Lizabits: April 2011

It feels so good to be back in blogging land again. These past few weeks have been a bumpy ride on the health front. My husband was in the hospital once again for a week due to fluid accumulation in his lungs and abdomen. But now he is feeling better than ever and I consider myself to be one happy and lucky girl to have such a strong trooper like him by my side. The very first time I met my husband, he had mentioned to me that he had been a two time cancer survivor. And right then I knew that any man who could kick cancer in the butt was a man that I needed by my side. I still admire his spirit and positivity through cancer. I have never once seen him feel sorry for himself. He continues to get up each morning and go to work. He jokes a lot, laughs a lot, and never worries. Inspirational, that is what he is to me and always will be.

While I was driving home from the grocery store one day. I began to think of my relationship with my husband over the three years that we have been married. I realized that each year of marriage has taught me so much about love, life, and my own being. I wanted a way to document the lessons that I have learned along the way and that is how this idea for a mini book got started.

I decided that I would choose 5 pictures from each year that we were married to include in the album.

I also decided that I would place the more personal journaling inside of these Kraft envelopes and I would pick words that to me really encompassed our marriage and lessons learned for that year on my journaling block.

I placed the corresponding year at the top of my page next to the photo collage.

Half way through this project my ADD self got tired of working with the same papers and embellishments. (I tend to start projects and then have a hard time finishing them) Not quite sure why that is? But I pushed through it anyways.

I also realized that I have done a terrible job of documenting our lives till this point. I must make a more concentrated effort to take more pictures and scrapbook more.

Year three was the biggest challenge for me to push through because, quite frankly, it has been a year that has revolved around cancer. Sometimes I find myself only wanting to focus on the good memories and ignore the memories that hurt a little. I guess this is a natural tendency. But ironically, the adjectives that I found to describe this year of marriage were far more profound and meaningful than the other two years: challenges, sacrifice, love, commitment, faith, and hope. I guess adversity helps our souls grow. The mountain tops feels good but it is in the valleys that our character is being built. This gives me the push I need to document our lives authentically, good times and the not so good times.

And that my friends, is my completed album. I have included some links to the supplies I used at the bottom of this post just in case you might like to create something similar for yourselves.

Till next time

Elizabeth