Savor the Love, Scrap the Joy

I get tremendous joy from making things, the hands-on creative craftyness just thrills my soul. Cooking does this for me, the art of mixing different ingredients and the end result is I have created something of beauty.

I'm creating something of beauty in a different art form lately. Scrapbooking!

Several of my friends sent me emails or notes telling me how special I was to them and just what I meant to them. Of course, anytime something like this happens is a big deal and something to be savored. Well I'm learning how to savor it. How to feel the love longer than the 3 seconds it takes to say "awww! how sweet!" and give your friend a hug.

I do this by scrapbooking.

I take every sweet note my husband or friends give me and use them as raw material for a scrapbook page. That way, I have the card in an accessible form, an easily flipped page in a book instead of a card that will likely get lost in a dusty drawer somewhere.

But.
But.

Even better. By looking at the note, and taking my time to select a page and cutting out the note text and gluing it to a background cardstock in a coordinating color and then selecting all the fun doodads to glue or hammer on, I am soaking in the love, reading their words over and over. Looking at the picture of my friend and I. Savoring the memory.

Did I say hammer?
Yes I did!
Have you ever seen those cool little things?
They have little child-sized hammers that you use to punch a hole in the paper and them pound a cute little colorful metal thumbtack looking thing called an eyelet into the page. I never thought at my age, a thirtysomething wife and mom and wayyy girly-girl that I would enjoy SO MUCH the BAM BAM BAM BAM of using a hammer. Delighted Husband just looks over at me and grins. He can't believe it either.

It's just SO FUN to build stuff!
God, I love being human.