Five Minute Friday – details over at Lisa-Jo’s blog.

Comfort. What an appropriate word for today. I’ve just closed up my Facebook newsfeed and the images of little Benjamin in the hospital are fresh in my mind and my heart. This little boy was born just one short week ago and has already endured more than many adults ever will in their entire lifetimes. Sweet baby boy in need of heart surgery. Struggling for his lungs to function properly. Fighting infections.

I look at the photos, I pray quietly, yet fervently, and tears come to my eyes. They stream down my face. Healing, I ask. And also comfort. For the mama who can’t hold her newest treasure. Who must sit and watch as others try to take care of the baby she longs to snuggle. For the daddy who watches his son struggle, and also sees his wife in pain. For the older brothers and sisters, still waiting with the sign hung up at home, “welcome to your new home, little brother.” And comfort for the little one lying in his hospital bassinet, fighting.

 

 

{This week is not about my writing, but please feel free to leave a prayer in the comments if you’d like me to share with Benjamin’s parents that we’ve expanded the body of believers praying for their little boy.}

May 4th was {inter}National Scrapbook Day, also known as iNSD or just NSD. To celebrate, there were blog hops and Facebook parties and all sorts of sales and contests and other scrapbook goodness happening all over the web. I’m new to the digital scrapbooking world, so this was an absolutely perfect way for me to discover shops, designers, and forums.

One thing I picked up this weekend via a blog hop was the More or Less collaboration kit from Pixels & Co. When I finally got it unzipped on Tuesday night and peeked through it, the “torn” gray and pink background caught my eye. Using that as my base, I found my favorite photo of one of my pairs of pointe shoes, and got scrapping. I used a few pieces from the kit, and supplemented with other kits.

. . . CREDITS . . .

• pink striped and distressed gray backgrounds, and pink tape {More or Less collab from Pixels and Co.}
• photo frame {Everyday Memories kit by Sugarplum Paperie}
• silver sparkles {Sweet Storytelling kit by Sahlin Studio}
• pink and silver ribbon {Early Spring kit from Created by Jill}
• pink flowers {Something Pretty kit by Zoe Pearn}
• “pirouette” created with {Anchored Alpha by Allison Pennington}
• journaling font {KG Strawberry Limeade}

 

This is what arrived in the mail for me today . . .

After reading The Poetics of Art Journaling and To Photo or Not to Photo, I decided to try scrapbooking one of my recent Five Minute Friday posts. It was a fun page to create – a photo-less page containing a cross between poetry and journaling.

I think I’m going to scrapbook more of my writing now.

I’ve been reading a lot about memory keeping over the last couple months and have “bookmarked” some of the posts, etc. that I’ve found the most inspirational, informative, or want to access regularly. Here are a few of my current favorites:

• To Photo or Not to Photo {photo-less scrapbook pages}
• Glimpse {a collaborative Instagram project by Clickin’ Moms}
• Capture Your 365 {inspiration + ideas + support for your everyday photography}
• 5 Photos to Shoot Every Day {a list of ideas for taking photos every day}
• Making Memory Videos {a list of ideas + a “best of” video of the blogger’s son}
• The Digi Dares {weekly “dares” to get you scrapping outside the box}
• Quotes scrapbook page {I love the idea of creating one of these with family quotes}
• 100 Bits of Life {everyday items to include in a scrapbook}

I’m also continually adding pins to my Memory Keeping board on Pinterest. Feel free to follow!

We write for 5 minutes flat.

No extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation.

Unscripted. Unedited. Real.

Today’s word is jump. You can join in or read more Five Minute Friday posts over at Lisa-Jo’s blog.

Child’s Praise

jump
hop
skip
twirl

little boy
little girl

run
dance
clap
play

thank the Lord
for the gift of today

climb
spin
sit
fly

worship God
with arms stretched wide

yell
shout
whisper
sing

give Him praise
for EVERYTHING

After working on Callan’s baby book for about a year (he’s 11 months old today!), I decided last week that I really wanted to try my hand at digital scrapbooking. I used to make real scrapbooks, back when it was all the rage, but it was time-consuming, space-consuming, money-consuming . . . and I eventually just stopped. Now I’m finally getting around to putting stuff into photo books and I thought I’d try scrapbooking again, but in the digital world. I have photos, Photoshop, and a basic knowledge of scrapbooking. Why not?

So this weekend I dove in. I read a couple of articles, signed up for some newsletters, and downloaded a bunch of free digital scrapbooking papers, elements, etc. to get started.

This morning I finally got all the files unzipped and made my first page – Callan’s first trip to Urgent Care. It’s a photo I hadn’t done anything with yet, and it had a lot of journaling to go with it, so I figured it was a good place to start. One photo, one journaling box . . . I could handle this. And in about 20 minutes, this is what I had:

I’m fairly pleased with it for my first attempt. Michael is happy that this means I can get rid of a lot of my physical scrapbooking supplies, I’m happy for a new reason to play in Photoshop, and we’re both happy that our boys will have pretty baby books and “yearbooks.”

If you’re interested in any of the elements I used on this page, here are all the details . . .

Chevron Washi Tape from a Vegas Girl at Heart

Polaroid Frame from fuzzimo.com

Prescription Journaling Box from Chelle’s Creations

Squiggle Arrow from Creation Cassel

Grey Street Paper Pack

Smiley Monster font