Ten on Tuesday

1. Getting back on the treadmill after our holiday wasn’t as hard as I’d imagined – it actually feels good – and my body seems to want it… this is [so] very odd for me.
2. And, while I know I’m still no great athlete [I do 30 to 40 minutes a day, folks] I can look back to a year ago and see a HUGE difference. Yay for me – my new goal: two marathons a month [WALKING 52 miles total – and if you think about it, THAT really shows you how very little I’m doing –] I hope to get up to a MARATHON A WEEK! Can I do it?
3. The winter garden is planted! We hope to have little sprouts of onion, cabbage, bibb lettuce, brussell sprouts, and spinach coming up soon.
4. How fun to have two of my favorite people in the scrapbook world mention me on their blogs. You can see why here and here.
5. After waiting – and waiting [and waiting] to find out about the aftermath of the plane crash on Wisteria Lane I turned on the TV to find that I MSSED IT. It was on the first week in January while we were out / town. Hulu, here I come-
6. And after Drew set me up with Hulu I realized I’d not only missed the first episode after the plane crash – but FOUR more – so I’ve spent a couple of evenings knitting and catching up with the folks in Fairview. Ha.
7. No out of town travel for work this week and was nice to have time to get caught up and organized in several areas [manual revisions, email, the never-ending paperwork.]
8. PMS or PMH? All I can say is that for the last six months or so I’ve awoken with a HEADACHE on THAT day, consistently – who knew?
9. Started working through the scanning of the negatives – what a TRIP down memory lane. The scanner is doing such an excellent job. Can I just declare it one of the best gifts – ever?
10. And finally, this week I ate the last little package of micro-wave kettle corn that we picked up in Colorado – I haven’t been able to find it around here [yet!] and that makes me kind of sad.

God is a God of Freshness and Change -

[I just love those snowy aspens!]

by Charles R. Swindoll
Exodus 35:21, 25-26
God is a God of freshness and change. But wait, before I leave that thought, let me make something very clear: God Himself isn't changing, nor is His Son. He "is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Heb. 13:8). Isn't that a great thought? God is no different this year than He was last year or a decade ago. Nor will He change one hundred years from now. But even though He is the same, His working is different. It stays fresh. His ways and methods are forever fresh, unpredictably new.
I need to warn you, if you like things to stay the same, you're going to be terribly uncomfortable in heaven. Everything is going to be new. God is a God of freshness and change. He flexes His methods. He alters His way so much, it's as if you've never seen it before. You can't imagine what it may be like next time.
God says we are to be "imitators" of Him, which really means we are to "mimic." Since God is a God of freshness and change, so we should be. If we are to fulfill this command, then I suggest that we stay fresh---that we remain open, innovative, willing to change.
Every age knows the temptation to try to restrict God's dealings. The majority of people in this world are maintainers. Once we get things set, we don't like them changed.
Are you open to change in your life? Are you willing to risk? Are you flexible enough to innovate? Are you willing to tolerate the sheer possibility of making a massive change in your direction for life? "Lord, is it South America? Great! Or Indonesia? I'll do it. I'll move or change my profession. Fine! Are You leading me into a new venture? I'll do it. Count me in!"
That's the spirit! It may mean moving across the street. It may mean moving across the States. It may mean moving across the seas. How flexible are you? It may not involve a move at all, only a willingness.
Reprinted by permission. Dear Graduate: Letters of Wisdom from Charles R. Swindoll, Charles R. Swindoll, © 2007, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee. All rights reserved. Copying or using this material without written permission from the publisher is strictly prohibited and in direct violation of copyright law.

Stories to Tell

Stories to Tell contains random - crazy - often inaccurate [but real-to-me] memories I want to record for my scrapbooks. I'd love to hear how these might prompt some of your own memories-

Green Stamps:

I have vague and random memories of green stamps – how many of you collected them in your household too? When we would do our bi-weekly grocery shopping at the Liberty Grocery Store [which always began with dinner out – a treat for us--- at Southland] my mom would receive a certain number of green stamps depending on how much we’d spent on the groceries. [Sometimes we’d get the big yellow ones that were ‘worth’ more.]

After we got home and the groceries were put away [my job was to put all the canned goods in the bottom cabinet], I’d plead for the chance to put the stamps in the little books where they were collected. Each page held, maybe 50 stamps [but again the yellow ones took up more space] and once the books were filled we’d go to the Green Stamp Store to redeem them. I have memories of looking through the Green Stamp Catalog, but I can’t remember what it held – small appliances? Toys? I’m just not sure. But I do know it was a treat to look through and dream of how the stamps might be used.

