Today I have a page to share with you- a page that started a massive shift in the way I'm scrapbooking now.

This is that page.

Not too long ago I made this layout, and then sat back and said "ugh." Not necessarily because it's ugly, but because it felt so uninspired, uncreative, and definitely un-me. After cranking out a few more in the same vein (many of which I've already complained about not liking on this blog), I finally determined that perhaps the string of constant multi-photo, straight-line layouts really isn't for me.

I felt just like Lara Croft in that scene from Tomb Raider on the morning after the bad guys completely demolished her house manor. You know, the one where the UPS dude brings her a package to sign and is looking around at the destruction in amazement, and she just grins and says, "I just woke up this morning and hated everything." Seriously, I just woke up one day and hated everything about the way I was scrapping.

This revelation prompted some soul-searching and serious studying of not only my layouts, but also the layouts of many, many scrapbookers that I admire- scrapbookers whose own style speaks to me on a level that's something beyond just scraplifting or even emulating their style, but instead inspires me to create something that's truly my own. I'll share some of those scrapbookers in a later post because I could write volumes on what I've learned just by looking through their blogs over the last couple of weeks.

During all this pondering of the future of my scrapbooking, I discovered that there were a few layouts that I've made in the last few months that I really do adore. I'll share a lot of those in my next post, as well, and one of them is posted here in an article I wrote for Scrapbook Update. That particular layout only took about 45 minutes to put together and came totally out of my own head instead of being one of my usual scraplifts. And I love it. Completely and utterly love it.

I think that I've finally found a style that I'm good with calling my own. One that means I'll no longer be scraplifting everything. One that will let me have fun and play with lots of one- and two-photo layouts on one hand while still incorporating lots of shots on the other (if that seems like an impossibility, then stay tuned for details on how I'm doing it!!). One that has settled once and for all the kinds of embellishments I really do like to use a lot (who knew I was a basics girl at heart?) and should save me from buying the wrong kinds of items in the future.

I want to take a moment before really jumping in to all of this to mention a wonderful class- Finding Your Way by Karen Grunberg- taught at Big Picture Classes earlier this year. Taking Karen's class was the catalyst that opened my eyes to the possibility that I *could* find my own style. She walked us through her very specific method that she used to find her scrapping groove, and I gained a lot of ideas and insight from taking the course (if it's ever offered again, I highly recommend that you sign up!!). What I didn't end up doing, though, was following her method. I took a very different path to finding my style, though she very much inspired me to do so in the first place. I'm mentioning all this because I don't want you to think that I'm simply regurgitating what I learned in Karen's class or somehow copying her ideas as my own- this is simply my perspective on the journey and my own methodology.

If you'd like to follow along with my style story, I'd like to invite you to come back and visit this space over the next couple of weeks as I share my journey in a series of posts about my style "reboot." They may not come one after the other since I'm writing them as I have time, but they will be fairly regular and there will be several of them before I'm done. A lot of the items I'll cover will be very, very specific to my style, but I'll try to share a few general concepts and tips that might just help you discover your own along the way.

What do you say? Are you with me? Have any burning questions before we get started? Leave a comment and ask away!!

Now, let the adventure begin...

our power is back!!!

It must have come back on during the night, because when I woke up and looked out the window this morning I noticed that our neighbor's front porch light was on (since we had to disconnect from the grid temporarily to install the generator I didn't have any indications like that at my own house).

So, yayayayayay!!! We have air conditioning again, and the light switches actually work. :) The only bad part is that I have to go back to work today (we're still on generator power there), but I have a feeling that all we're going to be doing is talking about the storms for the next several days...

around here

Things have settled into a good little routine.

We burn lots of candles at night when it's dark (we do have a generator, but we try to run it as little as possible).

We're making lots of trips to Lowes, first for parts to hook the generator up to the house's main line, and then the next day to pick up plants and mulch to work on gardening projects (since the power was out, anyway).

I check email, read blogs, and write posts from my improvised "office" at our local Sam's Club (about ten minutes from the house). It's the closest place I know of with working internet (our cable modem is still down).

I found out the wifi was working there when we went for a few groceries (we didn't really need much- I think I just wanted to get out of the house more than anything) the day after the storms, and took my iPad along to read on because I knew the lines would be a little long. Imagine my surprise when the wifi indicator popped on! I did a little happy dance, then proceeded to download the newest episodes of the Paperclipping podcasts. :)

I'm still getting some scrapping done (I promise better photos when the power is back on).

The mail is still running, and on Thursday I received an order from TwoPeas that I'd placed last week. It's all so pretty that I nearly cried! (sorry again for the horrific iPhone photo).

As an aside, UPS and FedEx are still running, too. I ordered a cast iron dutch oven from Amazon on Thursday thinking that it might arrive (and be a great substitute crock pot) some time before the power came back on (we have Amazon Prime). The silly thing showed up on my doorstep on Friday! :)

I'm learning exactly what the generator will and will not run. For example. The mixer? No problem- I used it to make cinnamon rolls on Friday. The dishwasher, though, is a no-go, as is the washing machine. Luckily I was caught up on the laundry before last Thursday. The dishes are getting washed by hand as needed.

We work on projects when and where there is light. In the morning/early afternoon, that means the living room and dining room (where I have all my stuff for our Aruba scrapbook spread out). In the evening the sun is on the back of the house where our offices are, so I make layouts and Darren cleans and organizes his tools.

We're both pretty happy right now that I'm a silly goose who often leaves her car lights on. That means I had this nifty jump-start battery in my trunk and charged up. We now use it to charge our cell phones when the generator isn't running (and we charge the battery itself when the generator is on).

We're finding that the stores still have most all of the essentials in stock, though produce is hard to come by, and it took me a day to find a place that had milk in stock (I walked two doors down from a store Darren had stopped at and found some at a corner Walgreens). I'm a bit embarrassed that I got caught out of that! As for the produce, though, it's good timing because the lettuce in our garden is really starting to take off.

The freezer cases, though? It's so weird to see those totally empty at Target...

We have flashlights and lanterns all over the house, and we find interesting ways to prop them up while we work. Note the headlamp that Darren was using while slicing our fajita steak last night (thank goodness for our gas range).

We had church service in the front parking lot of Willowbrook this morning, with several hundred in attendance. News travels slowly right now while most places are still without power, so this was the first chance we had to find out about volunteer opportunities around us. We plan on finding a place to pitch in and help tomorrow.

All in all, we have absolutely nothing to complain about. Darren even found Gouda cheese for me at Target yesterday (my favorite for using in sandwich wraps), so you know that we're doing just fine. We can't say that for the rest of the state, though. Please continue to pray for and support those people in any way that you can, because many of them lost everything. Power or no power, we're definitely the lucky ones right now.