Paul the Blessing Pig

Hi Guys!
So I'm not doing resolutions this year, kinda. This year I am going to count my blessings, be thankful for all that I do have and not focus on what I don't. And I'm here to tell you how I plan to do that.
One of my favourite bloggers Courtney Walsh is teaching another class with Big Picture Classes this year called Home Blessings. The idea of this course is to use crafty ideas to put your blessings on display in your home. The first week Courtney showed us her "blessing bird", a ceramic bird, she had covered with blessings. Because I'm cheap, I headed down to my local Sally Ann. There, I found a ceramic piggy bank. It wasn't actually what I wanted but the more I walked around store, the more I came back to this pig. As I was driving home I came up with this great idea, I could fill the pig with my blessings and at the end of the year I could empty the pig and see all the wonderful blessings I have. The final product is Paul the Blessing Pig. I don't know why his name is Paul, it just is.

Isn't he cute? Now just to find a place to put him so I can fill him up!

Keep Listening

Good morning all.
This morning I wanted to share with you something I created for Courtney's class Scrapbooking your faith. I've been taking a Lenten study at my church. The lesson that stuck out most for me was "keep listening." Now my friends would say I'm a great listener, my sister Patti would tell you she is surprised by how much I know about people that I've never shared and that they don't even know I know. But when it comes to GOD, I'm not always a good listener. That is because sometimes it's not always what I want to hear (no, you can't have that right now), sometimes I have a hard time believing it is true (I have a fear that I'll be an old maid who hoards and has more than a dozen cats - that I'll never be a wife or mom, but my family has huge faith that this will not happen to me - first of all I hate cats and second they are not telling me this to be nice, they mean it)  and sometimes the other voices are way louder (you let us down, you are not enough).   
Courtney wanted us to create something to put on our walls to remind us of a lesson we have learned but often need reminding off. "Keep listening" is my lesson. It's funny how things fit together perfectly as if they were made to go together.
Here is the canvas I made for my living room;

The bird idea I borrowed from Brave Girls.. Melody always uses a bird as her Truthteller and encourages us to use it too. The butterfly image was left over from Brave Girls, Body Restoration printouts (I would not claim that as my own). This is the lesson I learned this Lenten season and I'm so glad I learned it. Now I just need to remember it. :)
Thanks for stopping by!

Mixed media fun.

Good morning.
Let me tell you a story. When I was a little girl I loved to put on an old work shirt of my Dad's, roll up the sleeves and paint with my sister Patti. One year my Nana put my sister and I in painting classes @ the local art gallery. This year my Nana told me that the reason we were put into the painting classes was because Patti was so good @ art but she felt that it wasn't fair just to put Patti in them and not me. Imagine her surprise when I loved the classes more than Patti. I think it was the structure or something. Patti could make up anything out of her head and didn't like to be confined (funny that she is a graphic designer now and gets paid to create someone elses vision). I on the other hand can't just "paint" but can paint a flower if someone asked. Somewhere along the line though, art was lost on me. Probably because I was always competing with Patti (which might also be why Patti doesn't sing much even though she has a beautiful voice  - I'm the singer). 
This year thanks to Brave Girls, I have re-discovered art....I love having paint and glue on my hands. And it doesn't matter if it isn't very good to anyone else, it always suits my style. Brave Girls has gotten me brave enough to play with paint and glue and fabric and paper and ribbon. And it has bumped my scrapbooking up a level.
I want to share a mixed media piece I created for Courtney's Scrapbooking your Faith class. The purpose was to pick a phrase, a scripture or whatever that when you read it you knew that it was true, even if sometimes you forget it. So I picked "You are loved" a line from Josh Groban's song of the same name. In fact I could have used any lyric from that song but this one pretty much sums up the whole song.

This is not something that I would have been able to do a year ago. I used a piece of drywall from my basement, taped the edges and painted. I added rub-ons and chipboard. Some old sheet music and letters. I'm happy with how is came out and just have to figure out how to hang it on the living room wall.

I am so grateful for the classes I've been taking, I'm having so much fun!

Hope you guys are having a great week so far, the weather here is amazing!