The day my life changed forever.
Today is my daughter’s birthday. She is 9 years old. It’s funny….. lots of people told me when I was pregnant that the years would fly by and before I knew it she’d be driving and graduating from high school, etc., etc. And I didn’t believe them. I thought they were exagerrating. But they weren’t. It’s true. It seems like she was just born. I can still remember every detail of every moment of that day, and it seems like we just brought her home from the hospital and laid her down in her crib and I turned my back for just a second, and now I’ve turned around and 9 years has gone by. NINE YEARS. That may not sound like a lot to some people. There might be young mothers who are currently experiencing the “terrible twos” who think they can’t wait unil their kid is 9. But I know there are mothers who don’t get this much time with their children.
I keep tearing up as I write this, because I am so overwhelmed with love for this child. I am so overwhelmed with gratitude down to the deepest part of my heart that I have been blessed with having this beautiful creature in my life, that I have been given the gift that is she, and I have been allowed to borrow her for as long as I am allowed, and God help me I hope it’s until the end of my life.
She’s just ending her third grade year in school and struggling with book reports and recently she challenged me to write a 500-word essay about how much I love being her mother. I’m not one to ignore a challenge, so a few hours later I presented her with this:
How much do I love being your mother? More than 500 words could ever say. I love being your mother more than anything in the world. Life changed when you were born. Before, things I did had no meaning. Now everything I do means something. I have a daughter who is watching me, learning how to do things or how not to do things because of what I do. That makes being a mother a very important job, the most important job I will ever have in my lifetime. When I was younger, I didn’t think that I wanted to be a mother. I didn’t enjoy being around children very much, and I didn’t think that I would love having a child of my own. Boy, was I ever wrong. I didn’t know all the wonderful things that I was missing. The day I became your mother was the happiest day of my life. That was 8 years ago, and I still think back and remember it all the time. I remember the joy I felt when I looked at you for the first time. You were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. You were a miracle, and you were mine. I had waited so long to see you while I was pregnant, and I was so relieved it was over with and you were finally here! I can’t describe for you how much joy I felt, because there are no words that can describe it. It felt as if my heart was so full of love for you that it would explode inside my chest because it couldn’t possibly hold it all in. That is how I still feel when I look at you in a quiet moment when we aren’t rushing around, hurrying to get somewhere, or arguing about something. I will always feel that joy and love for having you in my life. Even when you are grouchy or sassing me or you make me angry, I will still love you. I will always love you for the rest of my life. There is nothing that you could ever do that would make me stop loving you. I want you to always remember that, no matter what. Since the day you were born, you have been the light of my life. You are what makes my life happy and beautiful. Some days mommy feels sad and tired and I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, and what makes me get up is that I have this wonderful daughter in the other room, and I can come wake you up and see you and say good morning to you and spend another day of my life with you. You are what makes my life worth living. You are what makes my life have meaning. You are what makes my life happy and full of love and light. I love you more than anything or anyone in this whole wide world. Love, Momma
Happy Birthday my darling daughter. I love you so.
Filed under Life | Comment (1)Cards For Heroes Blog Hop!
Welcome to all you hippity-hoppers. If you’ve just randomly stopped by and haven’t come from the first blog, you should go to to the beginning blog hop post at Cards For Heroes blog and start your way from the beginning. I’m sure there will be lots of awesome things to see! On a side note, the Cards For Heroes website has a beautiful video that’s less than 3 minutes long that is great and I encourage you to go watch that and look at the smiling faces of the soldiers who have gotten cards. I have no idea how to get it to play in this blog post or I would do that.
This is the second time I’ve participated in making cards for Cards For Heroes (because of Jennifer McGuire talking about it on her blog), but this time it’s more meaningful for me. See this boy?
It still feels like he’s just a boy. He’s my 17-year-old nephew who just graduated from high school. And then he joined the Army. He ships out for boot camp on September 2 and then goes for special training of some sort after that in who-knows-where. And probably somewhere around the end of the year it’s a real possibility that he could be sent to Afghanistan or Iraq. Which one really doesn’t matter to me; both are equally terrifying. I have encouraged him and supported him 100% throughout the process of deciding to enlist, and I do think it’s the best decision for him, to be able to leave this small area in the Midwest where we live, where there are no jobs to speak of, and grow up and become responsible and most importantly do something with his life. He’ll be able to go to college when his service time is over, which is not even an option financially for him right now. He’s also talking about getting a job with government security when the time comes, and this is the path to take that could help him achieve those things.
Okay, enough of that stuff before I start crying and can’t see my computer screen to type. I plan to actually send several cards, as many as I can make before I drop, but here’s what I can show you today.
Just a simple little sentiment, that someone can use to say hello to their spouse or mom/dad, brother/sister, whatever. Cards For Heroes is always looking for donations of handmade cards that the soldiers can use to send to other people and also cards that are TO the soliders telling them that they are appreciated. I’ll be sending a few of those too.
