In the Storm

#the100dayproject 2023 | 006

#the100dayproject 2023 | 005

Five facts about me - right now. Because sometimes facts about us change with seasons of life. Sure, sometimes things stay the same, too.

a fact then: I'm retired from the Air Force, but because I am retired I have now, almost unlimited access to health care when I've needed it the most which is - right now. I have RA that only seems to be worse, I often can't breathe and phlegm builds up overnight every single night. I, personally have had few issues with the healthcare I've been provided in the 20 plus years since I've retired.

Our pastor preached on suicide and depression (Yes to this) and I pretty much bawled the entire sermon because I struggle so much physically and a little bit relationally and it just all piles up sometimes and it seems to never end, and thus, emotionally I'm pretty much a wreak. But, the fact is also, I'm not hopeless. It's just sometimes that is hard to see.

I'm a momma to 4 adult children and grandma to six and my two oldest and all six of my grandkids live far away and I ache most of the time because I don't get to see them. One of my daughters (and her kids) visited after Christmas for a week and I saw them one day during the entire week. I haven't seen my other daughter and grandsons for over a year. This, too, causes so much heart ache.

My job is to watch the weather and report what I see. It's pretty much one of the best jobs in the world. I used to forecast the weather and while I miss briefing pilots the forecast along their flight path and analyzing radar and satellite, observing the weather has become fulfilling enough. It is enough. I used to say if I can't do aviation meteorology than weather observing is good enough, but somewhere along the way I've found it is not just good enough it IS enough. The added bonus, for sure, is, when the weather is good I have lots of time to read.

The writing part of telling my stories is my favorite part of memory keeping, scrapbooking, story telling. This was a simple 5 facts about me exercise and yet for me it is so much more.

#the100dayproject 2023 | 004

Five people to (re)connect with soon.

#the100dayproject 2023 | 003

Five things to do on a Sunday morning:

1. Wake up to no alarm

2. Early morning breakfast at Waffle House with the family

3. Gather at the house of the Lord for worship

4. Prep salads-in-a-jar

5. Spend some time scrapbooking

#the100dayproject 2023 | 002

The prompt for day two of Here: Five Things by @lizelayne is "I give myself permission".

A bit of introspective and playful with my answers to the prompt and kept it simple, cut and dry.

1. Spend more time scrapbooking

2. Pursue creative play

3. Embrace joy (my One Little Word for 2023) even when I'm livin' in the hard.

4. Put more puzzles together. Yes! & Please.

5. Skip desserts (because I don't need the sugar).

Definitely, a little creative play going on with this page.

#the100dayproject 2023 | 001

It's that time of the year again when I begin #the100dayproject, a worldwide community of creatives doing their own things for 100 days. This is my fifth year doing this project and each year I have told my story for 100 days. This year I am still telling my story but this year I am using a prompt, not a one word prompt, but a more specific 5 Things prompt that will be the basis of my story, or that may be the whole story. @lizlayne has a Here: Five Things project and I'm joining her in February and will follow along with her prompts in February. Afterwards I've created a list of five things prompts to carry me through the remainder of the 100 days.

And, once again, I am using a Citrus Twists Kit Life Crafted album to hold my stories. I plan on creating pages inside and outside the page protectors, using no pictures - and pictures, collage pages and simple journal cards. I am hoping it will be an eclectic mix of color and style but more artistic expression than I'm known to create.

I wrote a reason why page and explained #the100dayproject at the beginning of my album.

And here is Day 1. We were asked to jot down 5 things outside my window.

My favorite part, I created an acetate flip up using a window digital stamp from Ali Edwards Open Story kit. Perfect for this prompt!

What I've been reading | January 2023

My reading goal this year is, once again, to read 100 books. I didn't find, this past year, much space for reading more books. I did notice, however, that I read most often during the week and way less [read: almost never] on weekends, except for those rare times when both my husband and I take a leisurely weekend where part of that leisure is reading books. I have an exorbitant amount of time - at work - I'm happy to say, for reading opportunities, given the nature of my job, but less time at home because of other endeavors.  So, 100 books in 2023, it is. 

