I’m sure you were wondering what I was going to do with all of my “free time” when Sweet Tomato Designs retired…    *wink*

Well I found someone else willing to take me on to be on her CT Team!!  In the Small Things has graciously allowed me to join her awesome team.  I can already tell this is going to be a great group to belong to!

Can’t wait to show you some of her stuff, I’ve already created one layout and am in the process of doing another, all the while I’m trying to update my blog.  As I’m sure you’ve noticed – especially depending on if you’ve popped over while I’ve been playing…  Hopefully I’ll have the new look set soon. 

I’ll be back in a bit to show you some of my new gig. ’til then…

With Blessings, Rebecca

This post and layout came out of my recent trip for our American Baptist Women’s Convention.  I almost didn’t go.  Frustration with the continued uncertainty of the future… exhaustion of being at home with three kids all week on my own… Not being sure of what my role is supposed to be.  And as I was there I was reminded as the speaker spoke of how we are like a pot of clay to be molded by the potter’s hands… God knows.  God knows how tired I am.  God knows what is coming.  God knows and I need to let go and be molded and filled.

I could have done this just as easily with pictures of me.  But like any mom, those are not as readily available.  And with Pink and Green being the old two’s favorite colors this seemed very appropriate.

I used Sweet Tomato Designs new kit called Raspberry-Lime.  You can purchase at one of her stores…  Polka Dot Plum, Scrappity-Doo-Dah, and Funky Playground Designs

I need to print this out.  Put it in the girls room.  So they see it, and so I see it.

Night all.  With Blessings, Rebecca

Some of my pictures I feel are Front Page news.  Other times they are more of a section B,C, or D.  Or perhaps the backpage even.  But the pictures I take have stories behind them.  They are important to me.  And because they are important to me, they are important to my family.

We have lived away from family our whole marriage.  Now granted I know anything that is less than 5 hours probably have some of you thinking yeah you don’ t have it bad, I do.  We have been lucky that even in bad weather that is probably as long as we have to be on the road for.  But I’m getting tired of it.  And with the continued uncertainity of the future we can’t help but hope we will find a job closer.

But until we do, right now we have to travel.  Which means that we do not see family all the time, they do not get to share in our joys, in our pictures, and in our daily lives every day or even every week.  That is part of the reason why I started scrapbooking.  To capture the stories and the miracles that I see every day.  So they can be shared either with family now, or family later.

I find I’ve gotten away from that some.  It’s almost too easy as a CT member or as a busy mom of three, to simply say “Ok, I’ll throw together a quick page and put it out, then it’s done.  I’ve got too much to do.”

But I don’t want to do that.

I want the time that I spend scrapping to tell a story of what is going on, what miracle I’ve seen in my children or through their eyes.

And yes, I’m writing this as much for me as I might be for those of you reading this.

The latest kit that has been put out by Sweet Tomato Designs has made this easy though.  I have to be honest, I took my basic page from another layout that I can no longer link to the kit for because not all of the designers are designing anymore.  But in recreating this page from a new kit, that I can link to it reminded me of my epiphany up above of why I scrap.

And I needed that reminder right now.

Sometimes we need to take a step that is unexpected.  And mine came honestly as I began writing this post.  It was not what I expected to come out, but is obviously something that God is trying to get me to listen to.  Otherwise it would not have flowed so effortlessly from my fingers into my keyboard.

Anyways…  The latest kit is called, as you probably guessed, Front Page and you can buy it at Funky Playground Designs, here.

And here as I’m sure you’ve been waiting for, is my layout that I recreated with it.

In this picture my first daughter was having a PT (physical therapy) session.  My camera was always close at hand for her.  I still try to now with her sisters but it’s harders since I have now three very capable little ones that can grab the camera where with Angela that was not as likely.

We were talking as she was hanging out.  And then she did it.  She lifted her head, on her own!

Here is the journaling if you can’t quite read it all….

“You didn’t think we were looking.
Right to left… and left to right…
three times…
It was all I could do to not say something
and to just continue talking to your PT like nothing extraordinary was going on.
Click goes the camera.
Capturing those moments…
that you were never supposed to do,
that we were never supposed to dream about.”

The kit has a lot of other great elements that didn’t fit this picture but I’m sure I’ll be pulling it out again to highlight how the camera is ever present in my hands, capturing those moments that I need to remember the stories that I want to tell and want my children to remember.

With Blessings,  Rebecca

Sweet Tomato Designs has a new kit out and the colors are very calming.  I love these colors.  The turquoise, browns and ice grey, are like a balm to my troubled soul.  They were urging me to Relax.

And as I was reading through some post that I found off of my Facebook feed, the thought of Jesus saying “Come to ME, all who are weary…” was comforting.  So I scrapped it.

