Thankful Thoughts-Thanks Ali Edwards

I came across these on Ali Edwards blog this evening and thought what a great idea, random thankful thoughts. I thought I might be a little more purposeful with mine and try and do one a week till the end of the year and post them on Fridays, as these tend to be a busy day around our house and not much time for crafting is available.
My first thankful thought is of my Mom, she is my rock. The person that taught me to be who I am. She is there when I need her and also knows how to give enough space that I never feel crowded or overwhelmed by her attentions. She believes in me, for which I am truly thankful. She is a great Grandma to my kids, teaching them things that I would never think of but that are truly important in life, like how to garden and sew a hem. She has instilled in my my life long love of reading and learning for which I am grateful for.

On another note I would love to share a link to my daughters blog, she is living and working in China for the second year as an elementary school teacher and I am so proud of her.
Brittany's Blog
Here is a picture of Brittany standing on the Great Wall of China in Dandong, during my Feb. 2011 visit.

Today we were challenged to make kits out of paper we had based on background colors and then to create layouts that contained no trapped white space with these paper kits.  I must say it was hard to find papers with white backgrounds in my stash.  I seem to have a lot of them that are based on cream colored backgrounds.  I did find that I had more brights than I thought I did which is a good thing as far as I am concerned because brights make me happy.  It might be fall outside but that does not mean that I need to scrap with only browns and oranges right?
Here are my three sets of patterned papers, and the layouts I did with them.  I decided to not use any card stock at all for these layouts, mostly because I am lazy and I did not want to go out into the garage and find any.

Bountiful Baskets

I know that this is something that I should have posted in July when we were getting these wonderful weekly packages of produce from bountiful baskets but I never did get around to it.
I really enjoy fresh produce, having grown up on a mini farm in Oregon I am sure that I did not know that peas can frozen from the store until I was in High School My mom was a great gardener and all of our meals always contained fresh or freshly canned fruits and veggies that we had grown ourselves.
Well as an adult I have never had the land to go the veggies that my mom did but I did discover a wonderful way to get fresh fruits and seasonal vegetables into the house on a weekly basis. Bountiful Baskets is a great food co-op that provides the best of the best on a weekly basis. My only problem with them has been that the pick up is on Saturday mornings and it is hard to get there after a 12 hour night shift, but I do try to get a basket on the weeks that I am not working.
Why you ask am I posting about this today, well there was an email from them in my inbox today that said this
"Dear Amber,

We suggested on Facebook tonight that it might be fun to connect a few families with a dietitian to help them use their Bountiful Basket to give their diet an overhaul to meet their health goals. The families and dietitians will all blog about their experiences so the rest of us can learn some new tricks and hopefully get healthier and more motivated as we watch their success. Hundreds of families responded that they would love to do this. We realized we needed a better way to select who would be the lucky families!

If you are interested please follow the link, and fill out the survey. We hope to get this going by November.

Best,
Sally & Tanya"
and it really got me thinking what a great opportunity this would be for all of us. Rachel as an average teenager could use some healthy eating tips, Abby and I could both use to eat better and loose some weight and as a pre-diabetic it is very important for me to do so, and I would love to be able to have a dietician work with Kai and see what part diet plays in his autism.
I know that it is a long shot that I would be one of the chosen families but this is something that has gotten me very excited.
Here are a couple of pictures I took of one of our wonderful baskets this summer.

Pretty Paper Party

I have more pretty patterned paper than I know what to do with, so I thank one of my favorite online if not my favorite online teachers Shimelle for offering this class. I really look forward to using up some of my stash and getting some nice layouts and cards done. I have been really bad about scrapbooking this year but that does not mean that I have stopped collecting. Here are a few pics of my patterned paper stash that I took for the first challenge of this course.