What a Week I've had!

We have been navigating some really rough waters the past week - i am so glad that it is somewhat behind us! I have never been too exposed to mental health issues - but the past 3 years have been a crash course in Bi-Polar Disorder in one of our family members.

I am so thankful for all our friends, family members, church family, etc. who have been instrumental in supporting us through this roller coaster ride. Whew! Realizing that our kids are not ours... they belong to the Lord. They are His. And He loves them way more than we could ever love them. That has been a huge comfort.

There are a lot of people who don't understand the sickness that can occur in the brain. There is definitely a chemical inbalance in someone's brain that can totally change a person's countenance, behavior, attitudes, and outlook on life. How powerful our brains are! THANK the Lord that there is medication now - and so much help for - people who suffer with a mental illness or disorder. I am learning - so much and so fast.

If you know of any online sources to help with mental disorders - please email me! I would love to hear from you. AND if you have been touched by mental illness, I know what you're going through. I truly do. It's hard. But when your loved one is affected, you love them through all the ups and downs.

Heather
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Going Scrapbooking!

I am heading to Virginia Beach, VA for a weekend of scrapbooking with one of my besties - Sally! The crop it associated with the scrapbook store, Beach Scrapbooks. We stay in a motel for the weekend and scrap away. I can't wait! And with my new scrapping organization - using my Scraprack - I am set to go (well, a lot faster than I used to be!) I even bought the extension to the Scraprack on Ebay with 5 spinders because I have so much STUFF. But now I am so organized. I even feel like scrapbooking now because I'm not so overwhelmed with my total disarray of supplies, papers, and embellishments. AND the Scraprack site has FREE organization videos. I have watched most of them and have learned alot about how to organize my supplies: the 6 categories, using color to organize, and the yearly events/holidays sections. It just all makes sense to me and I am going to scrapbook better now that I'm organized. I can feel it! hee, hee.

I have a few pictures of our wonderful weekend in Blowing Rock, NC. We had a great time. The weather was stunningly beautiful and the view off our back porch were priceless.

I am truly an Appalachian State girl and Eric is a App State boy. We fell in love at App State and enjoy every minute in the mountains around Boone and Blowing Rock. I dream that one day Eric and I will own our own piece of the mountain. I pray and hope so!

I have submitted some layouts to Cricut Magazine and Scrapbook Trends and have heard nothing. It makes me so sad. BUT not sad enough to quit submitting AND realizing that I LOVE my pages - whether a magazine validates them or not.

figuring it out...

i have been thinking alot lately about WHY I scrapbook. I used to feel so much pressure to produce the most amazing pages - hoping that it would get me published in a magazine. That attitude really was exhausting AND took all the joy out of scrapping for me.

I also wanted to keep up and stay current with my pictures. I had all these "rules" to my scrapbooking - like matchng colors on all the pages, or both sides of a two-page layout had to be the same; or how about the "rule" to use only odd numbered items on your layout? I had so many "rules" that I couldn't just go with my instincts and enjoy creating my layouts!

In the past couple months I've come to relax so much more. MOSTLY, because I thought that if it isn't fun and enjoyable to me, then I am not going to waste my time and energies on it any more. Life is way too short for something like scrapbooking to be a chore!

Now, I use pictures to scrap that I want to scrap - not in chronological order either. I put as many or as little pictures on a page based on what looks good to me. I am realizing that it's FUN to scrapbook when I take all the pressure off myself.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad