Composition Notebooks

Today I wanted to share a little something about one of my recent projects. This year my Dear Friend encouraged me to keep better track of my devotional readings by way of journaling. I didn’t think I could make it work for me, but I have taken what she does and tweaked it to make it easier for me to use. 

As a special gift for her I took a standard composition notebook and covered it with scrapbook paper and embellishments. I have made another for someone else and one for myself. They make great gifts for anyone who likes to journal. I’m planning to try some miniature ones for Christmas gifts next year. 

 Every Sunday afternoon I try to sit down and write down my goals for the week. Every evening I brain dump for the next day and make a To Do List as well as recap anything I want to remember from the day. Each morning I record what I read in my devotions and any special insights I was given plus any prayer requests I need to pray over, then I review my To Do List I created the night before. It’s working better than any attempt I’ve made in the past and I don’t have a bunch of little notes to myself laying all over the house or different notepads for different things. Everything is now in one book that I can easily refer to when needed. Here are a few photos of a couple of composition notebooks I have enhanced.

                                             Notebook #1

Notebook #2

I use heavy printed card stock for my covers and inside pockets. I also make sure I have very sticky permanent glue. If you try this for yourself, please let me know and share your photos.

Somehow it just seems more fun to journal in a pretty notebook rather than a plain one. 

Royal Blessings, 

Joint Craft Project

Crafts

Apr 14, '11 8:53 PM for Julie's contacts

This past week for no apparent reason, my mother has been constantly in my thoughts. I have actually thought things like - oh, I have to remember to tell mom that, or- mom would love this. I have been missing her so much again.

She loved to do crafts. I have kept all the doilies she crochet along with a vest, a shawl, some Christmas ornaments and I'm sure many more things than I can remember at this point. She also did paint by number - I used to love to sit and watch her into the late nights as she would make such detailed brush strokes with such perfection. Somewhere I saved one of her paintings, it was of a girl in a straw hat. I can't find it and it is breaking my heart. I just hope one day soon it will spring from it's hiding place. She was also good at embroidery and when I learned to do counted cross-stitch I taught her and she not only caught on quickly but loved it so much that it took  her no time at all to complete many more projects than I ever dreamed of making. We enjoyed doing crafts together and when we weren't actually creating something we were shopping for something new. I wish we would have had more time to enjoy scrapbooking together - she would have so loved getting into that had I discovered it sooner. In her later years one of her favorite things was to buy and make small cross-stitch kits. After she passed away I found stacks of small completed cross-stitch  projects and could not bring myself to part with them, but the question remained - just what to do with them. I decided they were small enough that I would find a use for them in my scrapbooks; then this past weekend I was sorting through some things that my daughter was getting rid of - she had a pile of items to donate and a box of "trash". I glanced in the trash and found a cross-stitch piece that I had made for her and put in a plastic "coaster"; I had made one for each of my children with their initial cross-stitched on it. I took it out knowing I could re-use it. Today I took it apart and took out the cross-stitch and saved it for her scrapbook - maybe someday she will wish she hadn't thrown it away, and I replaced it with one of my mother's creations. I had three other coasters that I also filled with some of her work and now I have a set of four coasters for my living room tables that I treasure because they are from my mom's handiwork.

I wish I had told my mother more often how much I loved her and how much I appreciate all the little things she did for me and made for me.

I miss her so.