This is the face of love.

Since this is the “month of love,” I thought I’d share one of my favorite love scrapbook pages I’ve done.  This one is about the very special relationship my little girl has with my step-mom.  These are the kinds of childhood memories I would cherish if it were me, so I wanted to document it for my daughter.

Here’s what it says:  

This is what I call LOVE. Memaw spent several hours at our house with Summer while Ken & I were at the hospital for his cardiac cath. She let Summer give her a makeover. This woman was covered in glitter from head to toe. And so was our recliner and carpet! And if that wasn’t funny enough, she drove home looking like this! Imagine if she’d gotten stopped for speeding. I crack up just thinking about it!  Papaw said when she walked in the door at home she looked like a Christmas tree. I know Memaw doesn’t look REAL happy in the photo, but she told me several times that she just had the best time that day and how much she really enjoyed her time with Summer and she was really glad she got to spend that time with her. Summer doesn’t know yet how LUCKY she is to have a Memaw that will play with her, pretend with her, color with her, read to her, and let her do THIS. And Memaw doesn’t know how much it means to me that she loves my child & is willing to patiently spend TIME with her.  Not to mention what it means to Summer.  She loves her Memaw deeply & I’m so glad she’ll have this childhood memory of her.  Yes, this is the face of love.  January 2007

Here’s a closer look at the pages.  You can click on them to see them larger also.

Love Scrapbook Page #2

In keeping with the “LOVE” month, here’s another layout about someone I love, my daughter.  I actually used the pieces from a card kit because I’m not much of a card maker and I didn’t want the kit to go to waste.  You can’t see it, I don’t think, but I wrote my journaling on the dark red paper under the photo.  It’s so wild to see this layout, because my little girl was only 3 and now she’s almost 8!  Time does fly, doesn’t it?

Scrapbook about why you love someone.

Since this is the “month of love,” I thought I’d share one of my lovey dovey scrapbook pages.  Anybody who has seen my scrapbook pages knows I’m pretty much all about the journaling.  I can’t do a page without telling a story on it.  Ultimately, when my daughter looks at my scrapbooks I want her to read about and “see” the stories, not so much the photos.  I think the stories are the important part, because they are the memories. 

This is what my story says on the layout:

“Mom, why do you tell me you love me all the time?”

This was the question you asked.  We were lying in bed, me waiting for you to fall asleep, as is our usual nighttime routine and I told you I loved you, as is our usual nighttime routine.  My answer to you was, “Because I love you and I want you to KNOW that I love you and I don’t ever want you to think oh, my mom doesn’t love me.” 

But what I was thinking and feeling and didn’t say was, “Because I grew up with a mother that never told me that.  Because I grew up never feeling that.  Because you are my life, and I love you more than anything on this earth.  Because I didn’t think I wanted to be a mother, but you are the best thing that will ever happen to me.  Because you are everything I could ever want.  Because someday you’ll be a teenager and maybe all your friends in their teenage angst will be rebelling against their parents and will hate their parents and think their parents don’t understand them, and maybe YOU will say, “Nah, I don’t need all that drama.  I KNOW my mom loves me no matter what.”  Because sometimes bad things happen and people die young and moms die young, and as much as it kills me to think about it, maybe I won’t be here until you grow up and I would want you to always remember that your mommy loved you and you could feel it and you knew it because I drove you crazy telling you ALL the time.  I tell you I love you because I can’t help it.  Because since the day I held you in my arms for the first time my heart filled with it and overflowed with it and exploded with it.”  Plain and simple.  I love you.    Mom

The Invitation

I read a poem somewhere a few years ago that I felt was very profound and turns out it was made into a book.  The author, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, has such a way with words.  It’s called The Invitation and here it is. 

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.  I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.  I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.  I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.  I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.  I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul, if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full mooon, “Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.  I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here.  I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.  I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Scrapbook the momentos of your life.

So, if you’re a scrapbooker or planning on starting the hobby, you’re probably a “saver.”  Meaning you’ve got grade school Christmas programs, movie ticket stubs, concert ticket stubs, etc. in a box or drawer somewhere and are going to incorporate those somehow in your scrapbooks.  I’ve got those too, and I use them once in a while.  But the kinds of things that are really important to me are the things like what you see below. 

Back in the summer of 2005, my daughter was 5 years old and decided to quiz me, her daddy, and her Memaw and Papaw (my parents).  She asked, “What is your favorite thing?”  And wanted us to write it down.  Well, actually she didn’t even ask me because even at the age of 5 she said, “Mom, I KNOW your favorite thing is SCRAPBOOKING!” (and she was right!).  So she got answers from Daddy and Memaw, and then it came to Papaw, who decided to just trump everybody else’s answers and earn major brownie points in the process.  My 5-year-old kid thought that was THE coolest thing ever.  She loved the little drawing of her, and was quite impressed with Papaw’s artistic skills (she’s an artist herself & wants to be one when she grows up).  I, of course, immediately confiscated it and plan to incorporate it in my scrapbooks.  I scanned it for that reason so I could print it on acid-free paper and thought I’d share the story with you here.  In my opinion, not to minimize the importance of all the little daily things we do like going to the movies and what not, but this is much more meaningful to my heart than a ticket stub in my scrapbook.  So don’t forget to scrapbook these kinds of momentos from your lives.

