How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love LOAD

...because LOAD is the bomb! (See what I did there? I crack myself up.)

It's almost here! I have been looking forward to LOAD215 for, literally, months! I wasn't "successful" the first couple of times I tried LOAD, and I was really down on myself. Looking back now, I see how silly that was. I normally get an average of, oh, ZERO pages done most months. (I have a yearly retreat I go to with my sister where I do the majority of my scrapping, which I LOVE, but more scrapping=more happiness, right?) I was looking at it all wrong. Each time I've attempted LOAD, I've gotten 20 or more layouts done. That, my darlings, is SUCCESS.

So how did I go from a LOAD Loser to a LOAD Lover?

BEFORE

AFTER

1. This is my HOBBY, what I do for relaxation and creative fulfillment. If I make it stressful, what's the point? I might as well make laundry my hobby if I want to constantly freak out over being behind or not finishing. I do hereby give myself permission to enjoy my hobby. LOAD, then, becomes a month-long opportunity to do something fun for me. Um, yes, please!

2. Practical tip: get your space ready before February 1. You'll need some supplies within arm's reach, but having stacks of layouts that need to go into albums or scraps everywhere will make trying to create harder than it needs to be. Do yourself a favor and clear an area to work in. Stockpile a little adhesive if you're running low; check the ink levels in your printer cartridges. Oh, and pick up some fun new product or cardstock or a new pen, just to get in the spirit of things.

3.  Practical tip: if you're in charge of dinner at your house, plan all your dinners ahead of time. My family will not eat out of a crockpot, but if yours will, consider yourself lucky. We have tacos, spaghetti, soup, baked potatoes, casseroles, pot roast--anything that takes just a little time or can be thrown in the oven and dealt with later. We also have something called YOYO, which stands for You're On Your Own.

4. I'm crazy-excited about the prompts for this LOAD, but I know from experience that at least one or two just won't work for me--or I might need more than a day to get my story together--so I make a list of topic ideas of my own. I have all my Christmas pictures ready to go, for example, plus pics from a friend's visit in November. If you're familiar with Lain's Scrapbook Improv, that's a fun way to do some layouts during LOAD. She has a spinner, but I roll dice to find out what my topic is, what my embellishment(s) are, what style of journaling to use, etc. That will cut your scrapping time considerably and you'll find your creativity kicks in when you're freed from making so many decisions.

5. Don't overthink it--have fun! You may not love every page you make for LOAD--but I bet you'll be surprised by how many you do love, especially the stories that you never thought to tell or the techniques you try on a whim. I made this page during LOAD214 and it is NOTHING like what I normally scrap. Where are the pictures? Where's the journaling? Where's the product?? This may be one of my favorite layouts ever. Because, oh my gosh, it references Flappy Bird! That was a year ago? Really??

When you exercise your creativity day after day, you'll find that it becomes easier and easier to jump into that space of "flow." I'm about as busy as the next person, and I sure didn't think I could add anything as time-consuming as scrapbooking into my daily routine, but between the prompts, Lain's Improv method and how amazingly creative I feel at the end of the month, I have found that a little bit of extra effort pays off in a big, big way.

Thanks for stopping by to hear my LOAD story. I'm excited about seeing your layouts in the Flickr gallery!  

Be sure to check out the rest of the LOAD215 blog hop scrappers here:

