Weekend Reading

Remember the time I let the fuel oil tank hit empty? (Hint: it was this morning.)

As a kid this was a fairly regular occurrence in our household – all of a sudden the house wasn’t as warm as it was yesterday, cold air was being pushed from the vents, then shortly afterwards one of my parents would be out at the side of the house draining a 5-gallon “emergency supply” into the tank.  Despite the fact that they were divorced and in two separate houses, they both felt as though monitoring the home heating oil level was just another way “the man” was trying to keep us down, I assume. This phenomenon was not exclusive to one household in particular.

When I was a kid I always assumed that knowing the contents of one’s oil tank must require some sort of herculean effort or complex mathematical equation. Imagine my surprise when I bought my first oil heated home and found out that there’s a gauge on there – just like the one in your car. Who knew?

In my adult life 50% of my homes have been heated by fuel oil, and I’ve never let the tank hit empty until today. I noted that we had 1/4  tank (60+ gallons) back in early December and since we have a fairly efficient home I said to myself at the time “I’ll call just after the holidays”. Last night just as I was falling asleep I had a brief moment of panic when I realized that I’d never made that call, but the house … she was warm.

And she on empty when I finally checked the gauge this morning. Not completely empty – the furnace was still pushing warm air out – so at least we won’t have to do anything insane like “bleed the lines” to get the furnace running again because I have no idea how one even does that .. but I’m sure my mom is an expert in it.

In a few moments Tom will be making an appearance in the backyard with our first ever “emergency supply” of diesel fuel to carry us through until Monday when we won’t have to pay the insanely expensive emergency surcharge for an after-hours delivery.

We are now the official owners of a bright yellow “Oh Crap! I let the fuel oil run out!” fuel can that will sit in the garage, taunting me with the fact that my perfect record of proper fuel oil supply monitoring finally came to an end. It’s the end of an era!

What’s next? I let the cable get turned off? (That would never happen – my Internet is on there. If my Internet were fueled by home heating oil then you can bet I would have just made that call in early Dec.)

Links I Loved This Week

1. 2011 Lesson #2: Don’t Carpe Diem (Momastery). A well-written and humorous take on motherhood and the irrational guilt we sometimes feel for maybe not cherishing every single moment of it. After reading this post I made a vow to myself to utter the word kairos to myself every time I leave chronos time  - and to be gentler on myself knowing that the two separate times can and do exist harmoniously.

2. Habitual Scrapbooking (Anna Aspnes). Reminding me that I have to make memory keeping a part of my daily routine – like brushing my teeth or preparing dinner. After a quick back-and-forth with Anna on Twitter, it was decided I need to just stop talking about it and do it.

3. Vintage Camera Night Lights (Swiss Miss). No explanations needed. (Oh how I want one!)

4. Stories To Tell (Daily Digi). I loved reading Katie’s list of stories she has yet to tell – and I’m so curious about a few of them. I recently started making my own list of stories I haven’t told yet and it’s not just a couple! Do you keep lists like this?

Have a great weekend everyone!

New Release | Generations

It feels as though it’s been forever since we’ve done this, doesn’t it?

Hello, friends! I have a new product for you, a collaboration with Paislee Press and Traci Murphy Designs.

I’m so excited to be able to share it with you and hope that you’ll find it as lovely and inspiring as I do.

Generations will be available for 20% off through January 10th, 2012.

Cage Liner subscribers can save an extra 10% using the coupon code in their newsletters. Not yet a subscriber? Subscribe now and receive a coupon code of your own!

My Page

JOURNALING ┊ It’s a beautiful thing when you’re all together, standing side-by-side, the kids that Cynnamon and I made. When Grandma gathered you up for this photo the common thread was unmistakable – each of you unique in your own little ways but for those smiles. Oh, those little smiles that we see every day when you’re happy, when you’re scheming, when you’re humoring us. And there you are gathered around the source of it all, the Alpha smile to this little gathering of Omegas. It’s a sight to behold.

MATERIALS ┊ Generations by Paislee Press, One Little Bird and Traci Murphy Designs; Stamped by One Little Bird; Photo Edges by Something Blue Studio; Font is American Typewriter by ITC.

Inspiration From The Flock

[Show as slideshow]

by Rachel

by Becky

by Beth

by Crystal

by Dana

by Julie

by Kelly S

by Leontien

by Lex

by Margelz

by Michelle

by Nicole

by Rachel

by Renee

by Sarah

by Sarah

by Steffi

Start Fresh

I love when the day’s mail so perfectly reflects my frame of mind.