I am a mother.

This face.  It takes my breath away. 

I didn’t think I wanted to be a mother.  I went into pregnancy at the ripe old age of 29, kicking and screaming, freaking out, scared to death I wouldn’t be able to love my baby because she wasn’t “planned.”  What a dumbass I was.  Seriously.  I can’t even tell you.

Something happens when you’re pregnant (at least to ME).  Yeah, okay, there’s a baby in there and we’ll see her in about 40 weeks.  No problem.  But after a certain point, the baby starts to move in there.  And then the realization hits you that holy shit, there’s a person in there.  There’s a life in there.  Then the baby comes out of there.  And if you haven’t experienced childbirth no words I could ever write here could explain what it’s like.  It’s like nothing and nobody could possibly exist in the world that you could love more than her.  And it’s funny, because when my daughter was born, I thought no way could I ever love her more than I did at that moment.  Not true.  There are moments in her lifetime when she has looked at me (or I looked at her) or she said something to me that overwhelmed me with such love that I was left breathless.  This photo was one of those moments.  (Incidentally, that is why I scrapbook.)

This girl is my life.  She is my whole heart.  She is my everything I never knew I wanted, every dream I never knew I had come true.

I am a mother.

Olive you Valentine’s card

I was reading Craft magazine online a few weeks ago and I saw a project a woman had made for her boyfriend.  She knitted a bunch of olives and put them in a clear jar with a label on it that said “olive you.”  You can see it better here.  I thought that was the cutest thing!  Unfortunately, I have no idea how to knit, so I did what I do best and used my scrapbooking materials. 

(click to see LARGE photo)

I took a sheet of 8.5×11 cardstock and folded it in half, glued the strip of paper in the middle, cut out my olive from another sheet of cardstock, used letter stickers for my words, and called it done!  I think I’m going to make a few more of these in the next week.  Cute, yes?

Snow day equals snow picnic.

I’m a mom who figures if it’s not HURTING my daughter, I’ll let her do it.  So Friday was a snow day.  We had a nice 5 inches of snow fall.  Summer decided she wanted to have a picnic.  She made snow mashed potatoes and snow pudding and snow ice cream with strawberry topping.  She had so much fun, and I had fun watching her.  I was planning my scrapbook layouts in my head while I was taking the photos! 

In case you’re wondering—Yes, people, I told her NOT to eat the yellow snow

Ready, Set, Create!

One of my scrapbook pages is in this month’s issue of Ready Set Create.  I love this online scrapbooking magazine.  Sometimes I’m lucky enough to be published in the e-zine, and if I’m not in it then I subscribe to it.  It’s chock full of fantastic scrapbook layouts and altered items and cards.  There is really a lot of talent and ideas to be seen here.  And it’s affordable, which is important for me!  Go check it out here.

Don’t store your photos in direct sunlight!

I think by now every person who is a scrapbooker knows that you should store your photos safely, meaning in boxes or envelopes that are acid free, cool and dry places (not the basement or attic), places where there isn’t humidity, and not in direct sunlight.  I’ve been scrapbooking for 12 years now, and I knew all these things.  It’s important to me that my photos look good later when I’m gone and my daughter is grown and they’re her photos.  I take the time to buy photo storage boxes at Hobby Lobby or Walmart or some place similar and check the label to make sure it’s marked “acid free.”  I no longer hang framed photos on “outside” walls in my home, because the moisture/cold can seep through the wall and ruin them.  They warp and/or wrinkle.  (I speak from experience.) 

So….I have these inspiration boards above that my (awesome!) dad made me out of sheet metal (I think) that are hanging in my studio.  I hang things on them with round magnets from Office Depot.  I put sketches I’ve drawn, pages I want to copy, quotes that inspire me, plans for scrapbook pages, things my daughter draws me, photos I love, etc.  These boards hang on a wall that is facing a west window.  I don’t consider it a “sunny” spot.  In fact, I’m always wishing there was more light in here!  Here’s my point.  While I never considered the photos hanging on those boards to be in “direct sunlight,” this is what happened to one of them.  Now, I must also mention that this photo was printed at home on my photo printer, and it lacks the quality that I always get when having them developed professionally, so I think some of it is caused by the photo paper and some by the sunlight.  Incidentally, I no longer print my photos at home either.  Even the Kodak photo paper for my photo printer doesn’t have the quality of a professional developing place on Kodak paper (not to mention it’s too expensive). 

I have not altered this photo in any way, so you can see what happened.  The bright circle in the middle is where the magnet was covering up the photo, and that’s what the ENTIRE photo should look like!  Seriously, I can’t even tell you how much this upsets me.  This is the only copy of the photo.  My daughter and her daddy are roasting hot dogs in the fireplace, and I’ve had the scrapbook page planned in my head for a long time.  So this totally sucks.

Now all photos that go on my inspiration boards are going to be copies.  Lesson learned, people.  Lesson learned.