It's reveal day at Nuts About Sketches. Here's my interpretation of Sketch #256. I really do love working with Shawn's sketches - they're so fluid and user friendly. My Nuts About Sketches projects always turn out great because Shawn's already done all the thinking. I just have to pull out the product and put it together.
I've got a mix of old and new here. The flowers are Primas and have been in my stash forever. The papers are Kaisercraft and are new. The letters come from Graphic45 and they're old.
Another "old" is the man in the photos - my darling husband of 24 years now. Every year with him just gets better. I could not have found a more perfect life companion - he is the string to my kite, keeping me grounded, helping me achieve my dreams by making them more realistic realities. He is a great conversationalist, has a warm, kind, and loving heart, and has a fun sense of adventure. Every day with him is a new discovery.
The photos are from a visit to Blue River last year. I was doing a scrapbook series on the 23rd Psalm and I had a "still waters" image in my head that only THIS particular place could make work. True to his adventurous spirit, Tom agreed to a day drive, and off we went, taking Cowboy along of course.
We had a great time. I had my new camera and was learning how to play with the features, but I think Tom had more fun than I did. He took a quick skinny dip under the bridge. Me, I sat on the bank and played lookout. I told you he was an adventurous soul!
March 3, 2013
Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.”
~Leonora Carrington
Hard to believe but 2013 is 20% over this week. Today is a gift, grab it, and do something you've been putting off!
I love working with Shawn and using her sketches to create beautiful projects, so I'm honored and excited to be invited to continue with my Design Team position at Nuts About Sketches. This layout is one that I turned in with my application.
My mom, age 74, retired before personal computers were standard issue for teachers, and she really only uses her home computer to play solitaire. But recently my sister and I decided that her rich knowledge of the Bible and her incredible teaching ability needed to be out in the world.
Mom has, for years, wanted to write, but her health issues with her cancer recovery and an old heart surgery, coupled with her age, make sitting at a desk for long periods not really an option. Blogging seemed to be a perfect solution. But to do that, she was going to have to enter the computer age and buy a laptop. My sister said, "ONLY a Mac - nothing else. And you'll have to talk her into it. She won't listen to me." So, it fell to me to bring mom into the computer age.
At first, she resisted the idea, but surprisingly, only for a couple of minutes. I told her, "we'll get you a laptop, and a lap desk, and you can do it from your recliner. You sit there watching television anyway, and you can do this at the same time." Then there was a whole conversation about the logistics. Mom, and if you knew her you'd laugh, had very clear ideas of what her keyboard and her screen needed to look like. I said, "ok, let's just go to the Apple store and see what's there, and we'll find what you need."
I did a quick internet search for lap desks, and found that one that would work that we could pick up in the same mall as the Apple store, so I met mom in Tulsa and we looked first at the Mac Books. Mom got a little excited when she saw how simple they would be to use. But before we bought it, we measured it and then went upstairs to Brookstone to check the lap desks. I almost lost her when I sat her down in the big massage chair to rest a few minutes. She took a sales tag and asked the sales clerk, "do you deliver..."
The lap desk was perfect -which I knew because I'd researched and found the #1 best one out there - and she bought it. Then we went back down to Apple and she bought her MacBook Pro 15 inch retinal display, top of the line model. Then she signed up for the One to One program.
Since early December, I've been driving to Tulsa one day a week, meeting mom for lunch, and going with her to her One to One lesson so that when she forgets what her tech tells her, she can call me and I can help her with it. But she's a good student, and she is learning fast.
This photo is of her and her favorite tech, Josh, who looks for her name on the list when he's scheduled because if she's on there, he wants to work with her. I think that makes him one of the sweetest guys on the entire planet.
And as a pure bonus for me. When my DH asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said, "A MacBook Pro" and he took me to the store and bought me one. So now I do a little one-to-one myself.
If you've gotten this far, thanks for listening to me ramble on (and on and on).
March 1, 2013
"The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep." ~ Rumi
None of the sunrises this week has been what I would call spectacular. We did get rain one morning, thank-you, God. And one morning was totally cloud covered so the rise was just a plain gray gloom.
But weeks like this remind me that God expects us to take time to just find PEACE in our hectic and frantic lives. Take time to remember that it's not all about the spectacular. Sometimes the simplest thing can be an ordinary miracle.