I have a [very] vague memory of a Green Stamp Store over in Sheffield, but during a recent visit to the Shoals Craig and were driving around Florence and reminiscing – and came upon the old Seven Points Shopping Center and he vividly remembered the Green Stamp Store there – and I can also remember visiting it – was it the only one, or was it larger than the other store that I recall?

Random memories of simpler times… did any of you ever send off the tops of cereal boxes for a treat? I could ramble on about that too, but I’ll end with sharing the best thing I ever got with cereal box tops: a print of horses running in a storm, larger than 18x24, and still framed, and in my attic today – fun.

A little ps fun

I know many of you read The Pioneer Woman [link to the right, and down a little] so you've already seen her sweet little tutorial on enhancing snow photos. And I wanted to give it a try - case in point, this precious photo of MK that I grabbed off her blog.
1. Is straight-off-the-blog, cropped by the parents , but I'm not sure if it was enhanced or straight out of the camera goodness - such a great photo
2. I played with it a bit a week or so ago -using some actions [I can't remember what] and thought I saw some changes at the time, and
3. Today I opened up the straight-off-the-blog photo again and used the [simple] hardlight and curves technique the PW shared - and I'm loving the results - but what do you think - that's what really maters!

Ten on Tuesday

1. Never [ever] move a pound cake from one level of the oven to another mid-bake. It makes for a flat, but oh-so-sweet, heavy ‘thing.’ [I’m not sure I can call it a ‘cake’ – but people ate it, including me.] Rest assured, it DID NOT look like this, even though I DID use the Pioneer's Woman's delicious recipe.
2. I finally learned how to make a digital template – and I know I’ve shared that information with EVERYONE, but I’m just very pleased with myself.
3. There’s just something special about doing lunch with good friends – and Emma’ Tea Room was THE BEST place for our little group that hasn’t been together for far too long to go and catch up on a cold winter’s day.
4. Got good news from a favorite magazine today… and I have to say – I agree with my friend [who’s been published a ga-zillion times] you can just never be quite sure what they’re looking for in the scrapbook publishing world. Of the ten submitted, there were at least two others that I thought would be chosen [for sure.] I understand the publishers have to make choices based on color combination, size of layouts, etc. But I did especially love these:
5. But since I only do pages that mean something to me I’ll still treasure them for my own. [These photos of the boys from younger days had originally been scrapped the “late 90’s way” – and those of you who started with this great hobby back then know EXACTLY what I’m talking ‘bout. – So fun to have these favorite photos enhanced with some of the products available today! Also the layout of Trey and September’s wedding? – love it…]
6. Speaking of scrapbooking [– and weren’t we?] I am so enjoying using page packets and found some cute ones at JoAnn’s on-sale for $1.99. Yippee!
7. I want to knit something! It’s been so – so long since I’ve picked up my needles – and I saw some of the cutest caps while we were in Colorado that I really think I can make.8. We’ve started Beth Moore’s Psalms of Ascent in my Bible Study Group – she does such IN DEPTH research to present these studies to us. And while I’m not a history lover – she does a wonderful job of making the background stuff come alive for even me.
9. Waited most of the day Friday to see if we would, in fact, get the ice that was predicted. Ice in the South is far [far] worse than snow – it means falling trees and no electricity – and truthfully, we haven’t had an ice storm since we’ve moved to our little tree filled acre in town…and, nope, it didn't happen. This time.
10. And finally – we’re cooking a little more often at home these days [or, maybe, we’re bringing in more leftovers…] and this has resulted in more ‘stuff’ for the compost pile – and that makes me happy.

Faith Based Pages Challenge - January

I hope some of you took the time to reflect on your 'every day blessings' these last two weeks. These could be big things or not so big - I just randommly chose three - my family - always and forever the biggest blessing ever to me, my scrap space - so nice to have space to just create freely, and my car - I'm 'on the road' an awful lot and it's nice to have dependable transportation [photo from when it was sitting on the lot waiting for pick up over a year ago.] If you've done the challenge this month, please feel free to comment or email and let me know where I can see it - I say it over and over - but I really do love to see how everyone creates differently.

Okay - I've been doing some MAJOR cleaning in the scrapbook area and
I [still] have bunch of stuff that needs to GO
despite taking a HUGE box for my local crop's swap table
-and I'm really tired of seeing the OMG abbreviation everywhere

[I try hard to make my mind read 'oh my goodness!]

So am hoping that we might also come to think of it as

'Once a Month [old stuff] Giveaway!

