My Soundtrack

Alyssa challenged everyone to choose three songs that could be the soundtrack to our lives. I like to follow the rules so I tried REALLY hard to narrow things down to three and eventually was successful. There's lots of great songs that didn't make the cut but I think these three do a good job of creating a well rounded soundtrack. 

Mr. Jones - Counting Crows

This song immediately transports me to playing 4-Square in the main building of the camp where I grew up. It's one of those songs that was embedded into the camp culture by way of the counsellors and then the campers who became counsellors who still played it because it reminded us of camp. 

Left & Leaving - The Weakerthans

I don't remember the first time I heard this song but at some point during jr. high I was introduced to it and it's followed me around ever since. I've always been sentimental and nostalgic and this song is both of those things.

Humble & Kind - Tim McGraw

I knew I needed a country song and originally I thought it would be and older one by Alan Jackson, Tim McGraw or Alabama because those were the soundtracks to my childhood. I kept coming back to this song though, even though it's super recent. It just summarizes everything I was taught growing up and everything I feel strongly about now. 

Stress Free Scrapbooking

I mentioned SMASH* books a few days ago in this post and since then I've gotten quite a few comments and questions about them. Since they are one of my favourite things I decided to make a post to share some pages from the books I've completed. 

I used the Pink "Pretty Style" book to keep things from my last year of university. To be honest I wouldn't even say it's 100% full. I keep meaning to take some time to stick in a few more things I have kicking around my room but I never seem to actually get around to doing it. There aren't very many photos in this book. It's full of ticket stubs, random things I cut out of magazines, quotes, notes and cards from friends. 

This page is full of movie stubs, a favourite quote, a random dinosaur that I liked and an "autograph" from a friend. (Just in case he ever gets famous.)

On these pages I taped in a friendship bracelet after it had fallen off, a list of the songs that we listened to on our drive to school each day, a post it note from my roommate and a letter from a friend that she wrote me to read while on the plane for a visit home at the end of the summer.

The second book I did was "Eco Style" it was perfect for camp! I had planned on using it during the 2012 summer but in the end I just put all those photos in a photo album. I knew I had to use it for the summer of 2013. I was much more intentional about taking photos and saving things. I brought the book and a rubbermaid container full of scrapbooking supplies with me to camp with the idea to do complete the book as I went, working on it during breaks and pasting notes at the end of each day. I should have known better than to attempt that though, I didn't do a single page over the summer. Instead once I got home from camp I printed all my pictures and spent almost a month working on the book.

In the end I'm really happy I waited until the summer was over to build the SMASH book. It was a wonderful way to reflect on the summer, remember the good times, move on from the not-so great times and I had time to really make the book what I wanted! I'm really happy with the way it turned out!

These pages are extremely simple, but I love them. I glued in my favourite pictures of sunsets and the moon over the river and added in a pocket where I put a particularly special note. On the side is a clue that was part of a scavenger hunt my secret friend made me one day. The clue is about a romantic spot to stargaze so it fit in with these pictures perfectly.

Back in my scrapbooking days these pictures would have all been cropped into straight lines, backed with coordinating card stock and arranged in parallel lines on a 12x12 piece of paper. Now they just got cropped into whatever shape made the most sense and allowed them to fit on the page. I threw in some dinosaur stickers as part of an inside joke and a particularly hilarious quote from the summer and that was it! 

I had originally planned on including more pages but I had a really hard time taking good photos. And some of the pages I took photos of lost a lot of their splendour once I very unsophisticatedly edited out people's faces. 

I've always been into scrapbooking but stressed about making everything "perfect" with the SMASH* books the point is literally just to smash it all in. Sometimes I organize my thoughts and create pages that do have layouts like you would see in a traditional scrapbook. Most of the time I just create a pile of things I want to include and stick it in where ever it fits! I have two more blank books that I'm not quite sure how to use. I really like the red one and have been saving it for "something special". (Saving nice things for special occasions is a habit I really need to lose.) And the purple one I bought during a really good sale and I was looking through the pages the other night and decided it would be perfect to use if my whole Texas plan happens. 

If you're someone who is a "saver" like me and hangs on to little notes and ticket stubs but has no idea what to do with them I really recommend this method. You can stick pictures along side your "stuff" and at the end of the day you create something totally unique that gives you just as much satisfaction as a scrapbook without the stress. 

**I was in no way, shape or form compensated for sharing this product on my blog. It's just something I happened to learn about, buy and totally love!

5 Years

This is my favourite picture of myself. There's nothing special about the photo itself, but it's all about the moment. I didn't know the photo was being taken until I was tagged in it on Facebook a few days later. In this moment I was standing at the Vespers Spot at the camp I grew up at, something I'm sure I did hundreds, maybe thousands of times over the 10 years I was a camper and volunteer there. What makes this moment important is it was the last time I would ever stand there. Due to a series of unfortunate events that started with the person who formally owned the land camp was on passing away without a will and ended with some relative of his voiding the lease and deciding to sell the land. Yesterday I didn't really talk about specific struggles, but this photo captures what has been one of the hardest things I've had to deal with. I have no idea why God would make/let that chain of events happen, especially to a place where so many campers, counsellors and volunteers found God among the trees and heard Him most clearly standing in the field. But He did. And now what used to be my favourite place on earth, the place where I learned the most about myself and life is in the process of becoming a subdivision. 

It's been five years since this all happened and it still hurts. Every time I drive by the sign advertising lots for sale I either tear up or am overcome with anger. For the sake of my sanity I have to believe with all my heart that there is an amazing reason for why this happened, I don't know it yet, and maybe I never will, but there's a reason. We tried to run the camp program by renting another camp for a few weeks each summer but two years ago the committee made the decision to end that as well. And that hurts too. I miss it every single day, and although there I things I love about my new/current camp, it's not the same.

I am thankful that I did get 10 amazing years there. Without camp I have no idea what I'd be doing right now, camp is so much a part of who I am, and that particularly camp will always remain one of the most important foundations of my life.

Missing

Today's writing prompt is "What do you miss?" I wasn't sure where to go with this...I feel like I'm in a constant state of missing people, places & things, then being reunited with those people, places and things only to miss different things. Missing is a vicious cycle. Usually I would write about missing camp, because I spend a lot of time missing camp. However, this time next week I will be at camp!! So I'm going to write about something different.

I love details. The little things make me the happiest. Proof that I love the smallest/silliest things? This is my favourite stain on the carpet in the youth group room.

The youth group I helped lead when I was in university had a youth group room in the attic of the church. We often joked it was just the dumping ground for all the things nobody else wanted. Highlights include a couch with a broken leg, a TV stand that had to be broken to fit up the stairs and then reassembled once it reached it's destination, another couch that has delightful red velvet upholstery and my personal favourite, the carpet. 

I'm not really sure how old the carpet is, or what it's original colour was but it's currently a dark mustard yellow, with a twinge of green and brown and maybe some beige. It's seen a lot of things. It's absorbed a lot of spilled pop and juice and crushed popcorn kernels and paint and general dirt. And even though it's usually vacuumed once a week or after ever major youth group event there are just some stains that won't go away. And I love it. It feels (felt) like home and peace and comfort. I obviously miss the youth a lot and the other leaders. But I also miss going up the stairs after a long day and being greeted by familiar couches and carpet and bright green walls.