Karen Siegel Fitting http://wp.me/pdovL-dG
Nicole Gray http://nicolesscrapbook.blogspot.com/…/load-215-blog-hop.ht…
Alice Boll http://scrapbookwonderland.com/load215-tips
Lisa Hausmann http://lisahausmann.blogspot.com/20…/…/load215-blog-hop.html
Wendy Elliott Aebi http://aebidabbadoo.blogspot.com/…/how-i-learned-to-stop-wo…
Connie Ochoa Hanks http://wp.me/p33sLZ-cSG
Kristie Sloan http://kristiesloan.com/scrapbook-page-a-day-prepping-for-…/
Kelli Panique http://scrapbookgirl71.com/load215-blog-hop
Lain Chroust Ehmann http://www.layoutaday.com/a-layout-a-day-heres-how/
Christy Strickler http://myscrapbookevolution.blogspot.com/…/load-215-blog-ho…
Lynnette Nagle http://sassyscrapper2010.blogspot.com/…/pre-load-blog-hop.h…
Danielle Leonetti http://scrapperonthestreet.com/…/01/lets-get-ready-for-load…
Danielle Hunter http://ecoscrapbook.blogspot.com/20…/…/load215-blog-hop.html
Leslie Smith http://lcsmithsaved-outofthemire.blogspot.com/…/012715-load…

Heather Dubarry  http://wp.me/p35Z1m-D5

Melissa Pearson http://melissakaythehappyscrapper.blogspot.com/.../lesson...

Valerie Lindgren Smith http://fromvaleriesheart.blogspot.com/.../load215-tips...

Christmas is coming!

OK, I'm trying something new here, so hopefully this will work. For the last seven or eight years, I've put together a calendar of activities for our family to do during the month of December. (That's not the new part.) Back in the dark ages, I made a paper chain and fastened it on the wall, like a caveman. I cut a star out of yellow construction paper and it moved down the chain to show what day it was. (I'm totally laughing at how primitive this was compared to the Advent Bucket Lists we see on Pinterest now!) 

It is completely impossible that they were ever this little.
Somebody must have been using a trick camera.

 Some of the activities stay the same year after year, under threat of rioting by the minions. Watching Elf, for example, absolutely must happen. Last year, I collected a couple dozen Elf quotes and put them into a Bingo card generator. Everybody's cards were different and it was so funny to watch people tense up when they were approaching a Bingo and the line they needed was coming up. So now we can't just watch Elf and be happy. We have to watch Elf while playing Elf Bingo. But I'm okay with that!

Some of the activities stay on the calendar for a while but then fade away due to changes in age or location. "Play in the snow" is a safe bet at some point in December if you live in Virginia, but not so much in south Texas. Sadly, "letters to Santa" and "Put out ho-hos and milk for Santa" have also cycled off the calendar.  On the bright side, "Christmas Eve tamales" is a delicious new tradition.

Now that both my kids are older (read: have more demanding homeschool schedules and ::gasp:: independent social lives), we may not be able to do every single thing I have planned. I'm going to find a way to be okay with that. I don't want to be the crazed Pinterest mom making the whole family miserable because "TODAY IS RANDOM ACT OF KINDNESS DAY, DO YOU HEAR ME?!"

So here's what I'm hoping December 2014 will look like at our house. Feel free to copy any ideas that appeal to you, or--better yet--leave some ideas of your own in the comments.

Here's the new part I mentioned. I've never had a download link before today. The instructions seemed pretty straightforward which is almost always a sure sign it's not going to work. If you try to download it, would you please oh please do me a favor and let me know if it works?
click here to download calendar

Watch Me Grow

This may be one of my favorite crafty projects of all time.  I used my cricut to cut 4 1/2" circles from cardstock, Then I chose one picture (I usually pick my favorite, but if the birthday kiddo has a strong preference, I try to use their choice.) for each year of their life. I cut the pictures into 4 inch circles, affixed them to the cardstock and threaded everything onto some sturdy jute twine.

Both of my children were born toward the end of the month, so I pop this banner up in the kitchen at the first of their birth month. Each year we add a current picture. It is so much fun to watch my babies transform into little ones, then school age, and now into their teens through this simple banner.

I loved this idea so much that I also made a scrapbook layout for each child that I maintain in conjunction with the banner.  Can you believe that 18 years' worth of birthdays will fit on two 12x12" pages?? I always think of the sweet old ladies in the grocery store/post office/restaurants who would tell us frazzled moms with babies and toddlers to "Savor every minute! It goes so fast!" My son only has four empty circles left on his layout. I get choked up just thinking how fast they'll fill up.

