This is Random

Ran . dom -adjective Having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective

I'm constantly amazed at the things you can find on the internet. During an afternoon of blog posting, leaving comments and praise on message boards and the blogs of my peeps, I stumbled across a random word generator site. Just for fun I began clicking the 'new word' tab and I was intriqued by the randomness of each word that was displayed. Each word generated was totally unrelated to the previous word. And, I noticed that when a new word would appear in the creamy yellow box it conjured up a thought or a memory in my head.

What a perfect prompt for a journaling challenge! So, your challenge this week is to go to the website, here, and scrap the word that is randomly generated for you and use it in the title on your page! And, it doesn't matter if you have to click the new word button a few times until you are compelled to scrap a word. Just relax and enjoy this fun way to prompt you to tell your story.

Here's my page for my randomly generated word:

What Happened to My Organization.

Journaling reads: For as long as I can remember I've loved to organize things. For me, there's real joy and satisfaction seeing everything clean, lined up, and in order. Craig expected the things in our home to be organized and although he wasn't too good at getting it that way, he was exceptional at keeping it that way. It was how we lived and that was fine with me.

Whenever there is change or stress in my life I feel compelled to clean and organize everything. It's my way of being in control. After Craig died, I spent months organizing every nook and crannie, desperately needing to regain command of my life and surroundings, and moving in to a new house helped me to do that.

I've lived here for 2 years now and slowly I've become less compulsive, less organized. It concerns me, but not enough to motivate me to action. What has changed? Am I adapting? Feeling less stress? More relaxed?

How Do I Love Thee ... Let Me Count The Ways Challenge #2

There's nothing new about using a list of reasons why you love someone as journaling on your page. Nothing except it's something I've never done and maybe there's a few of you scrappers who haven't done it either. There's lots of things that I love about my granddaughter, Breckin, but I'm not sure each one merit's it's own page ... or even if I have pictures to support my thoughts. But, I do want to make sure I preserve some of the current reasons ... one's that relate to things about her at three-years-old. And, I had this cute picture of her posing in her new jammies, that didn't have much of a story to go with it. So, I've combined the two to create this page for Breckin's scrapbook.

Journaling reads:

A Few Things I Love About You

1. I love that you always want to hold hands when we're walking together.

2. I love that one kiss good-bye isn't enough for you.

3. I love how we're always laughting when we are together. You laugh at my funny faces and I laugh back at you.

4. I love that you don't let anyone ignore you.

5. I love that you practice, practice, practice until you get it right. Then, you do it some more.

6. I love the shape of your pretty legs.

7. I love that you are so smart.

8. I love to share tomato soup and fresh fruit salad with you.

Your challenge is to scrap a list of things you love about someone. Your journaling can be done in strip form, as I have done here or you can write it out in paragraph form. You might even use a cluster of journaling tags with a reason written on each one. No matter what method you choose to use, be sure to write out the reasons instead of just using descriptive words. We'll save that technique for another challenge.

Twenty-Something

For me, the age that I am is a good age ... the best age. And, although I made the best choices I could make given the situation and information I had at the time, I do look back on a few periods of my life that I'm glad are over. When Beverley challenged us to pick an age and journal about it ... I immediately thought about my early 20's ... not realizing she was looking for positive thoughts and journaling. You see, my 20's weren't my best years. And, in my quest to be more honest with my scrapbook journaling, I decided to scrap about it anyway. (And, no fair laughing at the sunglasses! hehehehe)





My journaling reads:

Easily the worst years of my life, I don't look back on my early twenties with any nostalgia. I struggled to be a mother of two babies born a year apart ... one with a life threatening genetic disease, while trying to grow up myself. Living in a strange city without friends or family while Craig worked tirelessly to establish himself in business, I was often lonely and enticed by the social changes and fads of the 70's. It was a very unhappy time of my life and I look back with no desire to re-live it.

I loved working with these new BoBunny papers from the Beautiful Life collection that was released at CHA recently. And, I threw in some bits of the Pink Paislee Office Lingo die cuts just for fun! Don't you just love the way the clear embossed stamped lettering adds texture to the background? Stack on some buttons, use black Stickles for the dotty circles, distress and ink the edges ... and by george, I think we've got it!
















Now it's your turn. I can't wait to see what age you choose to journal about! Who knows? You might even choose to pick an age that you haven't even seen yet! And, don't forget ... it' doesn't HAVE to be a scrapbook page. It can be a blog post, a card, an altered item ... even bits of thoughts written in your journal. Just get those thoughts and feelings down somewhere and share them with us! Beverley has generously gathered together some fab goodies that will go to some lucky challenger!