DigiScrapChat

Archive for the ‘Monday Challenge’ Category

What are you scrappin’ this week?  Me, I’m still working on photos from 2 years ago, before Martha was even born.  I have a lot of layouts I want to catch up on, and today as I looked through images thinking about possible layouts, I thought, “hey, why don’t I do some Christmas layouts?”.  It’s SO hot here in Vegas right now, that it’s a little hard to think “cool” and “Christmas”, but I have some fabulous pictures that really need scrapping.  And ding, ding - perfect challenge for Monday!

Here is a layout from 2006 that I want to scraplift.  Every year Granma gets the kids new pajamas for Christmas Eve, and we try to take pictures of them wearing them.  You can see how much fun THAT is… and this was with just TWO kids.  The pictures of all THREE from this last Christmas are just as fun.  I like this layout that lets me so many pictures in one.  I think I may just use it each year as the official Christmas Pajamas layout.

Wow, they look little!!

AND, since we haven’t done one in ages, today is a Giveaway Day!

Post a link in the comments to one of your own Christmas layouts (one you’ve done in the past or one you did for today’s Monday Challenge), and you’ll be entered to win one of TWO $5 gift certificates to the digi-scrap store of your choice.  I’ll close comments on this post on Thursday night at 8 p.m. central, and pick TWO winners!

COMMENTS ARE NOW CLOSED - WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED FRIDAY MORNING!

It feels like a long time since I posted… or maybe we’ve just been living through some very FULL days lately.

My husband and I traveled to CA last Wednesday, with our three children, so we could spend some time with family and help strengthen and encourage my sister Sarah who was recently (has it only been a week and a half?) with stage four breast cancer.

Here in CA, I have had internet access, but there hasn’t been a lot of time, and quite honestly not a lot of motivation, to blog the last few days.  On Thursday, we spent the day at the hospital, helping and then waiting while Sarah went through a surgical procedure to have a port put in, to make chemo treatments much easier.  It was a difficult day, but she made it through.

Friday we spent the afternoon in the beauty salon… getting our hair cut short.  Sarah’s hospital counselor had recommended it in preparation for the chemo treatments which will surely cause her hair to fall out.  Sarah’s lovely friend Jill made arrangements with her stylist for us all to come in and get new hair-dos.  It was a fun, together, kind of afternoon… with only a few sad undercurrents.  (You will be able to see the write up WITH pictures on Sarah’s health blog soon).

Saturday was spent with family, taking brother and sister pictures, taking family pictures, and wishing it weren’t QUITE so hot! (We apparently brought the Las Vegas weather with us to northern CA).  My brother and his wife had to fly back to Nebraska, so we said our goodbyes to them.

Today, Monday, Sarah begins her first chemo treatment.  She and I will have a light lunch and head to the doctor’s office.  Our mother will be watching all the kids - my three and Sarah’s two.  My husband will be heading home to Las Vegas so he can work for a few days, while my kids and I stay here to help through this first round of chemo.

I’ve been thinking about whether to try and post a Monday Challenge … and honestly, my mind is tired.  My tummy is nervous, and my body aches (sympathy pains?) just a little in anticipation of the afternoon we have ahead of us.  I can only imagine what my sister is feeling (I’ll see her in just a little while), but I’m sure her fear and anxiety is higher than mine.  So, all that to say… no Monday challenge today.  If you pray, please say a prayer for her around 1:30 pacific time.

I’ll try to be back soon…

This last weekend has been full of emotion and more than our fair share of drama and worry.  We got word of my sister’s illness (you can read more about that here), and at the same time Samuel and I went on a mini-vacation to Nebraska.  He and I really had a wonderful time, even amidst all the angst and bad news and such.

I worried that I wouldn’t be able to sleep well, because stress and anxiety tends to keep me awake, but I prayed and God blessed me with GOOD sleep the entire weekend.  Last night, I could barely keep awake, and got a full night’s rest.  Today, after talking with my sister, I’m energized and feeling optimistic and hopeful.  It’s great to be feeling this way.  When I talked to my sister, we laughed and made plans for later this week, and next.  What was just a sliver of hope now feels like a big boulder of certainty, and I want to keep it that way!