I plan to randomly draw a name from the comments on this post and send that person a little bag of goodies that hopefully they can use

[new to them and all, you know...]
It's been a full and happy month for us - with lots of posts - just browse through the blog and leave a comment about your favorite post from JANUARY.

Comments will close on Thursday night February 11that midnight [central.]
I hope to post the winner mid-month -

And the Winner for December is:

Susie said...

Congratulations on the graduation ! That is so exciting to see another adventure to begin.

Your posts do make me think in a different light....I appreciate that. Thanks for making a difference in my day.

Have a great time at your celebration !

January 4, 2010 9:19 AM

Susie - send your mailing address to me

Judy@faithbasedpages.com

and I'll get a little box of goodies out to you soon!

Digital Scrapbooking?

I've played around with the idea of digital scrapbooking for several years now - mostly enjoy playing with it when I'm traveling and want to have a little creative fun - but I wanted to turn my 'Ten on Tuesday' posts into scrapbook pages and really thought digital would be the easiest way to make some clean and simple pages for this. It took me a while to set up the template - but I love it. I'll probably use differnet colors for each month. And I plan to have them printed on-line and will pick up a cute 11x8.5 album at Hobby Lobby to put them all in. By the end of December I'll have 52 pages of our life from 2010. How fun is that? I used Photoshop to set up the basic template and added background paper and other paper for decor - Light blue Solid [designer unknown] and Echos of Asia blue floral [Jessica Sprague.]
Now that I know how to set up a template [finally!!] I'm thinking of setting one up to quickly pull together some pages for the conventions and crops I've been to through the years. But these may be 'hybrid' - meaning I'll print the base and add in the photos and embellishments. But that's not on the front burner right now...

Little Happy Things

This month I’m involved in several crafty adventures that have me looking at what inspires me – and so many of these are the same things that I’m thankful for in my life. [I’m finishing up Elizabeth Dillow’s BPS class, ‘Inspiration Defined,’ the FBP Challenge is about the little things we’re thankful for, and the FBP Classes lesson this week is focusing on gratitude in the everyday things. And of course, my word for the year is JOY and joy really does come from living a life of gratitude, doesn’t it? – So I have to share that while I’ve never been a big trinket kind of person – I don’t enjoy dusting around a lot of STUFF – I am a BIG believer in surrounding myself with little things that give me a little happy feeling.My motto is, "Every room needs a little whimsy"

I realize the photos are a little grainy - but you get the 'picture' - ha-

Do you notice a theme here? I love green – especially this apple-avocado color. It’s my fave and it just makes me happy. I enjoy drinking my coffee or hot tea from a mug that reminds me daily that God cares for me and all I have to do is ‘trust’ and my day will be better…the apple [from Cracker Barrel, am I regular visitor there, or what?!?] is BIG [maybe 8 inches] and just brightens my day when I walk through our dining area and see it; and the pots sitting in my kitchen window help me see the good things this world has to offer – soon I should have little seedlings of thyme, basil, and rosemary to season our meals with [and I hope to eventually plant outside in the summer garden.] If you look closely there are already some popping up.

Look around and discover what brings you a little happiness or joy as you go through the day. It doesn’t have to be limited to stuff – it could be people, things you hear, scents, things you see [think about things you’ve read this week or seen in advertisements – I’m loving the new Subway ad, btw, where the grown men speak in little boy voices], or magazines, or places you go. It’s there if we just look to see it. Seek out joy!

Ten on Tuesday

1. Busy – busy work week with overtime + new time log system = ONE BIG HEADACHE.
2. I’m finally getting used to my ‘new’ bi-focal glasses – from Zenni – I’d recommend them to anyone!
3. Four months after a bad hair cut – it’s finally “like I like it” – that is the one and only time in my life when I’ve actually said, “Put down the scissors, we’re done,” and, “No. Seriously. We’re done.” I paid for it, but I sure wasn’t happy about having kindergarten bangs. [Photo above was taken several months ago, kind of mid-grow-out – it’s sooo much better now!]
4. Food is my enemy – maybe, not really… I need to do so much better there- and not just in the possible overeating – acid reflux has been a frequent visitor these past few days…
5. I hear birds singing in the early morning hours – spring is coming! Despite the forecasted 30* temp tonight…
6. I DO NOT enjoy driving in thunderstorms and tornadoes, and so, I didn’t. It’s nice to be in a place [work-wise] where I can freely make these decisions. It’s an awesome photo, isn’t it? [January 21st Huntsville tornado – photo from local news site]
7. LOVING the slide scanner my in-laws gave me for Christmas! It actually takes a little ‘snapshot’ of each slide as you put it through – very quick and oh, so easy! I went through over 800 of my slides during the weekend. And noticed that some will be spotty regardless of how much air you hit them with- ah, well, can I just pretend they already have a ‘grunge mask’ on them? I mean, some people pay for these digital elements! LOL
8. Of course, my slides are all in plastic sleeves so they can be held up to a light to choose – and choose I did via the LOM system – why scan those that I know I’ll never use? Note: I plan to scan Every. Single. One. of Joe’s slides so we can all have a copy...
9. I soooo enjoy our praise time at church – we attend the ‘blended’ venue* which has a little mix of hymns and praise – Mark does an excellent job in helping us worship before the sermon. [*Our church now has three venues: traditional – blended – and unplugged with 6 worship services – pretty neat.]
10. And finally – I saw a live chicken in someone’s yard this week – just walking around... it’s been a long, long time since I’ve been that deep in 'country' [Photo off the internet – no, I did not stop to document it- although I know many of you believe I would.]

