In honor of it BPC is doing a giveaway week on their blog..

I will also be doing a chat at 6:30PM PST on Saturday. It’s free and I hope to see you there.

Everyday Storyteller 2 is a brand new idea book offering more than 100 tips, tricks and techniques for scrapbooking. Go behind the scenes with 33 of your favorite memory keepers to see how they capture moments, tell stories and document their best memories.

Each book contributor participating in the blog hop is giving away an eBook copy of Everyday Storyteller 2. Use this entry link or click the graphic below to complete your entry form. You must enter by 11:59pm PDT on April 30, 2013 to be eligible. You may enter from each stop. Winners will be contacted directly as [...]]]>

Everyday Storyteller 2 is a brand new idea book offering more than 100 tips, tricks and techniques for scrapbooking. Go behind the scenes with 33 of your favorite memory keepers to see how they capture moments, tell stories and document their best memories.

Each book contributor participating in the blog hop is giving away an eBook copy of Everyday Storyteller 2. Use this entry link or click the graphic below to complete your entry form. You must enter by 11:59pm PDT on April 30, 2013 to be eligible. You may enter from each stop. Winners will be contacted directly as well as posted at everyda ystoryteller.com on May 1, 2013

Here are others hopping along today:

Tangie Baxter Kerri Bradford Joscelyne Cutchens Catherine Davis Patty Debowski Lisa Dickinson Karla Dudley Leah Farquharson Karen Grunberg <--- you are here Jenni Hufford Donna Jannuzzi Amanda Jones Mandy Koeppen Riikka Kovasin Kami Leonard Amy Mallory

Amy Martin Ann-Marie Morris Celine Navarro Lynnette Penacho Kelly Purkey Krista Sahlin Linda Sattgast Cindy Schneider Wendy Smedley Elisha Snow Amy Sorensen Neisha Sykes Jill Sprott Laura Vegas Allison Waken Crystal Wilkerson Jennifer Wilson

I really enjoyed reading this wonderful book and was honored to be asked to participate. I hope you like it, too!

journaling reads: My boys like to be silly. They put hats on and make silly faces and laugh and laugh. Then can play one little hat for over twenty minutes. I don’t really understand how they can find so much joy and entertainment from such a small thing and yet they do. And I love that about them so [...]]]> I noticed that it’s been a while since I shared any of my layouts with you. While I am doing a lot less scrapping lately, I am still making some pages and here’s a recent one I made for My Mind’s Eye.

journaling reads:
My boys like to be silly. They put hats on and make silly faces and laugh and laugh. Then can play one little hat for over twenty minutes. I don’t really understand how they can find so much joy and entertainment from such a small thing and yet they do. And I love that about them so much. How the smallest things can create joy in their lives. How they can entertain themselves and laugh and laugh. I love how easy it all is for them. It never was for me and I am so grateful that joy comes so easily to them and how happy they are. I love them so!!

details:

Before:

and here’s what the page looks like with all the gratitudes and celebrations:

There we go. Just another excuse to create art and remember the present that is my life.

This month’s assignment was to create a vision board. I made one of these in 2011 for Karen’s class. I’m not a vision-board kind of person. Not sure why and not sure what that even means. But I just know that I don’t do them each year. So when I first watched the assignment I was all blah [...]]]> It’s been a long day here and I’m quite tired and still have more commitments for the evening so I decided I’ll share my One Little Word for February with you instead. I’ll add some thoughts along with it so it’s more meaningful.

This month’s assignment was to create a vision board. I made one of these in 2011 for Karen’s class. I’m not a vision-board kind of person. Not sure why and not sure what that even means. But I just know that I don’t do them each year. So when I first watched the assignment I was all blah about it.

But I am a good student and I wanted to do my homework anyway. I knew from my experience before that I would do it digitally and have it available to add to my moleskines as well as my OLW binder.

So I opened up Pinterest and typed “present moment” into the search. I found a ton of boards, went through a whole bunch of them, tagged photos I liked, and then opened all of them in photoshop and just dragged and dropped, and moved and shuffled until I was happy with what I got. I tried to fit in as much as I could. I ended up with this:

I will admit that I love it. It has so much of what resonates with me right now. Last time, I’d deliberately added some images that were important to me, but this time I just pulled whatever spoke to me without any rhyme or reason.

My favorite part is the pooh conversation.

But I really love all of it. I love the peace, serenity, love, joy I see in it. It has so much of what’s meaningful for me and I know I could have spent another 50 hours on it but I love it just as it is.

and here it is in my olw binder:

If you did this, too, I’d love to see yours!

I talk about our the boys playing and studying. Then going exploring and building time machines while with grandparents and finally about David being star of the week.

This week I added an extra insert which has David’s art on one side. (it has my coaching course completion diploma thing in the back)

See you next week!

I talk about our celebration cupcakes, some activities we’ve done including the birthday, punching, and going to home depot and then two movies we saw.

I am still loving the 8.5×11 size and single page format. love love love. Yet, I still haven’t found a way to fit my art but still thinking on it.

See you next week!

here it is as a spread:

The intentions I set are:

January – Quietly Present – take a break. ponder. walk, don’t run. take it slow and steady. be calm. don’t yell. be quieter. listen. February – Joyfully Present – celebrate the joy of life. drink it up. buy a present. spread the joy. how could you celebrate more? March – Kindly Present [...]]]> Since I am really tired tonight, I thought instead of writing a thoughts-related post, I could share my One Little Word assignment. This month’s assignment was all about setting intentions for the year. I spent a lot of time thinking about mine.

here it is as a spread:

The intentions I set are:

January – Quietly Present – take a break. ponder. walk, don’t run. take it slow and steady. be calm. don’t yell. be quieter. listen.
February – Joyfully Present – celebrate the joy of life. drink it up. buy a present. spread the joy. how could you celebrate more?
March – Kindly Present – be kinder to yourself. how can you be kinder? gentler with yourself and others. go slow. be sweet.
April – Bravely Present – take a risk. do something new. where are you not being brave? dare to do more or different.
May – Physically Present – go outside. breathe. and breathe more. can you do more to be healthy? what needs attention now?
June – Calmly Present – embrace the chaos. assume it will be fun. breathe. and then relax some more. lean into the joy of family.
July – Positively Present – focus on the positive. what is good about this moment? see the good. find the gem. life is beautiful.
August – Deliberately Present – choose your path. choose to show up. is this what you want to do? is it fulfilling you? look closely.
September – Visibly Present – See people. Let yourself be seen. who can you reach out to today? send an email to meet with them.
October – Deeply Present – go deeper. what are you taking for granted? what more is there? what are you not paying attention to? look around.
November – Unabashedly Present – be bold. show up. be you. what’s holding you back? what would feel great? now go do it.
December – Fully Present – soak it all in. experience all the moments. love deeply. forgive. hug. breathe the joy in. love.

Here’s page one bigger:

and here’s page two bigger:

Christmas Morning:

Us:

and here it is with before:

and after:

And since I ran out of pages right on Christmas Day, I decided that would be it for this year. So I added my final page in my tradition of tulips and my word of the year for 2013.

and here’s the book done:

another year, another December Daily. Here’s to a great 2013!

I also added the program:

and then opening the first presents on the eve of Christmas:

and here it is with before:

and after:

that’s it. more tomorrow.