My Minds Eye Challenge

I actually did a sketch. No wonder its raining here today.


Was looking on the net and came across My Minds Eye challenge.
Challenge:Your challenge is to create a layout using this sketch from PageMaps as your creative spring-boar. The rules: Use ANY My Mind’s Eye products (current or past) you’d like as long as your project has at least 80% My Mind’s Eye products.

Challenges of product sites are difficult especially when they always ask for pages from their new ranges, etc. So I smiled when I saw this one, have quite a bit of my minds eye paper in my stash and I was going to do a page with the pictures of Bee and me with the butterfly poem we found. The reason being, she gave me a packet of punched out butterflies when I saw her, she sat and punched out butterflies for me before making the trip to see me. So special butterflies indeed were used.

Reworks

Oh the joys of reworks...yes I know its just paper. Have been working on this for some time, taken it apart, built it up again and now I AM GOING to stop and just leave it be. Do you ever have one of those days where nothing works, comes together or you just want to try the page again but differently? Be nice to hear your stories of - oh its just paper after all! Not exactly just paper :) is it ever.

23 year Kitti Skitti Marriti

Isn't that something special. She is 23 human years this year. She has been part of most of my life and has been with my child since he was born. She often snuggles up close to him to. I always say she has lived so long because she was smart enough to make her humans her slaves. The other theory is if I ever come back to this life I am coming back as my mom's pet.

She talks non stop. If she wants to go anywhere she will meow until she gets her own way. Even if it is at 4 in the morning. You will open up the window and she will look at you in disgust and tell you, "no I am not going out the window, that is for lower class...I used the door."

Still think its pretty amazing that Skitti Marriti is now so old and still so full of life and bringing my kids joy too.

Why we do it...

You ever think about it, why we scrap book, why we blog, why we collect stash like no tomorrow. Well I came across this paragraph browsing Ali Edwards site. Its a great article - so worth the read.

"Eventually I discovered for myself the utterly simple prescription for creativity: be intensely yourself. Don't try to be outstanding; don't try to be a success; don't try to do pictures for others to look at - just please yourself."- Ralph Steiner

Being seen as selfish or extravagant for indulging yourself in scrapbooking. There was a great quote from Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) when she was on Oprah recently. A woman had asked her about being seen as selfish for creating a list of things in life she wanted to do and actually doing them; in essence, focusing on things she loved. "In Mandarin Chinese, they have two words for selfish," Liz says. "One means doing that which is beneficial to you. The other means hoarding, greedy and cruel." She talked about how we as a culture have meshed the two meanings together and made the word into something very negative. She suggests you simply ask yourself, "is this beneficial?" Is it beneficial to tell the stories of your family? Is it beneficial to participate in a hobby that combines your love for your family and your love for photography or words or creativity? (Note: even beneficial things can become negative when driven to the extreme. Striving for balance in all things is usually a good path forward.)

My friend Bee is running a RAK, go post your favourite quotes.

This in one of mine
Above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was hungry. I was defeated. I was happy. I was sad. I was in love. I was afraid. I was hopeful. I had an idea and I had a good purpose and that's why I made works of art.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres

And my friend Tertia posted me this award

Ok I am supposed to name 5 things that I would like to do. Only 5? You have got to be kidding me, there is so much I want to do. how do I limit it to 5?

1. ) Be the best mom that I can be. Single momhood leaves you with so many shortcomings, its hard to keep up with it all and not beat yourself up too much. So where I can, I want to know I am giving it my best.

2.) Be more spiritual. Finding ways to bring me closer to my faith. Sometimes this is challenging when life gets so busy.

3.) Be a better friend. Find ways to seek out good things in my friends and make them feel good about themselves and find ways to let them know I care lots.

4.) Take more photo's and maybe one day find away to make some extra money so I can buy a new lens. But also to bring joy to people and capture something special.

5.) And of course the selfish thing, I would really like to go back to Paris.

Now I am going to change the rules, instead of sending this off to 5 bloggers, if you are reading all this, then the award is passed onto you.

Have a blessed week
V

Shoe! As in where did time go not what you put on your feet

It is scary when you look at your blog and think, oh my word, was that when last I updated.

So much happened since the last post...

• Ireland (lots of great memories)
  
• U2 (Totally frikking mind blowing experience - wow)
  
• Seeing Bee (ah, see below)
  
• Kids back to school, 2 kids party nogal too.
  

I will blog another post another day and share some Ireland pictures. For the time being they are on my PC, collaged and waiting for the "TO DO DAY". Its easy to collage in Picasa and if you play around you really get a great way of putting together lots of holiday photos. I am so impressed with how they all came out. Also so impressed I could show Bee how she too can quickly whip them up. Watch this space - I am sure she is going to use some of these soon soon.

What can I say about my friend Bee. So totally awesomely fantastic to see her. Laughter just flows. Here is the collage she did especially for me.
And I had a visitor, I don't know it the cheeky bugger is going to stay around as we have been debating my current status of creativity and what I want to do, says knitting is repetitive and brain deadening or that fact that I have too many watchables recorded on the PVR. Anyway the Mojo dude stayed around long enough to entertain me with some paper, glue and glitter. Got to love it when he visits and 4x6 photos all just work and line up the way you want with not too much debate. Or maybe its the whisky (as in Ireland do as they do) inspired talk that helped us get through a double page together. Or maybe its just the desire to have the sun back and the swimming pool to burn lots of kids energy.

Happy long weekend everyone. If that mojo man pitches up at your place, just feed him whisky me thinks.