Whatcha Readin? Week 46

Another week, another thriller. I'm telling you, next week I'm going to read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms to balance myself back out! Sleep Tight by Rachel Abbott is the story of a woman, her three children and her unstable, obsessed husband. What could possibly go wrong??

The woman--Olivia--and her children disappear, and the case is assigned to Detective Tom Douglas, who has actually investigated three other cases involving Olivia. Her husband Robert is, of course, their first suspect. He tells them a little truth, slanted to serve his purposes, and a lot of lies. From the evidence they uncover, the detective and his team have three theories: 1. Olivia and the children have been killed 2. Olivia and the children have been kidnapped or 3. Olivia and the children wanted to disappear. Robert has spent years planting seeds in case he needs to make Olivia look unfit, so the team also has to figure out whether the children are safe if they are, in fact, with Olivia.

Robert, in the meantime, is running his own covert investigation, and he's a step ahead of the detectives the entire way. I like books to have happy endings with clear and definite closure, but the more details Abbott revealed, the less sure I was that I was going to get that. I was reading as fast as I could in spots--as if I could help the detectives catch up by reading their parts faster! It might have worked, if I'd been able to read Robert's parts slower. ha!

This book could have been a predictable, formulaic read, but Rachel Abbott did a great job at keeping the reader off-balance throughout the book by frequently changing narrators and looking at the same clue from various perspectives. That's not to say that the book didn't follow a formula; I just wasn't sure which formula it was until the end. She also kept the suspense taut by changing the pacing of the story. At first, Robert is merely agitated, but soon his sections read like a crazed bull in a china shop. We're watching him unravel and lose control; we see him rapidly shift from being concerned with maintaining appearances in front of the police to being obsessed with finding his wife, regardless of who or what stands in his way. It was frightening.

I was also struck by how Abbott slowed the story by alluding to the detectives' lives. Tom would make dinner for his girlfriend or take a phone call about his cottage being robbed, and I would think, "Dude! You don't have time for this! Robert is thinking about one thing and one thing only--and he's ahead of you at the moment!" That is good writing, right there, my friends. As I keep saying, I'm done with this genre for a while, but I would definitely recommend this book.

Homeschool Week in Review (Week 11)

Bible
This week we studied the name Melek, which means King. This was another name that overlapped with a title given to Jesus. (We learned earlier that God is Jehovah Shalom--the Lord is Peace--and Jesus's was also the Prince of Peace.) God is King of everything, just as Jesus is called King of Kings.

For God is the King of all the earth;

    sing to him a psalm of praise.

Psalm 47:7

Math
We did math...I just can't remember a single thing about it.  At least that means it went smoothly. Unfortunately, the rough days in math are the ones that really stand out in my memory.  So...yay! I can't remember a single thing about this past week's math!

Grammar
Will is working on verbs and objects. He works independently and only has occasional questions for me. I'm a grammar nerd, so of course I'm really pleased to see his proficiency increasing! Katie is working on nouns. One of the lessons was on collective nouns, which we always think is so much fun.  Our favorites are the ever-popular 'murder of crows' and a 'clowder of cats.'

Literature
We're still reading The Blood of Olympus.  It's a long book to read aloud! We're going to have to start our next genre and study them concurrently or we won't finish before May. (May 2017, I think! It's a really long book!)

History
We read about Mussolini and fascism in Italy, but I didn't learn as much as I wanted to, so we're going to park here and dig a little deeper. You've heard the expression, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy"? Well, the homeschool corollary is, "If Mama's curious about something, everybody's curious about something." ha!

Science (co-op)
We've had a ton of rain this week, which is REALLY unusual for this area. Will had just finished a science chapter on the water cycle, and he made the comment that if this rain continued, it just might raise the water table. He was shocked to hear himself spontaneously apply what he was learning! It was a pretty cool moment.