So today, in honor of my sister and the battle she and the rest of our family is about to engage with the ugly monster cancer, I am challenging you (and myself) to do a layout that reflects hope, optimism, resilience, bravery in the storm.  Find a picture that speaks of overcoming or victory.  Do some journaling about a time when you or someone you know climbed a mountain that seemed insurmountable, and made it to the top! (And you know I’m speaking metaphorically, right?  Although if you have actually CLIMBED a real mountain, please DO share!)

And if you do a layout for this challenge, will you please send me an email or leave a comment?  I want to start collecting all the positive energy and stories I can gather, for myself and for our family.

I don’t know about ya’ll, but I sometimes get “digi-scrapped” out!  Just yesterday, I finished a 24 page album for a client (I am an artist/digi-scrapper for hire)… and wow, those 24 pages, while not horribly difficult, were still TWENTY FOUR pages.

I want to take a break for a month week day or two, but I have two, no three, other projects waiting in the wings - not to mention my own kids’ scrapbook pages that are not being made as quickly as I’d like.  Add to that, I’m leaving town for a long weekend, and I’m NOT taking my laptop with me.  (I’m traveling with my six year old son Samuel, and if you knew Samuel you’d understand why I need as FEW things in my hands at the airports as possible!)

Anyway, to keep my mojo going, and because I really don’t have time to take time off, I’m going to challenge myself (and YOU TOO, aren’t you lucky?) to work on SIMPLE pages today.  Get something done, even if it’s not the most artistic page ever.  Preserve a memory, one way or the other, and keep on’ keepin’ on!

And let’s keep it simple in honor of Monday, and all the days off we’ll have someday when the kids are grown and the dishes are done and the bills are paid and life is slow and sweet and we have nothing left on our To Do list but “Take a Nap”.  Or at least let’s keep it simple in honor of the IDEA of that far off day, because I’m guessing that day is NEVER gonna come…

So, who is with me?  You?  The gal in blue in the back?  Great!  Let’s scrap a memory today, shall we?

(And do share a link in the comments, if you get something simple scrapped today, will you?)

(I’m so demanding with my shall we’s, and will you’s)

(Aren’t I?)

(I’m quitting now…)

Today’s challenge is as much for me as it is for any of you.  I have been working on a couple of gift ideas for my husband, dad, and dad-in-law for Father’s Day, and I sat to look at the calendar last night and realized…um.. I better GET BUSY already if I plan to have these projects done.  Yes, we do still have a few weeks, but you all KNOW how fast time goes by, right?  And with the end of the school year coming, and all the hectic-ness that comes with that - Father’s Day will be here before we know it.

I’m notorious for having GREAT ideas, and then running out of time to implement them.  (Just ask my sister who had a birthday on May 2nd, and is STILL waiting for her present). (She will love it when she gets it, but it’s a bummer she couldn’t have received it on her birthday)!

So… are you planning a project, a present, a great idea for Father’s Day?  My challenge to you today is to work on it a little today, a little tomorrow, and get it done this week!  Have you not even THOUGHT about Father’s Day yet?  Well, my challenge to you is to think about it today… work on it tomorrow… and get it done this week!  Take it from me, it’s no fun waiting until the last minute.  Getting the “digi” part done THIS week will leave you plenty of time for constructing any hybrid parts, or printing any books and/or layouts.

Also, I’d love to get some links to great hybrid or just plain’ ole digi-scrap ideas for Father’s Day gifts.  Or super templates for Father’s Day layouts.  So put your thinking caps on, or get your fingers moving and share a comment with your ideas or links.

Let’s make this even more fun (because you KNOW I like to do giveaways!).  If you leave a comment with a link to or an idea for a Father’s Day gift, I’ll enter you in a little giveaway.  I’ll leave comments open on this until Thursday, and I’ll pick one random winner to receive a $5 gift certificate to the digi-shop of the winner’s choice.

Happy Scrappin’ Folks!