mindaTHINK

Mood for a Shoot

 I've been itching to go do a shoot at this place I found last year:

Here are some photos of the grungy backgrounds that just make my camera fingers itchy!

So come on!  Who wants to get shot?  Maybe I can talk my niece who just graduated from high school this weekend to come on down there with me.  She'd be fabulous!

Video

I've been making videos.  I LOVE learning something new and over the last few months I've been learning how to use my digital camera to make short how-to videos for www.tallyscrapper.com. 

Here is my latest, favorite.  Might have something to do with the fact that you really can't see me.  Which has something to do with the fact that I had just got done running 3.5 miles and was all sweaty and stinky...a perfect time to get inspired to do a video.

A Year in...

Music, Art and Poetry/Prose...my mother taught me an appreciation of all three, and I will be forever grateful.  When life gets me down, Music, Art and Poetry elevate me again.

I found out today that someone I was very much looking forward to meeting I was not going to be meeting...at least not yet.  Sigh. 

So it seemed a good time to run off and spend that gift certificate at Barnes and Noble my thoughtful husband got me for my birthday.

This is what I got:

Its a lovely mini coffee table book with 730 pages of art and a quote, one for every day of the year.  LOVE it!

Todays art piece?

The Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello.  This is a pretty bad representation of the painting, its much lusher and interesting. 

Uccello is not an artist with whom I am familiar, so it was fun to learn more about him.  The quote for today?

"Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew."  John Greenleaf Whittier.

I also picked up a book entitled A Year in Poetry at the library.  Today's poem is a good one:

February the 20th Street

Hugo Williams

A coincidence must be

Part of a whole chain

Whose links are unknown to me.

I feel them round me

Everywhere I go: in queues,

In trains, under bridges,

People, or coincidences, flukes

Of logic which fail

Because of me, because

We move singly through streets,

The last of some sad species,

Pacing the floors of zoos,

Our luck homing forever

Backward through grasses

To the brink of another time.

Poetry: It can still make me cry

WHAT TEACHERS MAKE or
OBJECTION OVERRULED or
IF THINGS DON’T WORK OUT, YOU CAN ALWAYS GO TO LAW SCHOOL by Taylor Mali

He says the problem with teachers is
"What's a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life
was to become a teacher?"
He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true
what they say about teachers:
“Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.”

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the dinner guests
that it's also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite company.

"I mean, you’re a teacher, Taylor"
"Be honest. What do you make?"

And I wish he hadn't done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, then I have to let you have it.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
“How dare you waste my time with anything less
than your very best.”

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. “No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won't I let you get a drink of water?
Because you're not thirsty, you're bored, that's why.”

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
“Hi. This is Mr. Mali. I hope I haven't called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something your son said today.
He said, ‘Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don't you?’
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.”

I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them spell ‘definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful,
definitely beautiful’
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (the brains)
then you follow this (the heart)
and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).

Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a difference! What about you?

The LAST scrapbook page

This post will contain the LAST scrapbook page I will ever

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post on this blog. I am throwing my hat fully into the Tallyscrapper ring.  If you want to see my pages, you will need to go to the best webhome ever for scrappers, www.tallyscrapper.com or you will need to come to my house.

You don't even need to be a member to see my work at Tally, and for those who are friends from both, I don't want them bored with seeing the same pages here and there.  So, this will become a place more focussed on the nonscrapping side of my life.  I DO HAVE a nonscrapping side, I just don't talk about it very often.  Time to bring that side out!

Christmas: Exemplified

Today I did my annual mini family photo shoot.  After a couple of ROUGH years trying to timer set a group photo, it came to me last year to take individual portraits of each of my family members and then the pictures can be combined in a collage or used seperately.

This year I asked my family to grab something from mom and dad's house that exemplified Christmas for them.  Exemplified means represented by, illustrated by or embodied in.  We jumped outside for the last rays of sun bouncing off the magical light snowfall.  Here is a taste of what my camera saw:

Much more to come on this project, including a challenge at TallyScrapper this weekend, so stick around, here or there!

