Ethnic Scrapbooking

Sisters

I should have blogged about this back in December, but when it comes to sharing thoughts about family, you are never too late.  I am extremely blessed to have strong genes to live a long life on both sides of my family. 

My Grandmother is one of eight and the eldest, Aunt Lettie in the photo below, is approaching 92 years of age.  She’s in a Nursing Home with Alzheimer’s but nevertheless we enjoy her company.  Every time I see my Grandmother visit with her sister I am amazed at the beauty and complexity of the mind.  She may not know who her daughter is or where’s she is, but when she sees my Grandmother’s face she calls her by name and know that she’s her sister.  This interaction reminds me how important it is to provide a solid, stable, healthy childhood for children.  Because what they learn and experience are embedded so deep in the mind that even though my Aunt can’t remember what her last meal was or even how to walk, she can still recall episodes and people from her youth.

My Grandmother suddenly lost one of her younger sisters this past weekend, one with who I was very close to, but I praise God that I/we got to enjoy so many wonderful years with her.  It’s hard to put into words the shock I feel over her loss, even though I know without a doubt that she’s in heaven and in a much better place than being here in the pain she was in for the past month.  The blessing I see in this loss is that she was very, very ill and suffered very little.  I was blessed to rush my Grandmother to her bedside after an emergency surgery over the Christmas holiday.  I was blessed that my last visit with her was spent watching Oprah, a show we frequently watched together by phone.

Our family has the choice to wonder why, wish that we could have done more, or just give praises to God for the blessing of her long life and the joy and laughter she brought to all of us.  I’ll miss my Aunt Margie, she was an elder in my community/culture who understood the peril and evil of untreated mental illness and I thank God for her encouragement to not be afraid to seek help when you need it and to not worry about what others may think.  I thank God she was in her right mind, though failing body until the very end.

Gifts from South Africa

One of my favorite times is when my globe trekking sister returns from her travels.  She always brings back the most interesting gifts and photographs too...over 800...already downloaded to my computer.

BALANCE

Balance...my word for the year.

A few years ago I heard Mark Rutland preach a sermon around one word...he wrote a book on the word nevertheless.  I was so impressed for a number of reasons. One, I had never really even used the word, two, his mother instilled in him the love of words and built up his vocabulary and three he wrote a whole book about the usage of the word.  So I read his book and paid attention to that word for a year. 

Last year I focused on the word PERSEPCTIVE...if you've read my book, Ethnic Scrapbooking you know why.

This year it is balance.  Being an accountant, balance is a part of my everyday life.  Usually you think of weights on a scale, or a state of being in equilibrium.  I'm looking for it in my life for mental and emotional stability; sanity! I'll be focusing on how to bring more balance to my life and household in areas such as rest, scrapbooking, reading, food choices, blood sugar levels, extracurricular activities and etc.

Leah works on balance 15 hours a week.

Connecting to Dr. King

I'm too young to say I marched on Washington, but I do have a story about how I managed to make a connection to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In April 2006, I visited the Penn Center at St. Helena Island in S.C. and I got to visit the cottage where Dr. King stayed and wrote the famous "I Have a Dream" Speech.  I haven't yet created a scrapbook page (or mini-album) about my visit, but I could go on for days about how much better my life is today because of one man, his speech and the quiet he must have been in to pen such a work.  I could also talk about my struggle of being an advocate for diversity in the scrapbooking industry...we've come a long way over the past 40 years, yet we still have such a long way to go. So even though I didn't fight the battles of the civil rights movement, I still believe I am a soldier.

Pure Inspiration!

check this out CLICK HERE  scroll to the bottom of the page!

Chela's Challenge

Okay I may have cheated but this layout accomplished a bunch of goals:

1. Scrapbook with the girls (Chela and Nicol)- check
2. "Old School" layout for AA yahoo group - check...notice those old school Creative Memories diecuts and sticker letters
3. Scrapbook more about myself - check (photos from 2000, why do I remember...this was my first overnight trip away from my breastfed daughter Leah!)
4. Complete Chela's second monthly challenge - check it's a monthly kit she provides along with a technique
5. Well that really wasn't cheating was it, it was multi-tasking...right

Here's a close up of something you will probably never see again on my pages...hand stitching...cute but way to time consuming...watch for a tutorial on this from me via my NEW newsletter...sign up in the box in my sidebar..plans are to do 6-12 newsletters for 2008. 

Oh and by the way, that's faux stitching on the yellow heart.

Football and memories?

Now how do those two really go together?  Especially if you are not at the stadium seeing the game live?  Well last weekend as I watched my two favorite football teams lose playoff games, I tinkered around in my scrapbook room.  My 7 year old son, Jonathan sat and watched the Steeler game with me and asked if he could help make some cards with me.  I was just using up scraps from a previous project and really didn't have anything for him to do.  He saw me inking the edges of paper and said he could handle that, so I turned over the ink pad and my perfectionist attitude and he went to work.  Here's what we made together as we talked about school, football, sports and anything elese that was on his mind. We had some real mother/son bonding time...which he asked for months ago.  What a precious memory that was.

More Zwadi

Because I have a Christmas Birthday people think I get jipped (shortchanged).  Well that has never been the case in my life...if anything I get more because so many more people actually remember my birthday.  I was brought to tears a number of times this past holiday season.  Here's why....

My globe-trekking friend Cynthia ( also a contributor in my book) was a public library book sale and brought me a stack of books related to various cultures along with a 2-disk music cd from the ethnic neighborhoods of New York...talk about a FABULOUS gift...absolutely everything I love and will consistently use.  THANKS CYNTHIA YO ARE A GEM.

So add that to your list of ways to connect to other cultures...a trip to you local library!

Zwadi

Zwadi - gifts given at Kwanzaa.

Here's a gift I altered for my mother.  She is organizationally challenged and she carries around a plastic bag full of addresses and phone numbers written on slips of paper.  We've tried for the past few years to get her to store the numbers in her cell phone...but we can barely get her to answer the dag on thing.

I found this blank journal at Barnes & Nobles for $3.00 so I added tabs using my Stampin' Up punch and then used rub-ons for the letters.  I also added our family mailing list that I had in an excel file using brads.  I thought that was enough and then I went eclectic (like my mom) and added the ribbon...it was so cute I wanted to keep it for myself.

Epiphany

Well my two favorite football teams, the Washington Redskins and the Pittsburgh Steelers are waking up to an epiphany today that the season is over for them…but what’s the holiday called Epiphany?

Epiphany, January 6^th, revelation of the Magi…considered the final day of the holiday season, which ran from Christmas eve to the eve of Epiphany.  A time to once again gather as a family, take down the decorations and trees, and sing carols.

Churches in the U.S. and Britain teach that Epiphany is the anniversary of the arrival of the wise men who gave gifts to the baby Jesus…a time to focus on the real mission of the Christian faith and its body of believers.

Epiphany is a time to put aside cultural, racial, and social differences and recognize that Jesus came to offer salvation to all people.

SOURCE:  Collins, Ace, Stories behind the Great Traditions of Chirstmas, Zondervan , 2003