March Wrap Up & April Goals

Before we get into what I want to accomplish this month let's do a quick recap on my March Goals and what I accomplished last month...

March Goal: Read one book of the Bible every day in March

Outcome: Nope. I read 5 books, which makes it more of a once a week accomplishment than a once a day accomplishment. I'm not being too hard on myself with this one. I've made progress and I'm going to keep it up for the month of April.

March Goal: Read two books.

Outcome: Seriously, what is my problem with this!? Another month has past and I didn't read a single book. I'm too disgusted by this thought to elaborate any further.

March Goal: Journal/Write Creatively 16 days out of the month.

Outcome: I'm giving myself a check mark next to this one! 

As for my 52 in 52 List...I did try a new food (baked brie with apricot jam) and made two new recipes (icing and pad thai). I'm anticipating April being a more successful month because I already have some things 'in progress' but can't actually call them done until next month. 

April has a few unknowns right now. Basically one of two scenarios is going to play out; either everything will continue according to plan OR I'll check a pretty big item off my life goals list...which is the preferred scenario and it will also come with some big changes. So keeping that in mind I'm keeping my April goals pretty simple. I'm going to go ahead and carry all of my March Goals over to April with a few moderations. I am going to keep up with my Bible reading plan and aim to read 10 books this month. On the literature front I'm going to take a different approach. I'm just going to read one book. One. Surely, I can read one book during next next 30 days. As for the writing, I'm not sure I want to put a number of times on that. I discovered last month that It can be hard to count days, somedays I can easily write for a few pages and others the only writing I do is a quick five minutes to answer the question in my Five Year Journal. So I'm going to try and keep track of how many hours I spend journalling and writing. I'm going to aim to spend 30 hours writing and we'll see how it goes. To make my goals a little more rounded and since the weather is warming up I'm going to aim to have at least one day a week with 15,000 steps on my FitBit. 

There may be some changes to this list depending on how the month unfolds, but for now I'm balancing living in the present while being aware of things on the horizon. What are you planning to accomplish in April? 

Blogtember 2015: Creative Memory Keeping

Blogtember is asking us to share our creativity. Lately I've been channelling all my creativity into memory keeping. I've been organizing my camp photos from this summer using a hodge lodge of Smash Book-ing, traditional scrapbooking and Project Life journalling. Sharing this creativity is a little challenging since I adhere to pretty strict confidentiality guidelines when it comes to camp. I tried to choose pages that didn't have a whole lot of people photos, but the ones that need I had to use my superb (haha) editing skills to make the faces go away. 

Part of my job involves doing Cabin Inspection each morning at camp. A few mornings each week the cabins do the usual tidying routine (making beds, cleaning bathrooms, sweeping floor) and create a theme. This year the theme for the themes seemed to be 'in space'. It was weird and wonderful so I devoted a page to some of the cabin inspection photos. The pocket on the next page is full of cards and pictures that campers (and counsellors) had drawn and given to me during cabin inspection. 

When I went through my photos I realized I had quite a few photos of campers doing crafts so I put them all together and added a few little drawings that had been given to me. 

These pages are a work in progress and still need journalling added. One page documents a typical break spent at N.'s cottage. A candle lit supper, an evening stroll, (not pictured a Friends episode or three). The next morning breakfast was a priority and then usually a trip to town to window shop and a coffee and donut stop before heading back to the cottage. The next page is photos from the night R. & I picked H. up at the airport and the three of us were reunited for the first time in almost a year!

There are a couple of blue chairs at camp that in past years have always managed to creep their way into photos that would otherwise be great for promotional use. So this summer I made a game out of photographing the blue chairs in all the crazy spots I saw them around camp. Overall I have over 100 photos, these 8 are just some of my favourites. This page needs some more journalling as well.

Everything is still a work in progress. I've blogged about my style of memory keeping more back here. 

Girl Between The Lines

I am really excited to be linking up with one of my long time favourite bloggers Hayley, and one of my recently discovered bloggers, Lauren for the first week of The Girl Between The Lines link up! I don't know about everyone else but I love reading about people. I enjoy reading about bloggers' daily adventures too, but my favourite posts are usually ones that are about the person behind the blog. Today's prompt is to share a picture of yourself along with three things that you love about yourself.

(I'll preface this by saying I hate pictures of myself, so much that I almost skipped out on participating today. And since I lost my hard drive a few weeks ago I don't have any pictures on my laptop I had to resort re-posting a photo I've shared before.)

Three Things I Love About Myself

I have a really good memory! I remember little details about people without much effort and sometimes I have to hold back on making reference to these details because I'm scared people will think I'm a total creeper. I promise I don't spend hours stalking Facebook and blog posts I just have a weird ability to remember that one time six months ago when you mentioned your favourite cartoon character for a week when you were three. I love that I'm able to remember the details and use them to make people happy. 

I'm a really good gift giver! This one pairs nicely with the first one, being about to remember little details about people means I am a pretty awesome gift giver. I will go to great lengths to track down a specific item I'm looking for and if I can't find it I'll get creative and make it myself! I love that I'm able to show love by putting thought and creativity into gifts for others. 

I'm creative! I enjoy writing, doodling, scrapbooking, crafting, decorating, ect. Anything where I can experiment with colours, textures and just lose myself in what I'm creating. I know there are people who hate the idea of writing for pleasure or sitting down for hours with piles of papers and photos to create something from nothing, but I am the complete opposite. I love that I'm able to express myself so easily.