photograph EVERY holiday, I simply have tons of holiday photos! Please tell me I am not the only one who does this!

I am now developing a new process to help me use up these leftover holiday photos. One where I will be using holiday photos on pages that have little to do with the actual holiday they are from. They will be pages that tell a story…and the photos I use on these pages just happen to be holiday shots. I will share more of this idea and concept as I create pages this holiday season.

I am just really excited to be scrapbooking holiday photos instead of hiding from them!

I am being inspired in NEW ways lately!

Being very visual a lot of my inspiration has been in the form of pictures.

I still LOVE pictorial inspiration.

Lately though I am finding WORDS very inspiring.

And not just solo words and emotional words, but phrases.

Why?

Because phrases can be the beginning of a page I may have never thought about creating.

My favorite way of getting phrase inspiration is through magazine covers.

This magazine  cover has  a headline that I can create an entire page around.

Best of the Decade - what an incredible FUN page this would be, plus a GREAT title.

Try creating your next page from the inspiration you find from a magazine cover headline.

You just may find that words and phrases begin to inspire you as well!

Fun Fall Activity!

Yesterday I took my girls for a walk around the lake.

It is a strange time of year, because already the leaves are falling and the weather is cooler than normal.

The falling leaves reminded me of an idea I had just discovered this past summer.

So, I quickly told all of the girls to look for leaves in different shapes, sizes and colors and collect them as we walked the lake. It was so much fun to listen to my younger two get excited over the leaves they had found and want to share their discoveries. My oldest just grabbed some leaves without giving it any thought. She later regretted her decision!

When we returned home we hopped onto the computer and l shared the Land Art link that inspired my decision to have the kids collect leaves as we went on our walk.

The girls got VERY excited as they thought of the wonderful creations they could make with their leaves. Even Olivia was excited, and decided she would go into the backyard and collect a better selection of leaves! J

Here are our creations!

 

 

 

 

This simple activity supplied a couple hours with entertainment and creativity for all of my girls…even the one who thought she was a bit too big to be collecting leaves!

This fall if you get the chance to create some Land Art I would highly suggest it! Such a fun activity filled with memories in the making!

Today

I am writing my WHY story from my 100 moments list.

I am teaching my children.

I am finding inspiration.

Love these labels by Jamie Oliver! I found them at Williams Sonoma.

 

 

They are inspiring me.