Week 13: We're on the road this week, and the first stop is the Kansas town where Wayne and I grew up. While we're confirmed Floridians now we still think of Kansas as "home," a feeling I'm acknowledging as my blessing for this week.

Home can mean a lot of different things, all of which are important in our lives. It's our little piece of the planet...filled with memories, people who are important to us and the things we hold dear. We associate home with safety and shelter from outside forces; it's the place where we belong. Such positive emotions are clearly blessings in our lives.

What part of "home" are you grateful for? Do you return to the town of your youth and renew ties with family and friends who still reside there as we are this week? Or does home call up different images in your mind, like your favorite chair in your current dwelling where you retreat when the need for a few minutes of quiet is too strong to ignore. Perhaps home is a much more up-to-date place for you...the one where you hang your @. Message boards and other homes on the Internet also provide us with places to belong and people to care about. My challenge to you this week is to shine the light of gratitude on the concept of home. I think you'll find many blessings in its different meanings.

I've played with a map, some typography and a transparency to create my page this week, one you'll find in the gallery and on my blog. More about the concept of home and an explanation of my see-through page can be found there as well. Stop by...we might be on the road but there's always someone home on the blog.



Week 12: I'm still celebrating St. Patrick's Day by "wearing" green for this week's blessing. It's more than just a color on my layout...I've chosen golf as my weekly gratitude.

Love for this game is something I share with many people in my life. While I played only once as a child, I grew up around golf as my step-father and brother played. It seemed only natural then to learn to play when we moved to Florida and Wayne was looking for a golfing buddy. We've played the game all over, carrying clubs with us as we vacationed around the country. And golf has opened the doors to very special and long-lasting friendships, ones that are the reasons we built our home where we did. It's so much more than a game...it's a part of our lives.

That brings me to this week's prompt: What interest or hobby do you share with someone significant in your life? Maybe you both enjoy basketball and you've collaborated on brackets, thoroughly into March Madness together. Perhaps you like something a little more subdued, like trading reading recommendations and making trips to the library together. Or do you haunt the aisles of the fancy kitchen stores looking for the latest gadget or exotic ingredient you and your gourmet buddy can use in your next culinary adventure? The things you and your special someone love and do together are a blessing in your life and deserve recognition in your project.

I was inspired this week by the combination of words and photos Jill Fickling-Conyers has been posting in the gallery. You'll find my page there as well. And my blog contains more thoughts on this week's blessing as well as a discussion on adding text to your photo.

St. Patty's Day may have come and gone but by focusing on our blessing, we're learning just how lucky we are to live the lives we do.




Week 11: The routine of life rolls along from week to week. Work. Chores. Meals. We do them week in and week out without really thinking about them.

This week I was happy to add yard work to my routine. Perhaps I'm weird but I like yard work, especially in the spring. After being cooped up inside, I'm eager to be out of doors, welcoming the sun's rays on my skin and breathing the fresh air. Cleaning out winter's dead and getting beds ready for new flowers appeals to my sense of order, and seeing the sprouts of returning plants renews my soul. For me, digging in the dirt is a form of therapy...one with external rewards in the form of an attractive landscape and internal rewards in terms of my mental well-being. Yes, yard work can be both a blessing and a chore...this week I've chosen to focus on the good side.

So my prompt to you for the week is to examine your life routine and see what chores include blessings you might not have thought about. Are you someone who cranks up the stereo and gets down while you vacuum, combining the benefits of a good workout with a clean house? Or maybe you watch your favorite television program while you iron, feeling productive as the pile of freshly ironed clothes grows and the guilt of spending time in front of the tube shrinks. Perhaps you're like my sister-in-law who still hangs all her laundry out on the line to dry, believing the fresh-air smell is worth the extra work. Look at something that would normally be considered work and see how you find joy in it.

My page is in the gallery. I scraplifted much of the design from the amazing Kim Kesti...a variation on the theme of finding good in what otherwise might have been a chore. Life's been hectic this week, and rather than struggle with creating my own design, I borrowed inspiration from Kim. There's more about the page and this week's blessing on my blog.

Chores are an inescapable part of life but they don't all have to be drudgery. We can find blessings in the...we just have to look.



Week 10: March always holds such promise. Winter begins to loosen its grip and if we can't see signs of spring yet, we know it can't be far away. The warmer days Mother Nature sends our way seem like a gift indeed.

Gift-giving has been at the top of my thoughts for a month now...29 days to be exact. Beginning February 1 I gave some type of gift every day as part of the 29 Gifts challenge. Very few of them were boxed, wrapped and delivered as a present but all of them were selected with purpose and a giving heart. It was rewarding to approach each day focused on what I could do to make someone else's day a little brighter and as a result, mine was too.

Rather than a prompt this week, I'm challenging you to put gift-giving at the top of your thoughts too and to give something each day for the next week (or for 29 days, if you're so inclined.) Gifts can be anything...send a card, treat a friend to lunch, offer a compliment to a total stranger, the list of possibilities is endless. It's something that requires a little thought but not necessarily a lot of money. I feel sure that at the end of the challenge, you'll receive more out of the experience than you gave...and that's where you'll find the blessing. The 29 Gifts webpage contains more ideas on fulfilling this challenge.

The primary component of my page this week is a pocket with a window that lets the journaling card inside show through. A piece of junk mail that arrived earlier this week was my starting point, and I even added a piece of a transparency to cover my window to duplicate the look of the envelope that inspired the design. And I modified one of the free journaling cards from the Creating Keepsakes project 365 Kit to tuck inside of it. Both are now available as free PDFs on the Downloads page. Think of it as just a little gift from me to you.