Okay, and now you’re wanting to hop along to the next blog, which would be Dapple Designs (isn’t that a cute name?) and it’s here. I checked it out earlier and she has SUCH cute stuff on there! Have fun hopping!
Filed under Life, Projects | Comments (101)Best Friends and My Scrapbooking Philosophy.
You’ll be seeing this photo on a layout soon because I absolutely love it. I took it 2 weeks ago and got it developed the other day (I always develop my photos right away). The lighting is not great because it was dusk, but I actually like that about the photo. My process in scrapbooking begins with my photo and the story I want to tell about it. And I will think about it and ponder for a few weeks, perhaps sketch something out, write my journaling, etc. ahead of time before I ever pull out the first sheet of paper. And in doing that with this photo it made me think about Stacy Julian. One of the reasons why I love Stacy is because when I first started scrapbooking I would have put this in a photo box somewhere and felt that I couldn’t use it until I had gotten to that point chronologically in my scrapbooking progress. However, the problem with that is that it would have taken me 15-20 years to get to the point in time where this photo came up chronologically! But I discovered Stacy Julian and Simple Scrapbooks and she changed me. And I don’t say that lightly. She actually (with her philosophy) changed the way I scrapbook, changed the way I think about scrapbooking. I stopped feeling like I had to scrap year by year in order. Thank God (and Stacy) because that was a heavy burden to carry around. Now I don’t worry about making my pages in chronological order. I scrapbook whatever photos I feel like, because I CAN dammit! haha
I am so grateful for that change because I love this photo, I love what it says and I love what it means. And if I were still scrapbooking my “old” way, I would have stuck it in the box and not looked at it again for years. And by then I would have forgotten why I love the photo, I would have forgotten how it makes me feel when I look at it, how happy I am that my daughter has a best friend to spend her childhood with her, how much I miss my best friend even now right this minute, 17 years after she passed away.
Okay, so this post actually started out with this photo that I wanted to share because I love it and look what happened. I went off road and just kept talking about something else. See what happened because of this photo? That wouldn’t have happened 15 years from now because I wouldn’t remember so many things about the photo. So perhaps tonight I will make a scrapbook layout with this photo. And then tomorrow? I might do a page using photos from the last date I left off when I used to scrapbook “in order”, which is way back in 2003, 6 years ago! And I don’t care. So there!
Filed under Life, Scrapbooking | Comment (1)Another Mother’s Day card.
Here’s a quickie card I made for my “other mother”, my step-mom. And when I say quickie, I mean I made it Mother’s Day evening right before I walked out the door to take it to her. HA I’m nothing if not a procrastinator!
Owl card.
Just a quick little card I made for Natalie last night. I wrote about her before here . She is my 18-year-old cousin who since March 15 has been in the hospital lucky to be alive. She has been working her ass off to just BREATHE and get off of that respirator and she finally made it last weekend. She’s been breathing all by herself and on Saturday got to eat REAL FOOD for the first time in 2 months. I bet whatever it was….it was delicious! haha She is going to need a lung transplant, though, so the road ahead is still pretty long for her but she’s my hero! Now she’s concentrating on learning to do a little thing called “walking” again. Her poor muscles have been resting for too long in a hospital bed, but she’s making them work now and yesterday walked 450 feet with a walker. ‘Atta girl Natalie!
Anyway, this is a cute little “whooligans” stamp from Unity Stamp Company. I love their stamps but only own a couple (though my wish list is long!)
Inside I wrote “WE DO!” Thanks to all of my friends who have been praying for Natalie. I think they’re working!
Filed under Projects | Comment (0)Altered Composition Books.
I’m sorry to say that I’m a bit of a procrastinator……can anyone relate to that? Probably not, right? Anyway, I bought this iron-on patch thingie to put on a T-shirt for my daughter and it sat in my studio for SO LONG that now the T-shirt is too small. Yeah…..probably a year. I’m not saying I’m proud of this quality of mine….in fact I make myself NUTS, but there it is. So the other day I’m cleaning and ruthlessly just throwing crap away and I come across this planned project and admit to myself that it’s never going to get ironed on to that shirt (and now I would have to go one step further and BUY another shirt!), but dammit I’m gonna use that patch if it kills me! So I decided to make my daughter an altered composition book/journal/whatever you wanna call it people. And here it is. She loves to write and she was thrilled with it. And I FINALLY did something with the skull patch. Yay me!
This next journal is for a special friend, who shall remain nameless but who if she reads the blog today will know without a doubt that this book is for her. Watch your mailbox girlfriend. I got a vintage comic book from ebay and (GASP) tore the pages out of it to cover this book. I covered front, back, and both the inside covers with the pages. I sure hope she likes it.
And this one……this one is for Natalie. I wrote about her before here and here. She is my 18-year-old cousin who since March 15 has been in the hospital lucky to be alive. She has been working her ass off to just BREATHE and get off of that respirator. I made her a card a while back and showed it here so I went with the same theme as that to be all matchy. haha She is still on the wings of angels and I hope and pray that she stays there.