Sometimes the strongest thing about my scrapbook therapy is the fact that life isn’t always pretty.  I don’t always remember to hand everything over to God, I don’t always remember to ask for help when I need it.  At times right now it feels like I’m going it “alone” so often, despite the fact that I have friends who want to help and most importantly a husband who is trying to so hard.  I hate feeling like I’m making him feel sad for what he is not able to do right now.

I have to remember to rely on God, every morning, every moment that I want to throw my hands up and scream, when I want to just close the door, crawl into bed and cry.  And today is one of those days.

This is me today.  Being weary, knowing that I need to relax and spend time with my kids because despite all there is to do, these days will go quickly.  So I will try to remember.

Here is the journaling…

“As a mom, there is never time to truly relax.  This has been ever present in my mind as Michael spends each week working to provide for us, living with his parents, and coming home on weekends.  You’d think that after a while it would become routine, that it would get easier.  But it hasn’t.  Perhaps it is the time of year, the anniversaries that we celebrate.  Perhaps it is the fact we have been sick, that the weather is cold so it is hard to get out of the house.  Whatever it is, it is wearing on me.  I am weary of this arrangement.  It’s not what we want.  It’s what we have to do right now.  So as I feel tugged in multiple directions, by three children here with me, by my grief of the one that is not here, by my jobs that I’m trying to do to bring in a little extra money and my volunteer work that I remain to feel strongly about.  I struggle.  I struggle to remember that God can help me through each day if I only look to him for strength, patience and guidance.  I need to go to him because I am weary, because I am heavy laden.  And even though rest feels like something of the past, I need to take that time with Him in whatever form it takes, so I can handle all that “life” is throwing our way right now as I wait for the job that will enable us to be together again…..”

So I hope you take some time….

Find some time to relax.  Purchase this kit, and remember even when there isn’t time, sometimes that is just the very time that you need to relax…

With Blessings, Becky

There is so much going on there!

You can read about Cara and learn more about her at the Behind the Scenes…

You can enter to win her latest kit, Relax, and tomorrow you’ll get to see my layout with this beautiful kit.

Good luck and make sure to check back tomorrow for my layout and more links to what is going on!

What is “cultivating a good life”?

Today… even as I am frustrated that Miss Hope has had a bad morning involving lots of screaming at the top of her lungs, I’m almost out of diaper covers for Miss Joy and had to hurry to get them in the wash so we didn’t have problems, all of the kids have the sniffles and I’m trying to deny my own, and My Love had to leave today to go to work … I had to sit and think about it.  I felt God prodding me to answer this question.

Not just for the chance to win the Project Life Album.  But for the focus that I needed for me, for today, for this week, heck even for this hour as I try to get the kids down for their nap so hopefully we will start the afternoon after quiet time on a better note.  And in that I felt compelled to share my post here…

I answered with this {with some formatting added}…

“Right now cultivating a good life means that I remember in the day to day:

• the blessings that my kids are
• that I am loved
• that God is providing for my family even as my husband has to leave every week for work because he could not find something locally.

Cultivating a good life, means

• making sure my kids do not feel like they are a burden
• but are loved, wanted and are the joys of my life (next to God and my husband)

Cultivating a good life is how I am trying to focus not so much on my to-do list that is a mile long, but what makes me and my family happy.

And if a few things on the to-do list have to change in priority for that to happen, then it just might be that time to let some of the old go, so our new life as we look to the future can begin.  It’s not easy.”

…sigh…

It’s not easy.  There are a ton of projects I should be working on instead of creating this post.

I still haven’t figured out a good way to keep track of what I have done versus what I need to do on a daily basis.  I had hoped my iPhone would have something on it for me to do that with, that was free (yes I’m cheap in that aspect) but so far I’m not happy with anything I’ve tried.  So I’m trying to figure out if it is that I need to visually see something say on the wall or if just the method I was using on my iPhone doesn’t work.  I hate spending money on an app just to figure out that it isn’t going to do what I want either.  :/

But my kids and my husband are what is important.  Hopefully soon God has it in his plan for us to be together again where my husband is working.  Instead of here and still unemployed.  That’s not any fun.  Been there, done that.

And in the meantime…  I’ll try to remember my list, remember to cultivate a good life for my family every day.

With Blessings, Becky

But as much as I sometimes hate winter, I love how my children’s jackets pop against the snow as I watch them enjoy playing.  It makes me wish I had warm enough gear to go out and play with them too!  But little Fiona is too small yet to go out so I hang out with her and enjoy their antics from inside the house.

It’s kits like Sweet Tomato Designs newest, Wintervention, that just scream to be downloaded and used for those winter photos.  Just like the kids jackets pop on that snow, all of your pictures of the kiddos in their snow gear surrounded by all that white will pop against these beautiful colors.