IEW (co-op)
Both kids knocked out paragraphs on how antiseptics make surgery safer. We also got to recompile all their assignments, because the teacher's grade book went missing at the auto shop. I thought it was going to be a huge pain, but it actually turned out to be kind of fun. I think I heard one of them say that they were moving on to multi-paragraph essays, so I'm guessing our time of quick -n- easy IEW is coming to an end.

Other news
Both kids are spending the weekend at Cold Play, our church's fall retreat for students. They're both so excited that it's a miracle we got ANYTHING done this week.

Whatcha Readin? Week 45

Another perk of being an Amazon Prime Kindle user is Kindle First, a program that gives you the opportunity to read certain books the month before they're released.  My Sister's Grave by Robert Dugoni is a suspenseful thriller.  In other words, Amazon lured me way out of my typical genre with this one!

Tracy Crosswhite's younger sister Sarah disappears and is never found. A man with a history of rape and assault is convicted of Sarah's murder with circumstantial--and suspicious--evidence. Tracy sees the inconsistencies during the investigation and trial, but no one will listen to her. Tracy blames herself for Sarah's disappearance and becomes obsessed with trying to figure out what really happened. She eventually becomes a detective with the Seattle Police Department, always reviewing her sister's case in her mind.

Not too far into the story, some hunters or hikers find Sarah's body. The case, of course, goes from the back of Tracy's mind to the forefront. She returns to her small hometown to give her sister a proper memorial and burial. But she is still bothered by the way things don't quite add up. And, despite warnings from everybody in her life, she just can't leave it alone.

I'll be honest, this genre stresses me out. I don't like not knowing what's going on; I don't like little hints here and there; I don't like holding my breath and waiting for the boogeyman to pop out at me. This. Is. Not. My. Favorite. Genre.

Me, reading My Sister's Grave

I made it through the first two-thirds of the book just fine, but that last third--EEK!!!  I couldn't put it down, couldn't read fast enough. I was SO GLAD to reach the end and just collapse.

My Sister's Grave had the level of character development that is typical of this genre, which I think is too bad, because Tracy could have been really fascinating. But, again, if Dugoni had spent a lot of time and effort on character development, it would have slowed the plot to a crawl, which would have left the majority of his audience dissatisfied. (Who do I think I am, anyway, dipping my toe in this genre and expecting it to change to meet my character needs?! ha!)

OK, so now that I've whined and complained about thrillers, suspense and mysteries, guess what's next on my list? Yep. Another thriller. This one is called Sleep Tight (Yeah, I see no possible way this could go badly.)  After I finish Sleep Tight, I'm jumping back to my comfort zone. You heard it hear first. ;-)

One of our November traditions

 I absolutely love fall! I love the crisp mornings (when we can get them in South Texas!); I love college football; I love to cook comfort food like soups and apple muffins;  I love everything about fall--except pumpkin spice anything. But that's a story for another day.

For the last several years, I've seen friends on Facebook using the month of November to post one thing each day that they're grateful for. What a great idea! For some reason, though, I have a really hard time following through for the whole month. I can never figure out if I want to post my thankful thing first thing in the morning or last thing at night or at high noon. So, ironically, instead of feeling grateful throughout the month, I feel stressed and neurotic.  Who needs that?!

We have started a Thankful Tree tradition at home. I feel like I can be more candid at home than I can be on Facebook. Sometimes I want to be thankful for silly things, profound things or semi-private things. I love social media, but it weirds me out sometimes to be grateful for something and then get (or not get) "likes" for it.

The vision for our Thankful Tree is for everyone to add one leaf each day, but we're pretty lax on policing that. (Well, okay, we don't police it at all.) Sometimes I'll add several leaves in one day, sometimes I miss a day. It's no biggie. I want this to be a fun memory and something my family looks forward to. 

Thankful Tree 2013

We started our 2014 Thankful Tree on Saturday. I'm excited to see it transform from a bare trunk to a gorgeous record of our blessings!

 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

    his love endures forever.

Psalm 118:1