The wings were made with alcohol inks on my first time trying them out and seeing how they work. And considering I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and was learning to use the inks as I went, I think they turned out pretty cool. Natalie’s favorite colors are lime green and hot pink, and these are really a purplish and a tealish color but they were as close as I could get.
I really only found the alcohol inks in about half a dozen colors, and I want more than that selection. Do any of you know if they come in other colors that I just haven’t found yet? For Natalie’s and Summer’s journals I used the My Minds Eye “Laundry Line” paper. It’s so pretty in real life, just a hint of sparkle in there. I love it.
Filed under Projects | Comment (0)Celebrate life.
This little girl is one of the things I celebrate in my life EVERY DAY. My life changed in a million different ways the day she was born, and ALL of them for the better. This is the project we did in class last weekend at Creek Bank Creations. Mine is different than what Marcie was teaching in class because I don’t do 12×12 pages; I do 8.5×11 pages so it meant I had to just “wing it” and cut things differently than the measurements she was giving. Kept me on my toes.
I also like to put my own spin on things, so I did some stuff that she didn’t instruct us to do…. like putting an “S” inside that chipboard frame (it was bugging me being empty! haha) …… and adding Stickles and jewels to my little butterfly, which just might be my favorite part of the whole page,
and adding Stickles to my little chipboard scroll-y thingies.
I love my Stickles~ I also added these lovely pink and green glittery brads from Creative Imaginations. They are officially my new favorite thing!
It’s kind of funny, because seriously green and brown are colors that I hate. I NEVER use them in my layouts. EVER. But I took Marcie’s class to see what I could learn, and I actually ended up learning that sometimes it’s good to use colors you don’t ever use. I did this layout and wasn’t loving it and brought it home and wasn’t loving it and then I added the S inside the box and I added the sparkly brads and I added the date (because I can’t do a page without putting the date on it…physically impossible!) and I still wasn’t loving it……and then you know what I added? That put me into LOVE IT mode? The PHOTO. Wow! What a concept, right? I’m a scrapbooker, so let’s put a PHOTO on the page! haha and when I saw this photo as I was flipping through I knew it was perfect and then I glued it down and I instantly loved this page. So, moral of the story….. try new things people! You just never know….maybe you will like it! haha
Filed under Projects | Comments (3)Mother’s Day card.
I am finally remembering that I have a few punches and can do something with my scraps of paper. After the crop this past weekend at Creek Bank Creations, I had some scraps left and instead of throwing them in the scrap drawer with all the others, I punched out some butterflies with my Martha Stewart punch and made a card for my mom with them. It’s different than what I usually do, and I think I like it!
Creek Bank Crop
Okay, let me just start out by saying that I failed to mention yesterday that a certain someone (my friend THEA) would be accompanying me to the Creek Bank Crop. THEA drove down from Chicago and went with me. THEA and I had a lot of fun cropping and taking two classes together. I actually did get a few things finished and so did THEA. Here are some photos.
This is for a certain someone who is graduating from college this month and said if I made it she would wear it. I look forward to seeing photos! haha
And here’s a cool project that THEA made.
I’ll show you some more tomorrow!
Filed under Life, Projects | Comment (1)Shop and Crop at Creek Bank Creations!
I’m driving to Muncie, Illinois tonight to attend a 2-day crop at Creek Bank Creations. I really like the owner, Julie, and am looking forward to taking her class tonight. I have a studio in my home, so I’m not the “going out to a crop” kind of girl. I actually went to another one she held in February and forgot to take half the things I needed. It’s hard for me to decide what to take with me since I am so used to just having ALL my stuff right here at my fingertips. I never know what I will use until I go looking through my cabinets and drawers and something catches my eye. You can’t really plan for that, so it’s frustrating for me to figure out what to take. Last time I forgot all of my PHOTOS. Can you believe that? BUT this time I am making a list! haha Of course, I’m sure to still forget something, right? Cause that’s my life! haha
Tomorrow morning I’ll be going back and taking a class from Marcie Morgan. I met her at the last crop and her pages were beautiful, so I’m interested in seeing what I can learn from her. I’m thinking of teaching a class myself for Creek Bank at the fall crop this year and I want to see how other people teach so I can get some pointers and adapt to my way of doing things and come up with something. We’ll see how it goes.
If you haven’t been to Creek Bank Creations, you should consider it. The store is housed in the old elementary school, and it is the cutest thing EVER. I really love Julie’s style of decorating and using “found” things. The store is darling! It’s always stocked with new stuff, too, and they make lots of products themselves that are awesome. You can shop at their online store too. I’ve got to get busy planning what to pack. Hopefully I can get lots of projects done over the next 2 days and then will have lots of things to show you here on Sunday! I have several “in the works” things that just need a bit of finishing up and they’ll be done. I love it when that happens because I feel so productive. Never mind that they were actually all started 6 months ago…..that’s beside the point, right?
Filed under Scrapbooking | Comment (1)
