In the Storm

stories 2015 | this makes my heart happy

Over the years God has fitted and weaved others, young women mostly, or couples, and couples becoming families, Melanie and Mark (Sidnie, Blake, and Selah), Kim and Brad, Stacia (Steven and Spencer), and this big family, the Trumps; a young couple who adopted five siblings, into our lives, nestled them in then out as each one has moved away (tears). This time, these kids would come upstairs at our church to the K-5 children's ministry where Jeff, the boys and I serve every week, Jeff would interact with them with his Donald Duck voice, then we befriended their soon-to-be real parents. Then,

God spoke,

"Give to this family.

They need you."

We listened.

And now, they are leaving too! But, I'm certain God will bring another. 

merry christmas.

Merry Christmas.

best Christmas ever.

I made a full-size 12 x 12 scrapbook page, also, of our #bestChristmasever photo from church because I've got a large-size Christmases album going in addition to any December Daily albums I make. This one was super easy to put together. I used some Little Lamm & Co and Paislee Press digital products. Easy peasy.

stories 2015 | oh what fun!

Oh what fun it was putting this page together with these fun photos of Elizabeth in her Christmas - sy apron and her chef's cap - I want one so bad! I absolutely love it when Elizabeth catches photos of Ella when she isn't posing but doing, and making memories - like baking Christmas sugary cookies topped with red and green icing - and snow! Oh what fun!

Digital Products: Little Lamm & Co.

P.S. I'm posting this page while Jarrod is playing Christmas music on his phone, baking up bacon in the oven for on our pizza's, Jeff and John are out back working on the walk way out to the marsh getting ready to come inside and make pizza's and I'm battling a pretty tough bout of arthritic pain enough to take medicine.

stories 2015 | wood splittin'

It may seem mundane. Or weird. Making a scrapbook page of Jeff, John, and Jarrod splitting wood but, man, this is life around here. Twice a year these guys do this thing. First, they spend an afternoon here and another there chopping wood, both ax and saw chopping, because there is always someone who has a fell tree that needs cleared of their property. Then they spend a day with a rented wood splitter, that I may or may not have had to pick up from the rental company, splitting a truckbed of logs into an enormous stack of split wood.

And they do this all for their Boy Scout Troops Boston Butt cook and fundraiser. And don't get me started on the amount of time and effort they put into those. Ok, twist my arm: generally, for Jeff, about 36 straight hours of backbreaking work from retrieving the cookers, prepping the cookers, to cooking the butts, stoking the fires, to cleaning the cookers, and then returning the cookers to their owners.

Don't get me wrong, when all is said and done we usually have anywhere from 3-5 smoked Boston Butts tucked away in our freezer to be enjoyed fully sometime later.

Digital products: Sahlin Studios' Like a Boss and Viewpoint

stories 2015 | watching

We've watched some really good television this year. I just wanted to document, because it's truly apart of our life, what we've been viewing. My own three favorites so far this year have been Blue Bloods, but of course! Blacklist reaches the top of the list, and Madam Secretary, my most recent favorite, joins in for the top three contenders. New seasons of all through are on prime time television right now but their showtimes leave much to be desired for this girl who has to hit the pillow by 9pm for her 4:15am alarm.

Digital Products by Sahlin Studios

ashley loves her people.

Ashley is enrolled in the Master's program for Christian counseling at Liberty University - online but she has had to do a couple in-residence practicums. This is from the week she attended in October and was part of a group of ladies where they learned group therapy techniques. And with a group of ladies who all just - clicked!

Sending kisses Ash!

And I love how this page turned out. I began with a digital template and modified the size of the larger photo. I deleted a bunch of template embellishments. Then, I used One Little Bird's digital kit Better Together for the papers, sweet little journal card, and additional embellishments scattered throughout the page. 

love these little things.

This was fun to put together, albeit time-consuming. I'm not normally a 'circle' scrapbooker and definitely not so much on the embellishment angle but I totally scraplifted this page by Stephanie Bryan for Ali Edwards' Story Kit: Little Things. Except my page was for my sweet, precious grandson, Noah.

This little guy is fillin' out and just too cute for words. Can't wait to see him toward the end of this month for Thanksgiving when Elizabeth puts this sweet little thing back in my arms for some cuddle time.

 

noah at 2 months.

Elizabeth has been pretty good about posting photos to Facebook and she even sent a 2 month list of Noah-isms that I used for the journaling. Thanks so much, E. Noah is pretty darn cute! He is filling out nicely and getting a bunch of character in his expressions. This year is gonna' be fun while I put this album together.

Just look at that face:)

This will be a filler page between the months - maybe. Haven't decided how I'm going to work it yet. I'll probably do some inspiration searching and then go back through all the photos for the filler pages. We'll see...

stories 2015 | hike table rock

This is the first 2-page of Jeff, John, & Jarrod's Boy Scout hiking Table Rock. My plan is to make a couple more pages and I'll journal on those, as it was quite the eventful trip.

For this 2-page I got the idea from this online advertisement for Portland.

I really like how mine turned out, but, honestly I'll probably try another page that aligns closer to the ad. The inspiration was there, though, so I went with it.