journaling

What’s on your …

by Amy on April 18, 2013

(not my yard. I wish. One of Maggie’s clients’ backyards)

What is on your …

VANITY | I don’t have a vanity … but I do have a dresser. And on that dresser is a jewelry box (rarely used); a pile of clothes that need to be repaired or have stains treated; a separate pile of colored socks whose mate I haven’t found yet.

PERENNIAL TO DO LIST | Take photos; edit photos; backup photos; grocery shop and cook; read read read

REFRIGERATOR SHELVES | leftover grilled chicken from the weekend (so good); salad fixins; half-and-half for my coffee; red seedless grapes. I need to go to the store soon

ITINERARY | Planning a weekend trip to Madison, WI for a wedding; planning a 2 week road trip to Colorado and back; possible weekend camping in Yosemite in August; a possible weekend trip to Idaho for a wedding in September; another weekend trip to Phoenix for a wedding in November.

FANTASY ITINERARY | Washington DC (I’ve been twice, and can’t wait to take Andrew); France (I dream of visiting Normandy before all WW2 veterans have died); Japan (want to do an anniversary photo shoot while there); I’m really not picky. I love to travel.

PLAYLIST | Original songs from this season of Smash; WTF Podcast; audio coaching from a now-defunct online marketing project (so many ideas, you guys!).

NIGHTSTAND | One of my THREE to-read piles; a sad desk lamp that is on its last legs; a small bottle of hand lotion; sometimes a glass of water, but the cats will insist it’s theirs so that’s not often.

WORKOUT PLAN | hahaha! You’re so funny. I have a quarter mile walk from my car to the office building each day (and another quarter mile back at the end of the day of course). That does it for now.

IPHONE | email; Instagram; TweetDeck; Angry Birds (in all its versions)

TOP 5 LIST | Days off with Andrew (and the cats); cooking (and inventing new recipes); reading (really anything I can get my hands on); creating (writing and Project Life and blogging and photos); planning (travel, house-DIYs, how to make money once I quit the day job).

BUCKET LIST | Travel – always. Write a finished version of at least 1 (of the 5+) novels in my head. Never go back to a cubicle once I’ve escaped.

MIND | Lots of work projects (big big blogging ecourse this summer); Final countdown to the end of my day job; what else needs to be planned for our roadtrip this summer; why is Khaleesi coughing like that.

BLOGROLL | Ali Edwards; Campfire Chic; The Nerd Nest; Elise Blaha Cripe; and many many many (many) others

WALLS OF YOUR FAVORITE ROOM IN YOUR HOUSE | I love the green in our living room and the teal in our bedroom. LOVE.

LIQUOR SHELF | I just drink coffee and water, but Andrew has quite the collection of whisky.

LAST CREDIT CARD STATEMENT | groceries; gas (ugh); and repairing Andrew’s truck.

Want to play along? Leave your link in the comments!

P.S. Ali had 2 more prompts at the end of her list that I skipped since my answer is ‘none’ – click through to see hers

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FLASH sale: Happy Valentines Day!

by Amy on February 13, 2013

In honor of Valentine’s Day, Our First Year Together is 50% off!

our first year together

Whether you’ve been married for 20 years or just dating for 6 months, you and your love have a story. A story together that should be recorded.

Each email includes a journaling prompt, some ideas of how to interpret it for your own story, and an example of journaling from one of the contributors.

Journal things like surprises that first year, your first homemade meal and how you met.

Learn more about HOW IT WORKS or SIGN UP HERE

50% discount is automatic through midnight Pacific Time, Thursday February 14.

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Limited edition #30Lists kit

by Amy on January 28, 2013

Guess what!!!

30 Days of Lists has a new collaborator for this round ….

Available February 4 when registration opens, you can purchase an original kit designed by Simple Scrapper in collaboration with the 30 Days of List team to coordinate with March 2013′s list challenge!

Want a little look ….. ?

More photos and details to come!

March is almost here!

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CLOSED Blog Post Ideas: Make it Easy (& a Giveaway!)

by Guest on January 1, 2013

The following is a guest post from Kam of Campfire Chic.

