SHARE 2016

Hello friends! It’s a new year. It’s a time for making goals, making plans, and for many of us, it’s time to choose that One Little Word® that we will try to incorporate into our lives in the coming year. In the past I’ve chosen really great words like DO and LOOK and LIGHT and I’ve been very unintentional with those words. 

Many of you know that last June, I quit my corporate job to work for myself and these past six months have taught me a lot. They’ve been good. But as I neared the end of 2015, I began a deep discussion with myself about how I should be spending my time. And in a way, that led to my word for 2016.

The word I’ve chosen to weave into my life is SHARE. And I’m excited about the implications that this might have. I thought about some of the ways that I might be able to apply this to both my work and personal life. 

I want to SHARE my truths.

I want to SHARE my time. This means creating specific times to be working and specific times where I have focused family time. Where I’m actually sharing the moments and not just on the sidelines of them.

I want to SHARE goodness on the internet. There is so much negativity out there. I want no part of that. I want to be a powerful influence for good in your daily scrolling.

I want to SHARE more of who I am. As a person. For me, this means blogging more. And not just blogging when I have a new project. It means sharing real moments about real life. I want that.

I want to SHARE more of my important stories. This year, I will be a part of four design teams. If you follow me on Instagram, you may already know some of them. I will be continuing on with Felicity Jane but in addition, I will be on the Elle’s Studio design team, the Therm-o-Web design team, and the Ali Edwards creative team. I was invited to be a part of most of these teams - and I am absolutely thrilled by that. I love these companies and wouldn’t have joined them if I didn’t. But I applied to be a part of the Ali Edwards creative team with intent. Ali has long been an influence in my scrapbooking and honestly in the way I approach my life. She is a storyteller and I connect with her philosophies on many levels. I applied to her team as a personal challenge to myself to getting back to telling my most important stories. I’m excited about making sure that these important stories are shared in my albums.

I want to continue to SHARE valuable content on my YouTube channel. I started this channel in October 2014 and since then have shared lots of scrapbooking videos. As time went on, I started creating different series on my channel including Old Meets New Stash Kits, Felicity Jane kit videos, my newer Script + Uplift series, and my most popular, my Saturday Series videos, which are more like a free 10 week class. I have loved creating these videos where I explore a single subject for several weeks. They have had a great response. THANK YOU for that. You have been amazing and encouraging and I’m glad you’ve found value in those videos. I have loved making them. I would love to continue to make them.

I also want to SHARE better and more valuable class content. Last year, I launched three classes on my website and I'm super proud of them. I have at least four small courses and one larger course, some collaborative and some on my own, that I would like to work on in the coming year. I want to make them better and I want to create classes that will help your storytelling experience.

So. In order to accommodate my goals, I have to cut back on my YouTube videos. By focusing more on my classes for now, it will allow me to shift my focus to providing more awesome free content when I’m finished. So, that means I’m going down to one weekly video on my channel, which will be my Saturday series, except I’m going to move it to Thursday. These videos have received the best response and I believe they provide the best content. Right now I’m in the middle of my Stamping in Scrapbooking series, and it will resume next week. And because I want to SHARE a little bit of goodness with you, my Sunday Script + Uplift series will continue, but instead of weekly, I’ll likely do this monthly.

As I previously mentioned, I’m going to be doing a lot of design team work this year. Some of those projects will have videos as well, but they will not have a specific schedule on my channel. If you want to keep up with me, be sure to subscribe to my channel. You can also keep up with my blog by subscribing. Just enter your email in the sidebar to get mail each time I post. You can also keep up with me on Instagram @craftyjenschow. 

Lastly, and maybe mostly I want to give a heart felt THANK YOU to all of you. Thanks for being my cheerleaders. Thanks for being so encouraging. Thanks for all of your kind words. Thank you for your support. Thank you for sharing your heart with me. I can’t wait to SHARE more of mine.

