Take Root and Write

Photograph Christmas

 

 It was all I wanted that year. I was in fifth grade and all I wanted for Christmas was this dress. A full-length, red velvet dress with lace on the collar and cuffs. My first extra-fancy dress. I can still remember telling Santa about it and my excitement as I opened the package from him and pulled out this amazing, cranberry velvet dress. The pictures my mother took perfectly captured my delight, excitement and thrill.

It wasn't until years later that I learned the idea of the dress was planted by my mother. She was quite financially strapped and couldn't afford to buy us the latest toys and gadgets, but she really wanted to make me a fancy Christmas dress. So, she carefully planted the suggestion and watched it grow. But I don't remember that part. All I remember was the magic of opening that present and getting something I really, really wanted. I still recount that story every time someone asks, "what's your favorite holiday memory?"

I'm sure we've all got holiday memories like that. Special, magical moments that stick in our brains - maybe not the absolute, unvarnished truth, but they're OUR truth from that moment in time. It's the same for our kids now. What moments will they remember 20, 30 years from now? What do we want them to remember? We all work so hard to create magic for our kids at this time of year, but do we really stop to notice the magic THEY see?

Remembering 2008

If you’re anything like me, you spend way too much time & energy focusing on the things in your life that are annoying, irritating, frustrating & just plain angry-making. Which, in turn, makes everything in life seem darker. But, there’s something about this time of year that gets many of us focused on the brighter things. We’re all busy and rather harried, but there’s something about this time of year that makes us see more beauty and reflect more on our blessings -which is what I want to talk about this month!

December is probably the most reflective time of the year. Not only do we have Christmas this month, but we’re also facing the end of the year which brings with it lots of natural “looking back”. There is, of course, so much about this time of year that is breathtakingly beautiful – the first snowfall, the crisp, cold air, the Christmas decorations that light up the night, the way we think about others first (hopefully!). But, I think the most beautiful part of this time of year is to look back & see what we’ve come through. What we’ve overcome during the past year. How we’ve grown. What milestones have been reached. What we’ve learned about ourselves. These kinds of things are monumentally big. This is how we really & truly grow as people.

Do you really & truly know how much beauty there is in your life? How many blessings you have? How much you have to be thankful for? Do you ever take the time to stop & list those things that make you catch your breath in your life? I know you have them. This is the very best time to get those things down before you forget. Here are a couple ideas for you to help you get those thoughts & feelings out of your head & down on the page.

Who Are You?

How has scrapbooking impacted your life? For the digiscrapper there are obvious things, of course. The need for more hard drive space. Overflowing folders of photos. The adrenaline rush when your favorite designer announces a new product release. For the traditional scrapper there's the needs for more paper storage, trying to find new ways to store brads, flowers & ribbon, the little rush we get when we walk through the door of our LSS. These kinds of things are certainly impacting our lives as well as our checking accounts. But when you strip it all down to the basics, due to our choice of hobby, we’ve all added new titles to our laundry list of “who we are”. Titles like storyteller, artist, and historian. Titles that can expand our view of who we are if we let them. As we start winding down the year (I KNOW!!), let’s look at how we’ve been impacted & how we can express that impact.

 When we scrapbook, no matter how we do it, we’re telling a story. We don’t have to write a word if we don’t want to - every picture tells a story, at least to us. But what will this story mean to the people in the photos or the children of the people in the photos? Probably not a whole lot. If you can accept yourself as the storyteller that you are, it may just change the way you look at your “hobby”. It works like this: many times, if we change the way we see things, it actually
changes the way they are. For example - if you think of yourself as an ugly loser, you’ll probably live that out in your life. If you think of yourself as an artist, you’ll be more likely to behave like an artist and do things in an “artistic” manner. If you think of yourself as a storyteller, you’ll allow yourself the freedom to tell your story. It’s a mindset that, combined with practice, will open up that part of yourself. So practice. Give yourself that freedom and be a storyteller.

Have You Been Blessed?

"Give thanks, with a grateful heart.
 Give thanks, to the holy One.
 Give thanks, because He's given Jesus Christ, His Son.
 And now, let the weak say, 'I am strong',
 Let the poor say, 'I am rich',
 Because of what the Lord has done for us....."  - Don Moen

Here we are in autumn!

This is totally my favorite time of year, in no small part because whenever I think about autumn, I number of really inspirational songs come to mind. Inspirational in a spiritual sense, yes, but also in an artistic sense. There are songs that reverberate in my head, making me feel energized and wanting to create. Giving me ideas for scrapbook layouts I want to do, scrapbook designs I want to create, pictures I want to take, and things swirling around in my head I want to get down. I cannot think of a better way to incorporate all these inspirations than through scrapbooking. It's such a fantastic medium for combining your photos, your memories, the use of color and graphics in a way that is meaningful and do-able for average people.

Have you ever thought about dichotomous autumn is? I revel in how God, in a time of dying, creates the most incredible fireworks show there is. There is nothing that can compare to it. The sights, smells, sounds of autumn make my soul come alive! But what’s coolest is that all this is happening because, basically, nature is “dying” in preparation for winter. How amazing that God shows us the most beauty within the context of death, huh?

Scrapping School!