Landing Soon | Generations

Hello, 2012

If you happened to listen to Episode 21 of The Digi Show you heard us talk about projects – from the past, from the present, and our plans for the future. I shared how I was feeling as though I’d gotten sidetracked with regards to what makes me happy when it comes to scrapbooking, and how I was feeling as though I should focus my attention on reconnecting with that rather than taking on projects in the hopes that they’ll somehow streamline or simplify the process for me.

Projects are great for drumming up stories, but I am not in (nor have I ever been in) a story drought.

I am in a scrapbooking drought.

When I was preparing materials for my guest spot at Debbie Hodge’s site, I made the following comment on Twitter:

I wanted to “get back to 2009,” which was a year where I really felt the most in touch with my inner memory keeper. I made sure that I took time to really think about my life and what was meaningful to me in the moment, and then I spent my time conveying that on my pages.

Over the past couple of years I’ve lost sight of that. Instead of carving time out to reconnect with those stories I’ve taken on “projects” instead. Projects that gave me a way to fill my time so that I had the appearance of documenting my memories, but really I was just creating things to document while purposefully avoiding documenting them in a way that fulfills my passion

My passion is digital scrapbooking. My passion is storytelling.

A good bit of my time in 2011 was spent trying new things each week, a project that I really enjoyed but that I didn’t necessarily care to include in my scrapbooks after I had already taken up quite a bit of time writing it out on my blog. I made a choice at the beginning of the year to blog them and NOT scrapbook them and that’s the format I stuck with for time management purposes. Having them preserved here on my site was enough for me, and when it becomes not enough for me I’ll pull off relevant ones and get them into our albums.

I amassed a large storage box full of Project Life supplies and I’ve tucked little bits and pieces of everyday life into the pockets, but I was quickly reminded of the fact that I don’t enjoy paper scrapbooking. Or hybrid scrapbooking. More than that: I don’t feel GOOD at it. I feel like it takes me too much time, that I think about it way too much, and that I wind up settling on getting the pages done rather than actually liking them.

Feeling as though I’m good at what I’m doing, whether anyone else agrees with me or not, is 99% of my happiness when it comes to creativity. I am not good at gluing things down or cutting things out. I am not happy when I’m walking back and forth from my desk to my printer to load photo paper into the tray. I do not like finding little bits of paper around my office. And more than that, I do not like having bins of paper supplies, bins of adhesives, a 12×12 album and things like paper cutters and hole punches in my office. My office used to be a place of zen solitude and it was starting to resemble a crop station at a craft store.

I spent some time in July trying A Week In The Life, thinking that would scratch my memory keeping itch. But as you may recall, the enthusiasm fizzled out for me. I consider myself an “everyday scrapbooker” but that was just way too much information about my everyday. I was on information overload because I could think of something meaningful to say about most of the photos that I took – but all packed into a one week span like that, my storytelling core shut down completely. Within those photos live some stories that I want to tell, but we needed some time apart.

The common thread with all three of the projects was that they kept me really busy – busy taking pictures, busy jotting down notes, busy buying supplies and organizing supplies. All of that busy work made me feel like I was documenting our lives. But they didn’t leave me feeling fulfilled. Instead I felt like I spent my time living up to arbitrary obligations that I’d set in my own head while ignoring what I truly love – which is sitting down at my computer and pouring my heart out onto a 3600 x 3600 px canvas in Photoshop. A photo from last week, a photo from last year, an experience from today or an emotion that happened to flutter through my heart.

That is where joy lives for me.

So my only scrapbooking project for the time-being will be to carve out time in my schedule to reconnect with the process that first won my heart. The organic, free-flowing stream of creativity that ends with my story on a 12×12 digital canvas – because that’s when I remember feeling my happiest as a memory keeper.

Which is not to say that you’re anything like me, or that you find your fulfillment in the same way that I do. It’s not even to say that I’ll feel the same way a year from now, or a month from now.

I’m not always good at examining whether I’m happy with the way I choose to spend my memory keeping time WHILE I’m spending it. I haven’t been asking myself “Is this how I really want to be spending this period of time?” This free hour that I have on a Sunday afternoon – what would I like to completely lose myself in for this hour? Because I have a finite amount of time, and I want to get back to enjoying how I spend that time.

More than that I want to get back in touch with what makes me love this craft; with what inspires me rather than what’s new or flashy. I need to clear out all of the other stuff and get back to the fundamentals for a while.

After all, I have all these untold stories from 2011 that have piled up while I’ve been occupied with other distractions. It’s high time they get their time in the sun.

So my question to you is this – when are you most happy as a memory keeper?