The Power of the Word

In my church group, we talk often about the Power of the Word.  When God speaks, things come into being.  Not just new things, like the earth, but things that aren't.  In Romans 4:17 it says

as it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations" --in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

In Genesis it talks about the world being a void, or nothing, and God spoke all that we know into being.  Christians and Jews call this creation.  Some scientists describe that moment as a "big bang" which I imagine is a great way to describe complete vacuousness becoming land and water and light and beings.  In the Old Testament God told Abram, an old man, that he would be the father of many nations.  Nearly all faiths on earth originated from that moment, and few debate that that infact happened.  God spoke and things happened.  In the New Testament, God spoke through an angel and a peasant girl from a small village became pregnant.  God spoke again and her husband to be not only didn't have her stoned, he kept his promise and raised Jesus as if he was his own.  When Jesus, God Incarnate here on Earth, walked among us as a man, his Word called into being health and welfare for many hurting people.  In at least one instance his Word raised a man from the dead.  Many days dead.

Sometimes, God's Word calls into being things we wish were not.  Imagine the surrender and pain Mary felt the day her son was killed, in the cruelest of ways.  Imagine the panic she felt when she discovered she was in labor, at night, on the road, and there was no place to deliver that babe.  And yet in these situations, we with the Bible as a guide and the hindsight of thousands of years can see how those seemingly tragic situations were the most glorious of all time.

This time of year is tough for most folks.  Its a time of reckoning and remembering.  And sometimes the memories and the reckoning is painful.  It can become hard to have faith.  To believe with complete peace that God is in charge of our lives and that its all going to work together to weave a beautiful picture. I think of the phrase "evidence to the contrary" and this year more than some others I seem to be inundated with "evidence to the contrary" that God is in charge that there is truth in the statement that(Romans 8:28) ... we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

This year my reckoning has made me realize how far apart my family has drifted, which considering the course of events is very sad.  My reckoning has made me face the fact that financially the ship is sinking, and sinking very fast. 

I Corinthians 5:7 says "This is why we live by believing and not by seeing."

Hebrews 11:1 says "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see"

I believe in God, the One who Speaks things that weren't into existence. I believe that all things are working together for the good.  And I also believe that I can survive everything that will come in the future.  I mean look at Mary.  She had to survive humiliation, rejection, fear, shame, and the pain of watching her own child be killed.  The song that is first on my playlist is one of hope for me.  It reminds me that the Breathe of Heaven, or God, is ultimately powerful, and ultimately in charge and will breathe life where life is not.

And that is far more comforting to me then the closest of families or the fullest of bank accounts.  In my life, I know God is working things out, redeeming the things I have destroyed or messed up.  And when I remember that?  All that other stuff just falls away into the void.

Something I have to get off my chest!

I just have to say....

I haven't even posted my finished project here and within 12 hours the kits are sold out. In one day! No words lads and lasses, no words!

Its UP, Its UP, Its UP!!! My Kit is available!

After two months of serious nailbiting my kit is up and for sale at TallyScrapper.

Kit Includes:
1Creative Imaginations Recipe Box, with 6 tabbed dividers and index cards
1 pkg. of 7Gypsies Calais Rubbings
1 7Gypsies Amber Knob
1 pkg. Cosmo Cricket Flutterby Chipboard Alpha
1 pkg.of 10 7Gypsies clips
1 yard of Daisy Bucket textured ribbon
1 recipe from Minda's husband
1 thank you card from Minda
1 sheet of Creative Imaginations Baked with Love paper
1 sheet of Creative Imaginations Scalloped paper
1 sheet of What's Cooking from Flair Designs
1 sheet of Bake off from Flair Designs
1 sheet of Sienna from Daisy D's
1 sheet of Espresso from Daisy D's
1 sheet of Chinoiserie Baroque from Daisy D's
1 sheet of Gingerbread from Cosmo Cricket

Here is a blank recipe card that you can download and print as many as you need (Or print two to fill a page and copy them off to save your printer ink!

And I have to switch to my other computer to show you what I've done with mine so far.

Run, don't walk to THIS SPOT to buy yours, because there are only 25 and they are going fast!

Kits.

We were talking over at Tallyscrapper this weekend, and I realized I haven't been telling my blog audience what's up with TS at all!

Things have really been hopping over there since I signed on as DT coordinator back in August.  WHew!  I real whirlwind. 

One of the benefits of being on the team is FREE kits!  The kits are fabulous and I love how a kit is stuff already pulled together, so you can work and work and work it and it all goes together!

Here is a picture of our latest kit, called Rocktoberfest. 

And following are the layouts/cards I did with that kits contents. 

Went a little nuts I did!

Well, there is more, but I think you are getting the idea!  Big stuff!  And I think Christine does an especially good job of making sure that the products she chooses for the kits blend well for any style or taste. 

Now on the 15th a new set of kits is coming out, and I'm very excited about these.  There will be two instead of our standard one.  I'll post about that when its closer to the day!