We all have our traditional layouts we do at this time of year. First day, special programs, school pictures – we’ve all got them. And, if you’re anything like me, you probably get bored with doing the same thing every year. Same layout, same journaling, different pictures. Because, you know, there’s only so many ways you can say, “Jimmy’s First Day of School”.  How can we make these memories fresh & different, unique & meaningful? That’s what I’m writing about this month - school from a new perspective.

There is so much more to the idea of school than just grade level, sports, extra-curricular activities and programs. Let’s talk about the idea of “learning”. That’s what it’s all supposed to be about, right? Learning what your curriculum says you’re supposed to learn, but also learning about life. That’s what growing up is all about. Learning what awaits us in the world and learning how to handle it. Developing the tools we need to function in that world. And it isn’t always pretty.

There is so much we can do with these ideas. I’m thinking not only about layouts about our kids, but also layouts that talk about us. What was your school experience like? What kinds of things did you learn? What kinds of things did you experience? What kinds of things do you remember? These can make fantastic layouts using some of your old school pictures. Remember back to when the pictures were taken and ask yourself some questions:

See Your Stories in a New Way

So what do you see? A beautiful woman in a fur coat or an old hag? Which one do you see first? Do you have to really work to see both of them? Can you see one immediately but not the other one until someone points it out to you? As it is with an optical illusion, so it is with recording our story in our scrapbooking. Sometimes it comes easily, but sometimes we have to really work to see things with fresh eyes. This week, that’s what we’re going to look at. It’s time to start noticing. The first step in having something interesting to say is to have noticed the interesting things that have happened or are happening.

Very often, we struggle with our journaling not because we don’t have anything to say, but because we feel like can’t say it right or interestingly enough or clever enough or whatever. So, we record the “who, what, where and when” & leave it at that. Which is okay, but it leaves precious little behind for others. Others who might actually want to know who we were rather than what we did. These magic “w” s are important, yes, but they really don’t tell anybody much of anything other than the facts. What’s really important is the “why” and the “how”. Not that we always went to the pumpkin patch every year and have 74 layouts recording it, but why it was important. What did everybody look forward to? What did little Joey do every year that was totally hysterical? What memories did the trip create, reinforce or bring back for you? We all want our journaling to be interesting, witty, and clever, but how can we expect to do that if we haven’t paid attention to what’s happening? If we aren’t noticing, we can’t chronicle it. Remember, there is only one person who can write down the emotion, the memory, the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and feeling of a particular scrapbooked event. That person is you. This is what we’re focusing on this week. Learning & practicing being aware in the world. Becoming practiced in noticing our world. Opening our eyes and really seeing.

Not Just That Surfacey Stuff!

Without pictures, our words will still be valued by our descendants a hundred years from now, but without words the pictures will be meaningless.

-- Author:Unknown

 

I really love to talk about the importance of memory-keeping in our lives and how we can get more comfortable with it. Here's where I'm coming from. Without a shadow of doubt, I believe the quote at the beginning of this article. Our scrapbook pages are gorgeous, artistic, creative & filled with memories, but we're lacking in one department - the sharing of the stories behind them. It's like this - I was looking through a scrapbook magazine & was so incredibly frustrated by what I was seeing. These great LOs with a couple journaling sentences telling just the very basic facts. Then, underneath the example LO was a quote from the person who did it giving the whole backstory of the LO & what it meant. I threw up my hands saying, "THAT is what should be on the LO - not that surfacey stuff!!!" That is what's going to matter to our grandchildren & great-grandchildren. Not how many ribbons & binder clips & felt pieces & cutesy stuff we can fit on the page, but what the STORY is. Who are we? What really happened here?? Quirks & anecdotes that will make those future generations say, "Whoa. Great-Grandma did that too?? No wonder I do that...that's so cool!!" Journaling that will make them understand what it was like to be us in our moment in time. Y'know?? That's the kind of thing I'm going to be focusing on here - not exclusively, but you'll probably see a lot of it. I hope this will help us not only get more comfortable in sharing our stories, but also in finding new stories to tell.

 

I have a question for you. Where do you "find beauty"? The awe-inspiring colors of autumn. Your little one peering through a window, framed in warm afternoon light. The Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, lit up with colorful lights and the presents underneath - all aglow with color. There's no questioning that these things are beautiful. It's easy to find beauty in a garden, in a child's eyes lit up over a birthday cake, in a breathtaking landscape. But beauty is so much more than that. It's about perception. It's about how you see far more than what you see. Let's look at that more closely. How you see. What that means to me is developing our ability to see beyond the surface of things and find beauty even where it's not obvious. By that, I don't mean in our pictures, necessarily. I mean finding the beauty in our stories. By recording the things in our lives that maybe are mundane or difficult or unusual or even tragic. By realizing that even if we aren't a supermodel or a gorgeous movie star, we still have beauty within us that yearns to be acknowledged.

Intro: Scrap Your Stories

Are you a scrapper who wants to delve deeper into telling your stories? This column is going to be centered around creating scrapbook pages that do more than look pretty - they tell your story. Read here to get ideas, get encouraged, get inspired and then come over to the group to talk about it, share layouts and get more in depth!

By, Christy Sturm
Column Posted 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month. Also meets as a Group in CWTR. HERE