journal prompt

Just Press Play

So it likely comes as no surprise that my “thing” is storytelling.  I have deep love for the story.  I kind of ramble on about it.  My greater hope is to encourage others in the telling of their own stories along the way.  And this month I’m happy to introduce a fresh way to have a play with telling your own story!

 

 

Just Press Play is a monthly challenge that is story-and-prompt centric.  The spirit of this challenge is inviting and fun and encourages us to take a fresh look at how we are telling our stories.  It’s where story meets creativity.  And journaling meets fun. (more…)

Putting Pen to Paper: The Stuff, Documented {Day Eleven}

When you think “Story Lives Here” what do you think of?

Do your thoughts land on events?  On people and relationships?  On moments?  On everyday happenings?

I confess this is my usual tendency and it’s why most of my scrapbook pages are filled with photos and stories of my daughter, husband and the moments we share together.  I have deep love for scrapping moments.  And personality and character.   You know, People Things.

This month’s Putting Pen to Paper prompts ask us to consider the Story from a different perspective as we consider The Things, The Stuff that we interact with, depend upon, enjoy, and otherwise make use of in our days.  This Stuff…These Things…they are “artifacts” of our story.  They often reveal a lot about who we are at any moment and what we care about or how we spend our time.  And scrapping the story of our artifacts can provide a fun and fresh glimpse into our lives and relationships with our loved ones.

So as we approach these prompts about our nouns, our stuff…keep your eyes open in a fresh way and pay attention to what surrounds you as you walk through your day.  Sometimes these artifacts are symbols of something you value, or symbols of the nature of a relationship or season in your life.  Sometimes scrapping The Stuff can simply be fun and easy going, even silly.  But together with our other stories and pages it weaves a beautiful portrait of our lives.

So let’s have a little fun considering our Artifacts and get started with the first prompt for this month (which is Day Eleven in the Putting Pen to Paper series).  Here is today’s prompt:

 

There are so many avenues you could take with this prompt.

You could take photos of the things “left behind” at the end of the day.  A kind of “Kids Were Here” documentation wherein you are capturing the *evidence* of what happened in your day without actually photographing it as it happens.  Think: shoes or puzzle pieces strewn on the ground, chalk left on the sidewalk, flour on the counter, notes on your desk…any Things that reveal what happened in your day — the evidence.

When I was writing this prompt I was having fun taking photos with my phone and preserving them in Instagram as part of my Time Capsule project.  And on this day I had decided to snap photos of various “things” in my life that day.  I called it Day Described in Nouns.  It was a fun exercise for documenting the everyday and it inspired my thinking of all the ways Things appear in our Daily Stories.  You could take this approach.  It’s like a Photo Walk as you walk through your day.

You could document the Things that define a loved one’s personality.  Or a current favorite.  Or a pet peeve.  Or something you cherish.  Or, or, or…let your creativity guide you as you explore the possibilities of revealing and sharing your story through the documentation of The Stuff.

And let yourself be inspired by these amazing prompt plays from the Storytellers:

From Aaron:

Aaron, a school teacher, scrapped a simple something that seems to be filling his days more and more: the copier.  Which of course, on its face, reveals a bit about his work life but it also reveals more..that his focus in work recently has been more focused on preparing his students for testing.  That this is a Story of his Now reveals what he is caring about at this moment and how some of his time is filled.  I love how he cohesively echoed the theme with his schooly element choices.

From Stephanie:

Journaling reads:

Every weekday morning we have the same routine. Breakfast, brush teeth, get dressed, out the door. You two add into this bickering, bothering and bantering. I end up prodding, reminding, yelling. It’s a frustrating and vicious cycle.

Stephanie fabulously used color choice and played with word art (adding “not” to the “happy” pennant) to reveal the story of a Thing that dominates her morning routine…and often in a really frustrating way.  I love her use of a brief and simple list of morning tasks coupled with action verbs that define the tone of that can emerge in this time sensitive before school morning (bickering, bothering and bantering,  prodding, reminding, yelling) in her journaling.  Both work together to  subtley convey that ever present  *tick.tick.tick* of the clock and the time-focused hecticness of a morning routine.

From Jude:

Journaling reads:

Food is pretty important in our house, it doesn’t necessarily have to be really flashy, but the day is never entirely satisfactory unless there’s been at least one yummy meal. We mostly cook from scratch, so we don’t mind spending time in the kitchen but we do prefer things that aren’t too complicated! We have an extensive range of cookbooks and they’ve all got nice, authenticly splattered pages to show they get used. Our favourite recipes are usually the really interestingly flavoured ones. I love to have Mexican food as a treat, Enchiladas are my absolute favourite, but I adore Thai and other east asian cuisines as well as Indian, Mediterreanean and lots of others.

