I’ve been a busy little bee lately.  I’ve completed the majority of the Christmas gifts.  The kids really like the latest two I finished today.  I’ve been busy at work with lots of projects that have been put off for far too long calling to me.  They’re not completed but the work is farther than it had been – progress!!  I’ve been in a scrapping mode today and have done many pages in our family album.  I had a stack of pictures on my desk getting in the way and making me feel guilty.  No more!!!  They are on pages in a book and I like them.  I always have such a sense of accomplishment when I get some pages done.  I love doing my art work but it’s always done so fast and the scrapping takes longer.  Maybe I need to do more intricate drawings?  I don’t know.  Plans are underway for Christmas.  The trip isn’t going to go as originally thought but it will still be a good one.  We’ve had a few close calls for the kids finding out but so far so good!  We will tell them in just a couple days at Thanksgiving.  Speaking of Tgiving, we have some friends coming down from Wisconsin to stay for a few days.  I really like hanging out with these guys because they are just relaxed people.  I don’t have to worry about the house or myself looking perfect cause they like me anyway.  LOL  They’re just nice people like that.  We haven’t made it up their way and I feel bad about that but my life right now just doesn’t allow it.  One day!  I’ve been doing some journaling for my own scrap book.  I’ve taken several pictures and just wrote about them.  It seems like the words just flow out once I get started.  It’s such a relief to get my thoughts out.  I’m really looking forward to starting that book – after the New Year!  Children call – LOUDLY!!  More to come soon.

It seems that I didn’t have enough projects to do.  The making of – so far – 10 Christmas gifts with many more to go wasn’t enough (after finishing the Halloween costumes).  The moutain of kid clothes needing to be sorted and packed away wasn’t enough.  The pile of work stuff needing attention wasn’t enough.  The clothes on the sewing desk awaiting mending wasn’t enough.  The scrapbook waiting for the stack of pictures sitting next to it wasn’t enough.  The four children running around wasn’t enough.  No, I needed more to do.  So, I read Real. Life. Scrapbooking.  It’s a gem of a book!!!!  I don’t normally read books on scrapbooking because I see these incredible layouts and I feel worthless because I don’t make my pages look like that.  I take the less is more and use whatever you happen to have on hand approach.  It’s made for a few interesting pages.  However, this book talked less about those perfect pages and more about the content of your pages.  The author had a ton of ideas from normal living to put in pages.  Who woulda thunk?!  She journals more than I ever have done but reading through them really inspired me to journal more.  I’ve been putting only the details of the event in the pictures.  I haven’t done what I was thinking or silly comments others said.  I wasn’t putting much of myself in these pages because I felt they were just for recording what we did.  I didn’t look at this hobby as something that I needed to really get creative about and have it represent me.  I scraplifted some of her ideas and I’ve started journaling.  I picked out some pictures that haven’t been used and probably wouldn’t be used because they just didn’t fit into a layout.  I opened my thought book and wrote.  I’m really looking forward to turning these into pages that aren’t part of a layout but that represent who I am as a person.  I’m not sure if I’m make a book of just me or if I’ll use these as fillers in our family albums.  Not sure yet.  But, they will be pages for myself – good or bad, happy or sad, proud or upseting moments.  They may have the kids, akdoc, my parents, my friends, or even myself.  I hope they will give my family and friends a glimpse into how I am and let the future generations know the WHOLE me.  Just thinking about doing this makes me feel happy.  I feel like I have something that I can say what I want and just make it me – separate from anyone else.  It’s a nice feeling!