I have a confession: I don’t always have a blog post ready to publish and can go a few days without new content on my site. It’s rare, but it happens.

That may be average for some bloggers, but I pride myself on my ability to have new content 5 days a week. I like having the consistency, I want to share what I have…and I like to read blogs that have new content on a daily basis, so why not do the same?

Over the past few months, I started documenting why I didn’t have a blog post scheduled and ready to roll.

The reasons included:

Relying too heavily on guest bloggers to submit work on time
Forgetting to hit ‘schedule’ and being stuck at work
Getting sick

The biggest reason? Not planning ahead.

I work full time outside the home in addition to blogging at Campfire Chic and a contributing writer for Gadchick. I also have a home life, a social life, and you know…that part of your life where you just sit in front of the heater with a bowl of cereal on really cold mornings and vow to spend more time alone. That’s a lot of life.

What is it that they say? Life happens? It sure does! I like to plan a head a little bit for that very reason. My usual blogging schedule is Monday through Friday, so I sit down on Sunday night and blog. I get 80-100% of my blog posts for the week done in that one sitting.

Some bloggers recommend having at least three months worth of posts ready to publish before you start blogging … I’m not sure how many of us have three months worth of blog posts ready to be drafted, but I at least I have a few ideas.

Developing ideas is the hardest part for most. I, thankfully, have quite a few topics I would like to write about and share…some of them I included in my first ebook, Three Sixty-Five: Ideas for Blog Posts, Scrapbook Layouts, & Art Journal Entries. I then re-read Amy’s The Finishing Manifesto to make sure I don’t start and not finish…a common theme in my life.

With 365 blog post ideas at the ready, I know I will have a more consistent publishing schedule in 2013. I like consistency, and this ebook, with its variety of post ideas, will help me stay on track.

The topics covered in the ebook include:
Your family, favorites, challenges, goals, reviews, recurring features, you, your town, and more.

I left plenty of space at the end of each section for you to jot down your ideas that arise while reading through the 365 ideas I compiled. Buying this ebook gives you enough ideas for a full calendar year, but with the addition of your ideas, there could be so much more!

You can buy a copy of Three Sixty-Five: Ideas for Blog Posts, Scrapbook Layouts, & Art Journal Entries for $5 here. Read Amy’s review.

I’m thrilled to be a part of Amy’s annual blog party, and would like to give away one copy of 365 to one lucky Lemon & Raspberry reader!

To Enter:

Leave a comment with your name, way to contact you, and tell us how you stay on top of your to do list.

Optional: Tweet about this giveaway

Copy and paste or CLICK HERE to tweet: I just entered to win a free ebook from @amytschubert’s Annual Blog Party! You can enter here: http://bit.ly/12IJN3t #LRParty

Giveaway ends Friday, Jan 4 at midnight PT. 1 winner will be randomly selected and announced next week.

Kam is the blogger behind Campfire Chic and the author of Three Sixty-Five: Ideas for Blog Posts, Scrapbook Pages, & Art Journal Entries. She shares about social media and blogging, productivity, and ways to spend time outdoors. When Kam isn’t blogging, she enjoys hiking, camping, Project Life, and reading comics.

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CLOSED Giveaway: One Year of Journaling email subscriptions

by Amy on January 1, 2013

I *just* announced a new L&R offer – sign-up for journaling prompts sent directly to you in your inbox under a couple different themes.

Make this next year the year you journal YOUR STORY.

Your story of your everyday life right now. One year of your everyday.

Your story of the first year of you and your love – however long you’ve been together. Your first year together.

Sign-up for one (or both) of the email series and get a journaling prompt in your inbox once a week, every week for a year! You can sign up at any time and get a year of email prompts to keep you busy for 52 weeks!

Take time every week to journal part of your story – whether that is for your blog, your Project Life album, or just for yourself.

Learn more about HOW IT WORKS

Sign-up for the One Year of Everyday email series or the Our First Year email series

or ENTER THE GIVEAWAY and have a chance to win a subscription to both series!

TO ENTER:

– Leave a comment below with an idea for how you would use your journaling prompts

– Share a link to this giveaway on Twitter/Facebook/Google+/etc (and come back and leave a comment that you did so).