Here is a video if you want to see my face saying all of these things. :)

The Good Stuff

So, I was listening to the Paperclipping Roundtable (a scrapbooking podcast) a few weeks back and it wasn't the topic of the podcast, but somehow May Flaum got to talking about what pages in her scrapbook her and her family actually appreciate and love looking back on.  And I have to say it was a real eye opener for me.

May was talking about how she likes doing pages about her family and how much she loves them and how she's so glad they are in her life and blah blah blah.  She said that those were the pages she didn't really care about, looking back on them.  The ones that really stood out and that she and her family enjoyed looking at were the pages where they could say "Oh! Remember when so and so did that?" and "Oh man!  I forgot about that!  That was hilarious!", etc.

It really got me thinking, because I love doing reflective, feeling-based pages.  I think that's important.  But in the end, everyone is going to know that I love my husband and daughter.  What they will want to see is the good stuff.  The stories we tell over and over around the dinner table.  Things that made us laugh out loud and the quirky stuff that our kids did.

Things like the fact that Malia used to love worms.  And this time she put it in her pocket.  And he didn't make it.  And she thought it was sleeping.

Or that time we took a walk around Grandma's house in Idaho and Malia kept calling the little reflectors "lollipops".

(Sidenote: I miss Sassafrass!)

Or even just the small fact that Malia HATES having her photo taken.  It always requires bribery.

These are the stories I want told.  Don't get me wrong, I still like the fluff.  I'm still gonna do the fluff.  Because I like making pages about how I feel and about how much I love people.  BUT. My One Little Word this year is LOOK and I want to make LOOKing for the story part of my journey. There's been a lot less of that kind of scrapbooking around here lately, but that's going to change.  I want to scrapbook The Good Stuff.  After all, it's the "stuff" that makes me love them even more. :)

Do you have any scrapbooking goals for yourself this year?  I wanna hear 'em...

My Return to Blogging + My Favorite Page Ever

Wow. I've had quite a long break from blogging. I guess. If you'd call 18 months a long time...ha ha! Some of you may be familiar with Ali Edwards "One Little Word". Each year, you pick a word that you can focus and reflect on as you go about your daily life. I love this idea. Ali always has great ideas that really resonate with me. You can read more about it on her blog. This year my word is...

For me, "LOOK" can mean several things.  Look for ways to be of service. Look up from my phone.  Look for the good in others.  Look for the good in the world and in every situation.  That last one is part of the reason I've chosen to blog again.  My blog is called "Things that Matter" and I'm really trying to focus on that.  I want to document the good that I find.  I want to document the things I'm LOOKing for.  

So, welcome back, me.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a scrapbooker.  I'm obsessed with my hobby and think about it all the time.  ALL the time.  Part of the reason I'm so drawn to scrapbooking is because I want to document our family's stories.  In a strange way keeping our memories has grounded me and made me realize how blessed I am and how much I have to be grateful for.

The other day, a co-worker and I were talking about my love for puzzles (because those are the kind of riveting conversation topics I bring to the table, folks).  She challenged me to use puzzle pieces on a layout. Immediately my brain started working and in seconds, I knew exactly what my page should be about.  The title: You are all of my Missing Pieces.  Brilliant.

I keep a baggie of puzzle pieces that we find after we put puzzles away.  My hope was that when we pulled out a puzzle and it was missing a piece, we would go to that bag and find the missing pieces.  We never did. So, those are the very pieces I put to work on my page.  I like that they are literally the "missing pieces". Here are some of the details of my layout:

I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the title and lots of the Maggie Holmes Flea Market collection.

Those tiny wood veneer letters from Studio Calico were perfect for my husband and daughter's initials.

While this layout was very fun to create, what I really appreciated about the process was the chance to reflect on what matters to me.  What matters to me, really.  It gave me the chance to look for the good in a seemingly bad situation.  And maybe that is what makes this my favorite page of all time.  Thanks for letting me blabber on about it. :)

See you again soon, I hope!

PS - Bear with me as I try to update my blog.  I know it's pretty outdated! ;)