Beautiful Friendship

GASP!!!! It's me!! And YES, I created a page!!!! First one in MONTHS!!! Wow, it feels good! I wanted to use some new stuff I recently got. So I thought these pictures of my friend, Bekah and I, would be fun to do. These pictures are from our recent trip to Michigan.

It had been so long since I created anything, it kind of felt foreign to me at first. But it didn't take long for me to get the swing of things again. I used some fun digi stuff from Christina's Greener Grass Designs kits.

Scrappers block and links...

Wow, yeah, it's true, I seriously think that's what I've had... It's been a LONG time since I've posted anything. So much as gone on in my life these days. I guess I sometimes I feel guilty if I spend too much time on the computer trying to scrap instead of taking my role as a mother. So I try and put off the things that are "me time" during the day so that I can spend the time with my children or take care of things around the house.... However, when I have gone to scrap or take time, nothing has looked right to me, I am just not satisfied with anything I've scrapped lately. So I have come to the conclusion that I have scrappers block, and I sure hope it doesn't last any longer, cause I don't like it!

I know I don't have any pages to share with you, but I do have some links to some videos I think you might enjoy (especially you moms out there! ;).

This first one is taken from the "Love Story" song by Taylor Swift. So if you haven't seen her music video, you'll want to watch that first to get the full effect of where this take on it is coming from. I think it's just great and so funny, and true!! Haha!

(A More Real) Love Story

And this one is just, well, plain HILARIOUS!! Haha!!

SWAGGER WAGON

Trust me, you'll have this tune in your head after watching this!! :)

So I hope those give you a little laugh for the day!

I do hope to get back in the swing of things after I can bite this scrappers block off!! I just need to push myself. I've been looking at different peoples blogs for inspiration and I've had some ideas, I just need to put them into action!

Hope to be back with a post of something creative SOON!!

You are my life

Hello there! How has your week gone? With the exception of celebrating my husband's birthday on Monday, my week was pretty uneventful... Mostly getting over the nasty thing that me and my oldest son had, and then my youngest son ended up getting it. So I've been having to clean up puke and diarrhea, my poor baby! I absolutely hate when my boys get sick. I am just praising God for healing them!

We did have GEORGEOUS weather this week, in the 60's & 70's! I loved it and the boys loved it!! They got to play outside quite a bit! I opened windows one day, and I even did some raking in our yard yesterday! (we have a lot of yard work ahead of us I've realized!). But I'm wondering if I got into some kind of poison oak or ivy or something, b/c I've been itching like crazy today! Hmmm.

So now it's rainy, chilly and nasty out... But that's signs of Spring, right??? I can't wait for thunderstorms!!

Plans for a garden have been dancing around in my head lately.... I need to do some research and figure out what all I need to do to have a successful garden, I don't want to have it all die on me!

This is a page I created last evening. When I was going through my digital supply stash for what I wanted to use on this page, I realized something.... I had purchased a kit quite a while back from Little Dreamer, and hadn't really used it yet. When I was looking through the folder I have with the digital papers in it, I realized that I didn't have all of the papers that it showed in the set, I then realized I hadn't downloaded the whole set since I purchased it! So all this time I only had part of it! I'm kind of a dork! I felt like an idiot! I was like "duhh, Jessica that's why I didn't have all the stuff that came with it". I know every time I went to that folder and wanted to use the stuff out of it, it seemed it was lacking, and maybe another reason why I was just not getting any good ideas for using what I had of it! So after that moment of stupidity, I downloaded the rest of the set and got to work on this page!! There is a lot of stitching on this page, and I like that!! I am just really into stitching lately! If you haven't noticed?! Ha!

Anyway... I FINALLY got my March/April issue of CK today (since when have they combined the months??? are they going to do that from now on so there isn't as many issues???) I don't think I'm that crazy about that idea. Anyway, so much has seem to change with that magazine, and I can't say I'm extremely impressed with all I've seen recently... Hoping maybe they'll improve down the road. I do still love to get the magazine though. I have always been excited to get it and look through it for inspiration.

Have a wonderful weekend!!

Blissful Love + crazy life------Warning.... LONG POST!

It's been a while since I've posted anything. But I want to thank those of you that are still faithful to leave me comments and visit my blog, old and new visitors! Thank you!