Luckily, the girls share our tastes. They’ll try pretty much anything, and mostly like anything too (unless it’s hotter than can be fixed with a big glass of water) so it’s ok for us to be adventurous when we’re cooking.

I really love how Jude chose to document a Thing that at once reflects family traditions and likes and shared time together.  This is the kind of portrait of the little things that I would have loved to see in my grandparent’s scrapbook and in my own.  The little things that are SO regular for us that we may not even think to document them, but they will be so wonderful to have remembered.   Jude also chose elements to underscore her journaling and that creates such a fabulous cohesiveness and colorfulness to the page.

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Putting Pen to Paper is a story-centric scrapbooking and journaling series. I hope it will inspire you to document your stories in a meaningful way that helps you live life more meaningfully too. Please remember anyone is welcome to join in and follow along at any time.  Looking forward to sharing a fresh prompt next Wednesday!

Happy Scrapping!

 

{grow with love: letters} Day Eighteen

Hope everyone has had a beautiful week!  I’m filling in for Crystal who is up-to-her-eyeballs in vacation preparations…can’t think of a better thing to be busy with really and I know she’s super excited to be getting away for a spell…to the beach!

So here we are with the second prompt for May, which is Day 18 of our letter writing adventure.  This month we are honoring family and celebrating legacy and history with our prompts and pages.

Here’s a peek at today’s prompt:

You may take a peek at this prompt and feel, like me, that you need to take a pause and a deep breath.  One way or another, this is a kind of nudge to write and reflect about something emotional.  And that can be challenging or convicting or a little scary or overwhelming or even empowering.  It’s prompts like these that encourage us to tell the WHOLE story.  Even the emotional or difficult chapters…because these do shape us so.  And many times, reflecting on the goodbyes and the legacies (good or bad) can help close a door or facilitate the letting go or even reaffirm a person’s importance in our lives.

We hope that you feel inspired in this way today.  And we hope you will find some inspiration in these pages by the Storytellers.  They are so heartfelt and emotive and so beautiful.

Coila:

Nicole:

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Grow With Love is a story-centric scrapbooking and journaling project.  We hope it will inspire you to document your stories in a meaningful way that helps you live life more meaningfully too.  Please remember anyone is welcome to join in and follow along at any time.  You can access the complete Grow With Love archive and hop in to any past Grow With Love project or follow along with the Letters project which will be highlighted here every Wednesday.

Grow With Love Archive

{grow with love: letters} Day Seventeen

Happy Wednesday!  And Happy May!!  (By the way, how is it May already?!)

If you’re just finding us here’s a smidge of backstory: “Grow With Love: Letters Edition” is a collaboration of templates and journaling prompts presented by Crystal Livesay and Sara Gleason and rooted in and inspired by letter writing as featured in the Artisan Notebook throughout 2011.  We will really explore the beauty of letter writing in our scrapbooking through letters to loved ones, letters to ourselves, letters as words into the cosmos.  Letters that help us set our hearts to paper, help us to get introspective, challenge us to bring words and thoughts to action in our days and letters that guide us to share the fun, the little moments, the every day.   So far we have penned letters that reflect upon setting direction and setting compasses, loves and relationships, gifts and beginnings.

With Mother’s Day and Memorial Day here in the States, we were inspired to honor family this month with our prompts.  And so the {may} letters will have us putting pen to paper writing letters honoring those we’ve loved, those we’ve lost, celebrating legacies and pondering our own.

We hope you will enjoy continuing in this scrapbooking and storytelling journey with us!  Please remember anyone is welcome to join in and follow along at any time.  You can access the complete Grow With Love archive and hop in to the Letters project which will be highlighted here every Wednesday.  The schedule for May is as follows, with all posts found right here on the Plant Your Story blog:

Week One: Wednesday 4 May – join Sara for Day Seventeen
Week Two: Wednesday 11 May – join Crystal with Day Eighteen
Week Three: Wednesday 18 May – join Sara with Day Nineteen
Week Four: Wednesday 25 May – join Crystal for Day Twenty

And I’m so let’s dive in to the prompt for today, Day Seventeen:

This is a timely page for Mother’s Day which is celebrated here in the US this Sunday.  Let yourself ponder your mother and how she has shaped you (good or bad).  Reflect and write a letter that reflects this relationship and its dynamic.

