We made it

We made it!

Well, Ryan made it through his camp and so did we- without going down to visit him at camp, though we were terribly tempted to when he did not call for three days!! We found that he actually tried to call, but at nearly midnight and we had gone to bed!! It is unbelievable that the camp made them stay up that late!!

When dh went to pick him up for home, he walked right past Ryan because he had become so dark and 'burnt'. Dh asked how was camp, and Ryan answered"on a scale of ten, two", and when asked why, said "the instructors sprouted vulgarities".... dear me! It is adventure camp, and meant to toughen them up, but still, no need for vulgarities! Still, he had fun, and we are sooooo proud that he survived it - all cool, and such. :)

I've been reading this awesome book and want to HIGHLY recommend it to you all:

Art Journals & Creative Healing by Sharon Soneff. Sharon and many other artists have made fastastically beautiful journals that are wonders of journaling and healing. I was totally blessed and inspired and at times in tears reading it. You must get your hands on a copy if you can! If I may quote Sharon from the book: " ... journals. Sometimes incredibly artful and detailed, other times modestly simple and scrawled, these journals have brought me revelation, calm, solace, and circumspection. A work-in-progress journal is the perfect complement to my work-in-progress life, bringing me continuous, work-in-progress restorative health." Wow. May you be blessed too.

I keep my personal thoughts and feelings in a private journal, but I feel comfortable and happy sharing our family photo journals on the blog. Here's # 2 of our first day in Washington. (Boy have I got a long way to go with scrapping this trip!)

Credits: paper by Jessica Bolton, white journaling spot by sclingerman, hearts by Christina Renee, frame by Lori Barnhurst, ribbon by Sun & Jan, brown journaling spot by Toni Berman

Just in case you were wondering, I had always been making the layouts first, based on what photos I selected and their sizes, then I simply punched out the photos and saved them as templates. I find it a lot easier and more creative this way :)

Carena left me a great suggestion to include a jpeg preview in the zip file, which I did, and I remembered to include a terms of use too. Thanks Carena! However, I'm not sure about the suggestion to set up an email subscriber box on the blog yet, just feels a bit intrusive sending my blog posts into your emails! I'm just happy if you like to come over and visit a while.

Oh, and here's the link to the template, thanks to so many of you who left me love all the time! This is now available as a set in the store here