You can get Wintervention at either Polka Dot Plum or Scrappity-Doo-Dah.

Now I did have to play a little with this kit   And in the end created a custom background paper by combining two of them in order to make my frame cluster stand out a bit more, yet give me that background interest that I really wanted.  That is the beautiful thing about digital scrapbooking!

Here is my layout…

This winter has been hard for me to get the girls out to play as it is a production usually taking up to 30 minutes to get them ready and Miss Joy is not always wanting to be patient that long.  But they still get out, still try to roll a snowman.  And although daddy is glad he doesn’t have to shovel each weekend when he gets home (yeah, we bit the bullet and got a plowing contract for the rest of the season) I know he misses the opprotunity to be out there playing with them when I’ve sent him pictures.

We know this seperation is only temporary.  God is working everything out.  We just have to be patient and smile. 

With Blessings, Becky

Well you could say I was Frolicking!  My husband was home so we spent some quality family time together during the holidays.  But there is a new kit out that I want you to know about.

Sweet Tomato Designs is having a Guest Designer Spot over at Scrappity-Doo-Dah this month. 

And as a part of this she has this exclusive kit called Frolic.

I used it to document what at first looks like not the best photo because it is blurry.  And after I took the picture I wonder how it would look in a page and for a while I worried about the fact I didn’t have the “perfect” picture for this moment.  The moment was of my first daughter, my Angela Faith, who is flying in heaven right now.

We went to a local school’s festival and although she was not able to get on the kids rides, she loved to watch them.  Sunday (1/30) she would have been 9 years old.  So although it has been a bit hard this past weekend; creating this page actually helped.

I based off with a template from Chrissy W that she gave away as a freebie on her blog, called Freebie Template #54.

Angela loved to watch the lights, she loved the music of the ride and to be honest I think she just loved being out and about.  Living with a child with a disability, that for simplicities sake I’ll say is related to Cerebral Palsy, it was not always the easiest to get out an about with her; but we were getting there.  And since we live where there were not many opportunities like this school festival, we took advantage of it for her to experience.

The journaling says,”You loved watching the kids ride as it went around and around.  You laughed and it gave my heart such joy!”

I know posts like this or topics such as loss are not so easy to read about sometimes.

But this is my life reality.  And my scrapbooking is my therapy.

And Angela and her sisters have been such a joy that I love to share those sometimes not so perfect pictures that have that  perfect memory.

I hope you will visit Sweet Tomato’s shop and see what perfect memories you can have fun and Frolic with!

With Blessings…

I have a picture memory of walking into my girls room and opening the curtain to find they had set up their own little library bookshelf on their windowsill!  It was so cute!  And I was positive I had a picture of it, that’s how vivid this memory is.  Well when Sweet Tomato Designs sent me her new kit, Bookish, that is the is the picture I went looking for.  But I couldn’t find it.  But I was amazed by how many pictures of the girls reading that I DO have.

So I went searching for just the right photos to highlight this great kit.  And I didn’t even get the extra cute bookworm into my page.  I can see I’m going to have to sit and scrap with this kit at least a few more times!  Of course the girls are into a labeling phase of wanting to label everything so maybe I’ll use the kit to start doing that around the house for them to learn the words associated with the items.

There are so many possibilities, especially with two little girls who are so eager to do and to learn.

When Cara announced she had a new kit for us I was so excited.  Then my girls came down sick.  Hence the reason you are seeing this post after this kit has been released.   But btter late than never right?  You can pick up Bookish at Sweet Tomato Designs Store at Polka Dot Plum.

Here is my girls, showing off their love of reading. 

To create the sky around the “roof” of my house, I actually combined three (I think?) of the papers in the kit using different opacity’s.  When I open photoshop later today I’ll update the post to say exactly what I did.  My brain can’t remember right now. 

So go on, pick up your copy and show your love of being bookish!  I’d love to see what you come up with.

With Blessings,

Rebecca

“If you would like to be considered for this fantastic holiday loveliness, please leave us a comment telling us one thing you are doing to get ahead this holiday season. ”

This was my entry:

I love everything in today’s post, but my getting ahead is probably not considered that by most people. I’m letting go of my expectations on myself. As a mom of now three kids under the age of five, the newest being 7 weeks old, and being a single parent most of the week with hubby only home on weekends I’m learning the hard way that getting a shower everyday is an accomplishment! (Didn’t manage it yesterday.) Don’t get me wrong I haven’t thrown my hands up in the air, but I just know I have to be much more realistic with my goals for this season. First and foremost is enjoying my children as they anticipate this holiday season.

Thanks for the awesome giveaway, I love “playing” and my older two actually try to help me decide where to put things when I’m doing it.