JOY – My ‘One Little Word’ for 2010

I know, I know, I’m late with announcing it to the world – but there it is: JOY.
In the ‘scrapbooking world’ there’s a designer [Ali Edwards] who started this trend a few years ago – choosing a word to focus on throughout the year – kind of a mantra to live by and guide us through the coming days. Some believers do a similar thing by choosing a verse of scripture to meditate on throughout the year, so, thus, my verse:

^“But as for me, I will sing about your power. Each morning I will sing with JOY about your unfailing love. For you have been my refuge, a place of safety when I am in distress”. Psalm 59:16 (New Living Translation)

Last year was the first year I participated – and my word was CHOICE – a good word that helped remind me that in all things God has given us a free-will to make a choice of how we react, what we do - or don’t do, etc. But even with that there were many times I found myself with such anxiety over the ‘what ifs’ in life that I failed to see the JOY in life, So that’s my word – JOY – it’s a choice too, you see. And this year I’m making a conscious effort to see [and experience] JOY as I go through life – and I’m not just talking finding JOY in big things here, I’m talking about finding JOY the little, everyday, things. I’m talking about choosing to not go through life’s day in and out regularness without really seeing and finding the JOY that is all around us, if we only look. For example – Having JOY in loading and unloading that dishwasher for instance – so blessed am I that I even have a dish washer and a wonderful family that helps me keep those dirty dishes coming…

Here’s a little craftiness I did a few weeks ago to hang over my desk to remind me to look for JOY in life. You can see that it’s an ornament I picked up at Cracker Barrel after Christmas and ‘altered’ a bit to bring me JOY throughout the year. [craft paint + flowers and netting from my kit from The Girls’ Loft] I’m also trying to focus on JOY, as I start the year reading ‘Choosing Gratitude: Your journey to JOY’ [Nancy Leigh DeMoss] and participate in the Faith Based Pages Classes Yahoo Group [link on the left] as we study this book and interpret it on our scrapbook pages together. Come on over and join us! There’s JOY in sharing together!

FBP Monthly Challenge - January

I’m not sure how much participation is happening with this and have to admit that even I’ve been a little bogged down throughout the holidays. But I feel the pull to push ahead with this – maybe just for me to focus on my faith based pages, and maybe to get some of you thinking about adding a little of your faith to your pages as well. Someone suggested a shorter time frame as goal for completion so that’s what I’m hoping to do this year –

But first – our challenge for December was: What Christmas Means to Me

[Scrap lift from Scrapbooks Etc. Nov / Dec 2009, p.20] Highlight your beliefs surrounding the Christmas season - Must include: two-toned title, hand cut and decorated tree, lined paper, sewing on the page, and journaling about your Christmas beliefs; Scripture: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

Here’s my layout:

If any of you participated, I would love to see what you did.

Our January Challenge is: Theme: Everyday Blessings

[Scrap lift from Scrapbooks Etc. Nov / Dec 2009, p.10]

Highlight the things [people – places - things] that make your ‘everyday’ just a little brighter. Or maybe, the things that just help you make it through the day, because aren’t these little things a blessing too?

Must include: Chipboard letters, three of your favorite colors, three ribbon tabs, and a row of flowers

Scripture: “And let the Peace of God rule in your hearts…and be ye thankful.” Colossians 3:15

Begin today and complete your own interpretation of this challenge! Post a comment and link to show us your page[s] before February 1^st and you could be chosen to receive a little giftie from me. I’ll post my layout on that date and a new challenge will be posted the third week in February. I look forward to seeing what you do!