10 on the 10th - 10 Moments To Remember

This month's 10 on the 10th captures 10 moments of this summer that I want to remember. Always.

I want to remember how blessed I am to witness the bgeinnings of a deep friendship between the daughters of two of my best firneds. There is something beautiful and meaningful in the continuity and interweaving of mothers and daughters.

I want to remember how lucky I am to have such a wonderful mother. I'm totally enjoying watching her with her grandchildren. My only child recently graduated fromhigh school. When he was younger, I was too overwhelmed with struggling to find my own parenting style and too insecure to appreciate all the insight that my mother had to offer. My brother and his wife married young but waited several years to have children. I love how relaxed I am with my niece and nephew. I can see now how amazing my mother is - and was - with children.

I want to remember all the warmth, laughter, adventure, exploration, giggles, hugs and love that we shared with Jim's sister and family. Good times.

I want to remember the scarifices made by all of the servicemen and servicewomen so that I can live in a country where I am free.

I want to remember how wonderful it is to have a group of women friends who exemplify everything that is right about being a woman.

I want to remember how much I love this young man, how scared I am about the changes coming our way and how hard it is to let go...

I want to remember how much I adore this man. He is my everything.

I want to remember the free and easy feeling of relaxing by the pool. I want to remember that I had the courage to put on a swimming suit, even when I thought I was too fat. I want to remember how cleansing it feels to dive into the cold water. I want to remember going off the diving board and doing handstands under the water.

I want to remember experiencing the magic of the musical Wicked with these fabulous people.

I want to remember the sounds of a ballpark in the summer.

What do you want to remember this summer?

PS If you want to see more 10 on the 10th, check out Shimelle's blog here.

Friday Photo Love: The Bad Mommies Club

I just love these ladies.

And The Giveaway Goes To....

Thank you so much to everyone that left comments on my June OLW Blog Hop post. I really appreciate your kind words and support. In addition, I learned lots of interesting tidbits about my readers. By far, the most interesting random fact was this:



Congratulations, Cynthia! Email me at jennhv@cox.net with all of your contact information and I will send a goodie box your way.

OLW Blog Hop - I Remembered Pictures... And I've Planned An Awesome Giveaway

 Welcome back friends! I am super excited about this month's One Little Words blog hop. Ali hit the ball out of the park with this month's prompt. I'm talking grand slam, out of the stadium home run.

This month we took a step back from prompts that centered around deep thoughts, letters to future selves and documenting our planning process and ventured back into the artsy, crafty side of things. Now don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed every single one of the previous prompts. The contemplation, planning, and exploring the depth of my Dreams has helped me to keep my OLW in an active place in my life. It gave me a timeline of sorts for action steps. It offered some accountability in committing to this process. And it opened my eyes to new perspective. To read more about these prompts, you can check out my previous posts on my Dream journey here.

But I was so ready for some hands-on creativity this month. In fact, I was desperately ready to express my Dreams in a more artistic way. Our prompt this month was this:

This month you’re invited to create a series of nine mini-canvases that will fit inside a divided page protector. The main encouragement I want to give to you is to simply keep your word in mind as you play.

Perfect. Just perfect.

The color scheme for my album has been turquoise, grey, red and yellow. And this month I was feeling yellow. Such a bright, sunny, cheerful, happy color...the exact right sentiment for my outlook as I move forward on this Dream quest.

Here's my collage:

 

I was super inspired by this stamp that Ali used to create her crossword pattern. I am a major crossword geek! And while I didn't have that stamp, I did have the amazing red + yellow crossword patterned paper that I've been  hoarding for a couple years. I used the paper, a brad and stamped my OLW to create the central canvas around which I built the others. I love how it turned out! Here's a close-up the central portion:

I also have photos to share of my completed project pages for March, April and May. Can you believe how long I've been slacking on sharing my completed pages? Yeah, I know, I can't really believe it either. But here they are anyway... If you want to see any image in a larger size, then just click on the image.

March - Folded

March - Unfolded

April - Left Side

April - Facing Pages

May - Facing Pages

May - Closeup on Quote 

May - Spreadsheets

May - Spreadsheet Detail

June - Facing Pages

Now, some of you might remember from last month that I started on embellishing my OLW album cover. It is complete! I love, love, love the butterfly accent with the flower cluster - doesn't that just evoke Dream-iness?

And here's a couple of detail shots of the cover elements...

Last but not least, I am super stoked to announce my very first giveaway! 

(cue applause)

I am doing a major de-stash of my craft room. I'm talking tons of patterned paper, sticker sheets, embellishments and even some American Crafts Thickers. I mean, who can resist Thickers?!?

No one, that's who.

I plan on filling a US Priority Mail flat rate shipping box to the brim for one lucky reader. To be eligible for this box of awesome-ness, all you have to do is leave a comment telling me one random fact about yourself. I will collect comments until 11:59pm CST on Thursday July 7th. The person with the most interesting factoid will be crowned winner by moi and announced Friday July 8, 2011. So be sure to stop back.

Thanks for hanging in there on this much-longer-than anticipated post. Next up on the OLW blog hop is Kathryn at Katlo Designs. Check out her blog here.

Happy Hopping!

Friday Photo Love: The Chase Is On

 

I somehow managed to lose the identifying information for the designer of this super, fabulous quote. If anyone knows who created the word art (I added the frame), please leave me a comment so I can properly credit the artist. Thanks!