I can hardly believe we are so very near to wrapping up Grow With Love: Marriage Edition.  It’s been an amazing process with challenges and fun and lots of reflection.  We so hope you’ve enjoyed the project and that, in the end, you are left with a series of pages you can be proud of — both for the creative expression and the story you’re telling.  And hopefully even for the growth you’ve experienced along the way.

The prompt for today, Day Nineteen, helps us to begin to really put everything in perspective.  Let’s take a look:

I have to confess that I don’t have my page ready to share yet tonight.  It’s been one I’ve thought about a lot and have begun, but today was one of those days that just ran away from me.  So I will be back to share it as soon as I can.

In the meantime I want to give you some food for thought as you formulate your own pages.  I know that the perspective we hope you will take here may be a little uncomfortable or even a little morbid to think about, but it’s one of my most favorite processes for really journaling from the heart in an earnest and meaningful way.  Any time I consider my family, children or husband reading through my art and stories after I pass, it puts everything into perspective: what really matters?  Am I sharing that here?  What do I most want them to know? About me? About how I feel about them?  Will they see that in my scrapbooking?

And that’s what we’re asking you to do here.  Our hope is that you’ll end up with a page full of those things “that really matter”.  It’s doubtful — if you knew these word the last words you would say — that you would share the trite or fleeting thoughts and feelings of hurt and anger or resentment and ugliness.  Instead, you would probably share everything from a place of love.  I predict as you’re writing this page, you’ll find yourself left with those kinds of sentiments.  I hope you really let yourself delve deep for this one.

I’ll be back soon with my page and will actually be going back and scrapping and sharing all those I’ve not been able to yet.  Which brings me to say….even as we are bringing things to a close, you can still dive in anytime. This project will remain here on my blog and Crystal’s blog so you can start the adventure anytime.  And if you are just finding us, you can catch up on the details in Day One and then follow the prompts as we hop from my blog to Crystal’s and back.  It’s never too late to start something you will find meaningful and we would love for you to join us or catch up anytime, in your time.

I so hope that you all have enjoyed taking this journey with us!  Don’t forget to stop by Crystal’s blog tomorrow for the final day of Grow With Love.

Lots of love, and Happy Scrapping!!

Happy fresh week scrappers!  I can’t believe we’re finally in the midst of Week Four of the Grow with Love project!  The end is in sight and that has me feeling both (admittedly) a little relieved and a little sad.  It’s been a journey in creative expression, in deep personal reflection, and in growth and hope in my marriage.

If you’re only just finding us please know that this project — at it’s heart — is meant to be one that you can complete in your own time and in your own way.  So ultimately there is still time to dive in and join us.  You can learn the back-story and the details of the project by reviewing the Day One post and then following the prompts with each new day as we hop between my blog and Crystal’s blog.

Before we dive in to today’s prompt, I wanted to take the time for a wee logistical note.  Crystal and I have been thinking about prize eligibility.  Originally we had mentioned that in order to be eligible for the “grand pooba prize” of a custom photobook you would need to use the templates AND the prompts.  Anyone would eligible for the gift certificate prizes (no matter if you used the templates or not).

BUT as this project has progressed, we’ve decided to change that a bit.  We understand that these pages we all are creating are, more than anything, story driven and our templates may not always fit the direction you want to go (I know they haven’t always done so for me)…we looove to see pages with the templates we’ve created, but ultimately we care more about the journey we all are taking.  And we are really excited about anyone playing along as they want to..and so we’ve decided that anyone who completes all 20 days of prompts will be eligible for the prizes, including the custom photobook.

Okeedokee, now on to today’s prompt.  Today is Day Seventeen. And this prompt is a lighter one that can be a lot of fun as we look back on special date night moments.  Let’s take a look:

For this one I had fun recalling many special and fun date nights shared with my husband, and ultimately in the end I landed on what’s kind of emerged as our “regular” date night.  It’s not as “flashy” or BIG, but it’s become really important to me.  So I scrapped about our sushi nights.  And decided to kind of mirror the stacked composition of sushi itself with my design.  Something simple, but it suits what I was going for.

Hope you have fun remembering your date nights!  Or maybe even scrapping about your longing for them.

And don’t forget to swing by Crystal’s blog tomorrow for Day Eighteen!

Happy Scrapping!!