Up to 2 entries per person. Be sure to include your name and email in case you win! 1 entry will be randomly selected to win a subscription to EACH of the email series (which you may keep or sign up a friend for).

Giveaway ends Friday, Jan 4, at midnight PT

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One Year of Journaling Prompts: self-paced email courses

by Amy on January 1, 2013

SO excited to announce the newest release from Lemon and Raspberry – you can now get journaling prompts sent directly to you in your inbox under a couple different themes.

Make this next year the year you journal YOUR STORY.

Your story of your everyday life right now. One year of your everyday.

Your story of the first year of you and your love – however long you’ve been together. Your first year together.

Journal your story using these prompts as a jumping off point every week. Journal your story to see where you’ve been and recognize patterns you may not have seen. Journal your story to discover things about yourself.

Take time every week to journal part of your story – whether that is for your blog, your Project Life album, or just for yourself.

Sylvia Plath

Topics include ….

Under One Year of Everyday, journal things like how you reward yourself, what’s the best part about your life right now and what you’ve been eating.

For the Our First Year Together series, journal things like surprises that first year, your first homemade meal and how you met.

There’s so many ways to interpret each journaling prompt – depending on YOUR story.

I’ve collected an eclectic collection of contributors to underscore the eclectic collection of meanings you can glean from the prompt.

Contributors include all kinds of points of view – from someone who just celebrated her 35th year of marriage to someone who has just celebrated a year of living on her own with her boyfriend. Some of these ladies have full-time jobs outside the home, some have more-than-full-time-from-home work keeping them occupied.

Sign-up for one or both of the email series and you can see how the contributors interpret and use the prompts.

I’ll even be throwing in periodic *bonus* emails to give you ideas for how to use the prompts!

Learn more about HOW IT WORKS

Sign-up for the One Year of Everyday email series or the Our First Year email series

and remember – today only, Jan 1, the registration is 30% off!

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Guest post: 2013 is for Gratitude

by Guest on December 20, 2012

The following is a guest post from Vicki Anne Melo, a creative blogger and entrepreneur.

Today is my birthday!! I feel so grateful to have celebrated it this year in sunny Mexico with my husband’s family. It was a really special day filled with good food, thoughtful gifts, and lots of laughs shared with people I love.

On days like today I really wish I had the time and dedication to create scrapbooks like Amy’s beautiful Project Life book so that I could look back later in life and remember how special days like these are. But with writing at least 8 hours a day and starting a new business in 2013, I know I won’t be able to dedicate much time to it.

Still, I really wanted to find some way to document my life that doesn’t’ take up a lot of time and that I could do no matter if I’m traveling or at home. I’m also not the greatest photographer so the “Photo a Day” idea that a lot of people do just isn’t my cup of tea.

While doing research for an article on my blog called What Do You Want That You Already Have? The Power of Gratitude, I came across the idea of keeping a daily gratitude journal. Basically, it’s just a notebook where you write once a day, every day about something specific you are thankful for with the entries being quite brief, ranging from one word to a short paragraph.

I thought this would be a perfect way for me to keep my memories for 2013! Not only is it not time consuming (we all have time to write a word or a few sentences), but it is something I can do no matter where I am (the notebook can be small enough to fit into my purse and be taken wherever I go). The greatest benefit of a gratitude journal though, is so much more than a simple and unique way to remember my year. I learned that writing gratitude journals have actually been proven to increase feelings of happiness and well-being.

By taking only a few minutes everyday to write down one or two things you were thankful for forces you to pay attention to the good things in your life and by paying attention to them, actually deepens their emotional impact. It’s true that grateful people are happier people and a gratitude journal is a simple way to practice thankfulness.

I also learned that in order to reap the positive benefits from a gratitude journal you should make sure that you don’t just go through the motions. You should make a conscious decision that you want to be happier and understand that by being intentionally grateful everyday is one way in which you can work towards that.

Also, it helps to elaborate about the things you are thankful for. For example instead of just writing, “I’m thankful for the funny sentences my son says that surprise me and make me laugh”, elaborate more and write down a few examples of what those funny sentences were. This way, when you read your journal many years down the road, it will make it easier to remember that time in your life.