Here’s a page from me that shines the light on my mom, who I am blessed to say has been an amazing light and influence in my life.

And here’s a spot of inspiration from the Storytellers:

Coila:

Lex:

Sara:

A page like this is not only a wonderful addition to your own albums and your story, but it could make a really lovely present for your mom too!  We hope you feel inspired by this prompt and we would love to see your pages!  Feel free to share them here in the comments or in the Plant Your Story gallery!

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Grow With Love is a story-centric scrapbooking and journaling project.  We hope it will inspire you to document your stories in a meaningful way that helps you live life more meaningfully too.  Please remember anyone is welcome to join in and follow along at any time.  You can access the complete Grow With Love archive and hop in to any past Grow With Love project or follow along with the Letters project which will be highlighted here every Wednesday.

Grow With Love Archive

{grow with love: letters} Day Sixteen

Hello Everyone! Crystal here bringing you day 16 of the letters. I am pretty ill but I was determined not to leave Sara hanging on today’s post, so I apologize in advance for any typos…or sentences that make no sense! Today’s prompt was a bit different for Sara and I. We are always looking for different ways to inspire you in your storytelling. Let’s take a look at what we had for today and then chitter chatter a bit more about it!

I quite like this quote, don’t you?? So much comes to my mind when I think about it and so much can be scrapped with that as your inspiration. Sometimes an ending is very sad. It’s hard to move on from some things and ever see good things come from it. Sometimes you feel as if nothing good could ever come from something. However, I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason and a lot of the time you have a lot of control over what is to be gained from a situation. If you sit around and sulk over your broken heart then you will never be able to heal or find someone to help you put it back together. Maybe a period came in your life where you felt so hopeless and full of despair? Where did you go from that point?? What good were you able to spring forth from those ashes? Maybe you are still at an end. Your new beginning hasn’t come yet. Where do you hope to go from here? We have a couple super amazing pages from the girls to share with you too!

by Lex

by Nicole

Totally amazing and inspiring!! I hope that you are moved by this prompt! Don’t forget to snag the May Letters because they will be starting here on May 4th!

{grow with love: letters} Day Fifteen

Happy Wednesday!  I’m so happy to present Day Fifteen of the Grow With Love: Letters project.  This month has us putting pen to paper about “beginnings“.  And this week’s prompt calls for us to get a little reflective and retrospective as we consider how a “beginning” of a relationship has evolved over time.

When I think of the “why” for my love of scrapbooking and storytelling, so often my thoughts land squarely on: relationships.  As I am documenting our days, really what I am doing is telling the story of our interactions: the conversations, the events, and the moments shared *together* with those I love.  Or I am gushing about or reflecting on the people I share my life with…and at the core of all of this is a portrait of my relationships.

Usually I am recording memories as they happen, preserving snapshots and details and connections in little windows of time.  One day, taken together, they will reveal an entire history and journey of our relationships.  But generally, as it’s unfolding in my storytelling day by day, the evolution of the relationships  isn’t immediately obvious.  And so this week’s prompt was refreshing for me.  It inspired me to take some time to consider the entire history of a relationship and give the “sum up” as I reflected on how that relationship has evolved over time.  And I’m really pleased to have scrapped it!

I was inspired to scrap about my relationship with my sister.  This is a relationship that has, regretfully, not been documented in my scrapbooks as often as I would like.  A huge part of that is the geographical divide between us.  Living at opposite ends of the country makes it difficult to make memories together like we once did.  And so that is another reason I really appreciated this prompt — I could focus on documenting a relationship that means so very much to me and has deep and long history, but fewer “today” moments than I would like.

I used goodies from the amazing new grab bag from Fruit LoOp Sally at Ninth and Bloom.

Coila was inspired to reflect upon her relationship with her husband:

And Lex was inspired to scrap the evolution of her relationship with her sister:

And Nicole was also inspired to reflect on her sister relationships:

As I was seeing the beautiful pages for this prompt I realized that several of us were led to scrap about our sibling relationships!  What relationship’s story do you feel inspired to share?

Hope this prompt speaks to you today too!  Happy Scrapping!

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Grow With Love is a story-centric scrapbooking and journaling project.  We hope it will inspire you to document your stories in a meaningful way that helps you live life more meaningfully too.  Please remember anyone is welcome to join in and follow along at any time.  You can access the complete Grow With Love archive and hop in to any past Grow With Love project or follow along with the Letters project which will be highlighted here every Wednesday.

Grow With Love Archive

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