Saturday

Sat, 6 Sep 2008 20:42:53 -0400

I had a nice mellow Saturday today. I worked on preparing to teach Sunday school, did some laundry, and went grocery shopping this morning, then spent most of the afternoon scrapbooking. I read some Dickens over lunch. I am close enough to the end of Nicholas Nickleby that I am pretty well sucked in to the story, but I think too much Dickens this summer is part of the reason I’m struggling with this book. I care enough about the characters (the good ones) to want to see them through their tale, but I am weary of the bad guys and dread the bad stuff that is likely to happen before the happy ending.

The deer above were in the yard yesterday morning. It was still pretty dark, and they really weren’t very cooperative in their poses, but they were fun to see (and photograph) anyway.

A couple layouts:

Just Measure

Fri, 5 Sep 2008 08:21:20 -0400

Leviticus 19:36: “You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin.”

This is one of those verses I usually breeze over. It has been years since I’ve dealt in a business setting with weights and measures. As a teenager I worked in a store selling, among other things, cheese and candy by the pound, and I do remember being conscious of my responsibility to weigh out my customers’ purchases fairly. But that was a long time ago, and I think I’ve absorbed that basic lesson fairly well.

In last night’s Spurgeon devotional (which I read this morning because I was so tired after watching McCain’s nomination acceptance speech last night), Spurgeon applies this verse much more widely, and I found it piercing. He writes, “Are the balances in which we weigh our own and other men’s characters quite accurate? Do we not turn our own ounces of goodness into pounds, and other people’s pounds of excellence into ounces?” I know that I tend to hold others to a much higher standard of conduct than I hold myself. I am always ready with an excuse for my own sin and only reluctantly extend grace to others. That too is an unjust measure. I am a Pharisee, carefully and accurately weighing your Cheddar cheese but tipping the far more important scales in my balance. Lord, have mercy.

Layouts, Problematic and Otherwise

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 19:01:00 -0400

Between loads of laundry and unpacking stuff and putting stuff away, I have been doing some digiscrapping, though not as much as one might think. I came home with 500 or so pictures from Cape Cod, and I want to scrap some of them, for sure, but it’s hard to sort out what I want to do with which pictures. Do I want a whole drive-in layout? A layout on my brother Dan whom I don’t get to see very often? One layout just for the beach pictures? I find this aspect--scrapping events--to be kind of overwhelming.

I did do a Cape Cod layout today, though. I did a two-page layout using a template, and I think, frankly, that it just won’t work very well. Here is what it looks like:

I like it--lots of photos, all the real highlights, some great photos, enough journaling to conjure up the weekend (I hope). But it’s two pages wide, and I have no way to put it in an album without cutting it in half, which cuts the journaling in half. My albums are D-ring albums, so there’s some space between facing layouts, and I just don’t think it will work very well. So I am pondering what to do with it.

Here is the other layout I did today. It uses pictures from this weekend but isn’t exactly vacation specific, and I find that kind of layout much easier to do! Aimée took the photos of the boys from her swing seat, and I took the one of her. I love the ones she took.

Finally, here is a layout I did earlier in the week using a photo taken in the early summer. This was for a challenge on the idea of accidents, and I thought it was just the perfect photo to use for the challenge.

Cape Cod

Tue, 2 Sep 2008 08:09:23 -0400

We spent the Labor Day weekend, last Thursday through Monday, on Cape Cod with my extended family. Both my brothers were there, as well as my mom and my married brother’s family. We have done some variation of this trip for nearly every year for the past 15 years, so there is a sense of tradition and homecoming to it all, and yet as the kids grow older, a lot changes. It seems the most important must-do events revolve around food: eating at the Box Lunch, a fried seafood meal, ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s with a photo of the cousins.

Just for kicks, here is a much older Ben & Jerry’s photo:

Of course, the beach is a must-do item as well--I hope that goes without saying. We had one glorious beach day this weekend, though we also visited under overcast skies one morning and played Frisbee & read & talked.

Books have replaced sand toys, though the boogie boards still get good use.

Other highlights included fireworks at the Wellfleet pier followed by a “Category 5” windy supper and a visit to the Wellfleet Drive-In for Wall-E.

My favorite thing was spending time with my oldest brother, who winters in the Dominican Republic and is very busy when he’s here in the States, so I really see very little of him. He is a photographer specializing in photos of cave drawings from caves in the Dominican Republic, and while on the Cape he set up shop selling pictures at a local flea market.

And here is a rare shot of all three of us together:

There are 500 or so more pictures, but I won’t be posting them all! We had a fun time but are glad to be home, despite being unable to quite believe that it’s actually September. Scrapbook layouts to come!

Newport Layouts

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:29:57 -0400

I had better hurry up and finish posting Newport photos and layouts before we get back from our next vacation.

I like how I was able to distill 2 1/2 days in Newport into two scrapbook pages, plus an extra just because I was inspired. I think looking at these 3 pages will be more fun in years to come than looking through 400 pictures (I took 588 but deleted a bunch) on the computer or however many I end up getting printed.

Anyway, picture these two side by side in an album:

This one was inspired by a song, “The Good Life” by Tim Myers, which I heard on a commercial during the Olympics and bought at iTunes. We listened to it on the way to Newport, and it just suited the mood of the day so well I had to scrap it:

Layouts linked to galleries with credits.

Little Chatter, Lots of Layouts

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:34:42 -0400

I was all relieved to have the Olympics over so I could get back into my evening reading habit when along came the Democratic Convention. The shows never end, and I had to renew Nicholas Nickleby today barely a fourth of the way in. True confessions: I did skip yesterday’s convention coverage. Hillary’s voice grates on me, and Dickens was calling.

I have been pretty prolific at the digiscrapping this week--perhaps a weekend off re-energized me. I have also started doing challenges at some different sites, which I do find jump-starts my mojo.

I did this one today, rather overdue, as I love the picture and took it in--GASP--July. Such a slacker.

I love this photo of Christopher. I scrapped it on Monday and want to do it again and again (but that’s just silly). I just really like the picture! Such a mom I am.

Now, being a mom, having posted one featuring one handsome child, I must do another equally handsome child:

I’ve also done some Newport layouts, but I’ll save those for another post.

God’s Enough

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:44:42 -0400

Proverbs 25:16: “If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it.”

Derek Kidner’s comment on this verse is titled knowing when to stop: “A parable of the fatal difference between a healthy appetite and greed. Since Eden, man has wanted the last ounce out of life, as though beyond God’s ‘enough’ lay ecstasy, not nausea” (Proverbs, p. 159).

As so often on this journey through Proverbs with Rev. Kidner, I was stopped short by his helpful application. I tend to read fairly literally, making this a proverb mostly about food (I don’t need to restrict it to honey--I’m not that literal), and that certainly has its applications to my own life. But I thought today about other stuff. I love to buy food in bulk, I often think when in an office supply store (for example), “If one is good, three are better,” and I have more digital scrapbooking papers than I could use in a very long lifetime. Why buy a 6-pack when I can buy a 32-pack flat? Why take 3 pictures when I can take 300? More always looks better, but it’s often a lie.

Today I am asking the Lord to help me hear his “enough” and trust that he knows what he’s about far better than I.