A lot has been happening here. It's been a roller coaster of emotions. It has taken me a while to even bring myself to scrap or do much with my pictures. I've had something pretty devastating happen to me. I haven't even wanted to blog, or talk about it much. Let's just say that something precious, irreplaceable, priceless, all memories I had to show for mid 2007 through to mid 2009 are gone.

A while back my husband took the pictures off our computer and put them on an external hard drive. Because our computer was getting low on memory and was running really slow. He didn't back them up on dvd's or anything else like I had asked him to do. I went to use the external hard drive one day to get some pictures off for scrapping. And to my dismay, my 16 1/2 month old son picked it up, and threw it on the floor.

I picked it up and heard something rattle in it. I didn't think a whole lot about it at first, I guess I just thought it would be okay, or I was just too scared to find out for sure if it was going to work. But when my husband went to hook it up to the computer, it would not recognize it. It made a funny noise. He worked on it for awhile to try and get it to work. But nothing.

I was devastated.

I was in shock.

 I started thinking of all the pictures we had on there, and what ones we still had on our computer. I realized ALL pictures from when my son Samuel was born were on that, all of his baby pictures, his first Christmas, every month of his life leading up to July of 2009 was gone. Other special events and moments flashed through my mind. My son, Isaac's 2nd and 3rd birthday, gone.

I cried.

I got fearful.

I felt like I lost someone very dear to me.

And what was more worse, most of those pictures I hadn't hardly even begun to touch to scrapbook.

I had just recently decided to really get myself into scrapping and going back to those ones and get them scrapped.

Now I can't.

My husband called a guy the next day, a local guy that specializes in recovering hard drive data. He sounded slightly hopeful.

We had another little hard drive we knew had some pictures from 2007 on it, and that hard drive wasn't broken, it just needed a special adapter that we no longer had to hook up to our computer to retrieve what we had on it.

He came the next day and picked up both hard drives.

Thankfully he had a cord he loaned us to use on the little hard drive, so we can get the pictures that were on that. But with the other one, he said it was beyond his capability.

he said there is a 95% chance that if we send it into a data recovery place they can get our pictures off it for us. But it's very expensive. Hundreds to possibly thousands of dollars to get fixed.

One more thing he tried, was to try and and retrieve the deleted pictures off our hard drive on our actual computer. But since so much time had gone by since the pictures had been deleted off our computer, it wasn't likely to get a whole ton of them. Because the longer you use your computer after you've deleted stuff off it the more likelihood of them being overwritten. And of course it writes over the biggest files first. Which would be our pictures and any videos.

Most of what he retrieved were small pictures, too small to do anything with. But there was a handful that were from the lost ones that I was happy he retrieved.

But just a small handful, compared to the THOUSANDS, and THOUSANDS of pictures we had on that hard drive.

I am praying.

I am hoping.

I am asking God.

Thanking him.

Praising him.

For the recovery of these precious pictures.

I don't know when we'll be able to send the hard drive in and what we'll find out, but I'm just praying that it will be good news and that I will one day have those pictures in my possession again.

Through it I thought of what it would be like to have your house burn down, and you loose everything. I think I felt somewhat like that. I mean, one day they'll all be gone and burn up anyway. But while I'm still alive on this earth and my children and children's children, I want to have those pictures. To remember, to reflect. Because that's all I have to show for that part of our lives, is just pictures. And sometimes we don't remember things unless we have a picture that shows for that moment.

I created this page today. They are pictures from Valentine's day. I've had some new digital supplies sitting in my folders for a while now, but haven't touched them until today. Like I said it took me a while to bring myself to scrap. It's just been hard. But I've realized how I really need to work harder on my bad habits. Like procrastination. Because if I wasn't like that, and was on top of things all the time. Then I could have already had those lost pictures scrapped. But I am not like that, and I didn't have them scrapped. So there's nothing I can do about it now. Other than just try to be better at it now. To not keep putting it off.

So on top of all that going on. We've been through some other crazy things lately.

We were without heat in our house for over a week. (long story). Our oil tank leaked. We lost all of our oil for heating. We had just had it filled a week before it happened. Thankfully, we were able to get a used tank from someone for 50 bucks. But we were still out the oil we lost. AND top of ALL of that, my son, Isaac & I got sick earlier this week . Some kind of stomach virus thing. It was not fun. Praise the Lord we are much better today!

I just thank the Lord for his faithfulness and seeing us through these trying and stressful times. Knowing that he's always there for us and can help us through these times is a wonderful feeling.

