More BPS

I signed up for another BPS (Big Picture Scrapbooking) class. This one is called Design your life and I'm hoping to get better at page composition. The photo here is from our class pre-assignment and the theme is "why scrapbooking". I used a variety of American Crafts papers that match the class colors (green, red, brown). I've had these for a while, and it seemed to fit.
The class officially begins on October 3 (next Friday). I will try very hard to keep up this time!

Sunday, after a weekend of struggle, I managed to install Susie's Wishblade software on my Macbook. It shouldn't have been hard, except that I've never installed anything on the mac before - we use it mainly for web surfing. So, most of my struggle was figuring out what to do with applications on the Mac. Anyway, I successfully cut out some page titles. Next challenge, some shapes! Stay tuned.

Stress Management thru scrapbooking!

Today, let's talk about stress! Almost anything can cause stress – especially when we feel like we don’t have control! In the media, we all see many reports of stress at work and at home – whether it’s a new baby or a new project at work. And, many of use have both at the same time! I attended a class focused on how to manage all this stress (without going crazy)and one of the recommendations was to create a stress journal – the idea is that you write it down when you feel the stress, and do some analysis around it – knowing gives some of the control back! I went to Google and looked for some templates for what to include, and came up with a basic format with information about day/time, the situation, the triggering event, the emotional reaction as well as the intensity and duration of the stress. The images below show the section of my journal for stress and the diary format I created. You'll note that I am not showing you a filled out version!




Then, I combined this with a wellness class I signed up for (last year and I didn’t do any of the work) and created a more holistic wellness journal. I’m hoping that I can use this wellness concept to address stress as well as other healthy habits – like exercise and more veggies. I’ve got my Wii fit and am ready to go! By the way, I can vouch for the AMA class on stress management – it was a very interesting 2 days!

Sister Days

Last May, my sister Lynn came to visit with Susie and me. We had a fab several days - it involved trips to Charlottesville and a couple of fine Virginia wineries. I was reminded about how important it is to have some sister time. I finally got around to scrapping a layout. The idea for it came from a Big Picture scrapbooking class. The paper and embellies come from My Mind's Eye.