If you've followed my READ posts over the past year or so, you'll notice I'm changing up these posts slightly, giving 'what I've been reading' a cleaner aesthetic. We'll see how I like it as the year progresses. But, what I'm not changing is documenting what I read. I'm creating, once again, a 4 x 8 album using a Citrus Twist Kits Life Crafted album and each month I will create, generally, a 2-page scrapbooking layout about what I read that month.

In January I read 12 new books, 6 fiction books and 6 non-fiction books. I expect to see an uptick on non-fiction books because I've challenged myself to read about all things JOY, my One Little Word® for 2023. This month I read 4 books on JOY! My favorite of the four is probably Choosing Gratitude by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, although none of the four captured my - JOY - enough for 5 Stars, but hers was close. My husband and I read together every morning from the Bible and a spiritual formation book. In January we finished up the one we'd been working through at the end of last year, A Gentle Answer by Scott Sauls.

I read just a couple 5-Star books, and one of those was a short novella, Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. A powerful telling of a true life story.

I am still hosting a book club in my home and our January book club read was Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng. It garnered lively discussion. I'm pretty sure everyone rated it 4-Stars, as we all liked the book a lot.

 

 

December Daily 2022 | Story 6

For Story 6 I saw a photograph fairly recently of a flat lay of ornaments with no white space between the ornaments. It was such a beautiful arrangement. I knew immediately that I wanted to incorporate, somehow, something similar into my December Daily. So, before ever putting the ornaments on the tree I painstakingly laid all of our ornaments out in the middle of the living room floor, careful to hide the extremely busy colorful rug beneath. And then snapped a photo from above.

This story is more for posterity sake because I ended up not putting any of these ornaments on our tree this year. I went minimalist, instead. But that's another story. I loved the gold foiled 9-square opening that came with Ali Edwards' Story of Christmas Past (I had combined everything from the Christmas Past kit with all of the main kits from this year) and knew I wanted to incorporate it into my album this year, as well.

I typed my journaling up on a piece of the vellum specialty paper and ended up adhering the vellum to the back of the 9-square (as one piece together). While we've accumulated quite the collection these past few - many - years acquiring ornaments have been hit and miss - at best. I'm pretty sure when the boys leave home and take their ornaments, Jeff and I are going to have to begin putting together a whole another collection.

This turned out to be such a fun, memorable, and simple page.

 

December Daily 2022 | Story 5

Probably going to be one of my favorite pages in my album. I made a list of things I 'need' to do and want to do this December season and simply made a page of the list. I have had this page of inspiration in my inspiration folder on my computer since 2014 and finally made a page off that idea.

This page came together fairly quickly: a recent photo of me, typed up my list and printed it, then simply adhered everything to that gorgeous gold foiled specialty paper. Love the Kraft and gold look. And, I'm a huge fan of trees. 

Yep, some things didn't happen. At least not yet. But, most of it did, or will. I'm good with that, too.

December Daily 2022 | Story 4

For this story I let the photos (mostly) tell the story. Jeff and I visited the botanical gardens again this year and rather than a drive thru as in the past couple of years they opened up the grounds to a walk thru. This posed a problem that Jeff solved. And, I was delighted.

These are mostly digital pages using Paislee Press templates. (I have ALL of her December FAVS templates and elements from all the years. They are just so good. She speaks to my minimalist heart). I did a minimum of embellishments, because embellishments are the bane of my scrapbooking existence.

It is here - this - that has my heart. To erase all concerns that I would be able to walk the entire lights display Jeff brought home a wheelchair his boss had in storage. Thus, we were both afforded the opportunity to enjoy the entire night without any worries of me not being able to walk it because of pain. But, let's be honest. It was a struggle to accept being pushed around.