So if you got through this super long wordy post, Thank you for taking the time to read it!

"The Lord is my rock and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower." Psalm 18:2

"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident." Psalm 27:1-3

"Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord."

Psalm 27:14

Have a wonderful rest of your week and weekend!

Being me

Here's a layout that I did a while ago. I have hesitated to post it because I wasn't sure I really wanted to.

I have changed it many times, and I'm not sure if this is going to remain this way, so we'll see if I change it yet again. Ha! It's hard for me because I don't normally scrap pictures of just myself, especially when I don't like the way I look... but after all that's kind of the whole point of this page is, breaking through that apprehension of scrapping about myself, no matter how unhappy I am with how I look.

5 years ago today!

Today my husband and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary! I wanted to get this post out sooner or have it scheduled, but I didn't get a chance to. Anyway thought I would share some pictures from our wedding day! We've been so blessed over the years and God has seen us through so much! We are so thankful for all he has given us and done for us!

It's so funny to think that on our wedding day it was about 70 degrees and beautiful out! And today on the same day five years later it's crazy snowy white, icy/rainy and very nasty out! We've had so much snow this year!

Thanks for stopping by to share in our 5th anniversary! Blessings to you all! :)

Attention Jane Austen fans!

For those of you who like Jane Austen, I thought I would share a link with you! They have redone Emma, and have made it into a longer version. It's aired on TV through PBS (I think) each Sunday evening. You can also watch the full length shows of it online through Masterpiece Theater (for those of us who don't watch tv or have cable or satellite). My sister and I have watched the first episode together, and it was 2 hours long!! You can now watch the second episode online now as well. I plan to soon. I just have to say that I really like this one! I have always liked Emma, and I am so happy they've made a longer version of it! I really like the characters in this one. Except, I have to admit, no one plays Mr. Knightley as good as Jeremy Northam. So although the Mr. Knightley in this new version isn't quite as good as the 1996 version, he still does a good job and I do like him quite well. I won't give too many details, but I would highly recommend you watch this!! I just love Jane Austen's stories and period films!! So pop yourself some popcorn, get cozy and enjoy!

blogiversary + Birthday

A year ago today I started my blog! I really don't have anything special to do in celebration of it. But I do have two pages I did from my birthday. As you may notice the first page is a redo of my original I did a week or so ago. I really didn't like my original one I designed, I just felt like it wasn't me. So it was bugging me too much, I just had to redo it! There are a few others I've done recently that I'm in the process of redesigning because I just don't like them. I feel like because I was kind of forcing myself to get them scrapped, that I wasn't designing what I truly like and what my style is. And lately, I'm not totally sure what my style is, but I have noticed I really am liking more simple designs, nothing too complicated and stressful on the eyes. I like things to look CLEAN and well balanced I guess. White background, a few flourishes, stitching (maybe you're getting sick of seeing me use so much stitching?? I'm just really into it right now!).
And I really like adding color- making my layouts bright and cheerful!
For this page I was inspired by this layout.

And because I'm not use to using a lot of pink on my pages (since I mostly do pages of the boys) I really wanted the page with me to look girly! I don't get that many opportunities for that and to use PINK! And I have so badly wanted to use it! And these papers from Crystal were just that! Bright and cheerful, and pink! They're really simple and clean looking, I guess that's what attracted me to them, oh, and the hearts and poka dots! I've been getting most of my inspiration from HERE & HERE lately. Crystal has been featuring digi kits that were designed by her little sister on her blog for a special price for one week (info here). I think that's so sweet that she's helped her sister out by doing that and also for helping her in design! I think that's awesome when people are so selfless and are so willing to give of themselves and teach others. Just a good example of how God wants us to freely give to others. I'm really trying to have a positive outlook on different circumstances in my life, and trying to always think the best of others. Sometimes it can be difficult, but with the Lord's help, he can see me through these changes! :)

So anyway, thanks for taking the time to stop by and visit me today! And to celebrate my one year blogiversary!! Maybe I'll eat a piece of chocolate cake in celebration of it! And you can go ahead and eat some too! :-)
Speaking of anniversaries, my husband and I will be married 5 years this coming Friday, the 5th! I'm really looking forward to it! It will be the first time in a LONG time that we'll get to go out alone together, just the two of us, no kids.