Lastly, get really personal. We are all thankful for good health and clean air and mexican food, but what are the things that you are specifically thankful for from only this particular day in your life. Being specific will help you remember the day easier when you look back by rereading your journal.

Since it’s already the end of the year, I decided to get my gratitude journal ready now so that I can start with no excuses on January 1st. You can buy ready-made gratitude journals or just use any old notebook. I decided to get creative and make my own.

You can see how I made this notebook by checking out my gratitude notebook tutorial here.

I am really excited about writing a gratitude journal, not only because I finally found an easy way to document a little bit of everyday for 2013, but because I’m looking forward to intentionally thinking about the good things in my life as a daily practice.

Whether you write a lot or just a word a day or incorporate gratitude into your Project Life scrapbook, I hope that this post has inspired you to be more grateful in 2013.

Besos,

Vicki Anne Melo is a creative blogger and entrepreneur. Her blog is a source of inspiration and resources for young writers, entrepreneurs, and creatives alike. She also writes a lot about personal development with stories of her own life thrown in the mix. You can check her out here or on Twitter @vickiannemelo.

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a seed of inspiration: Storyology from Ali Edwards

by Amy on September 28, 2012

I finally got around to working through Ali Edwards’ Storyology self-paced online class last weekend.

I bought it a year ago when it originally came out and just hadn’t sat down with the several-hours-necessary to go through it. Not because I wasn’t inspired or didn’t care. More because I am already a firm member of the church-of-Ali and am already on board with all the storytelling ideas included.

The self-paced online class includes a multi-page handout (including writing prompts) and a 2 hour video presentation.

As I read through the handout, including reasons why and techniques for storytelling, I found myself agreeing with virtually all the major points. Mental notes. Trying to memorize Ali’s word choice because these are the same arguments I want to make.

From the class description:

DESCRIPTION | A motivational, process-based presentation showcasing my favorite techniques to get words into my scrapbooks. My hope is that after completing the class you will be inspired to tell more of your own personal stories.

TOPICS INCLUDED | The reason why, getting ready to write, story mechanics, rhythms, etc. This class includes six different writing prompts and you are encouraged to take the time during the presentation to write your responses to those prompts (pause the video and then resume when you are ready).

Visit Ali’s site for more feedback from Storyology participants or to register.

One thing to note …. the handout includes multiple pages of text – which basically mirror exactly what Ali talks about in the video. I didn’t realize that when I started, so I read through the whole handout and then had to go over the same information (more in depth) during the 2-ish hour video presentation.

I love the ideas in this class.

But if you’re not willing to sit down to DO the writing and TELL the stories, you’re not going to get much out of this class.

Either make the time or be brave enough to put the words down …. or save yourself the $14 of the class cost. If you’re not going to be willing to do the work, I can’t see that you’re going to get anything out of the class.

This is definitely the kind of self-paced class I will revisit periodically for the inspiration and the kick in the pants to actually DO what I know in my head I should be doing.

You can visit this class page to register

Working through Storyology plants a seed of inspiration to:

Write
extract the audio from the video presentation to listen to over and over again in the car
re-do some scrapbooked pages/photos with more STORY added
re-read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (good book!)
re-read the The War of Art and Do the Work
WRITE

Full disclosure: I had an idea for a similar ecourse/ebook when Ali released this.
So of course, I bought hers right away to see what she had to say about the same subject.
My idea is still different so maybe we’ll see that in the future ….

*Also: I am NOT an affiliate. I just want to support Ali.

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My List book for September 30 days of lists

by Amy on August 29, 2012

We are in the home stretch for 30 Days of Lists – September 2012! I hope you can join us….

This week on the private blog, Kam and I are sharing our individual list books that we’re using for next month…. Both VERY different. Both awesome.

Today you get to see MY List book!

But, because of the way that I put it together, I had to complete all my lists ahead of time. So rather than show you photos, here’s a short video looking at my September 2012 30 Days of Lists book (and hopefully you won’t seen any list-prompt spoilers)

Please excuse the ridiculously awful preview image ….. Why are those ALWAYS bad?

Click here to get started creating your own photobook with Blurb

I think this would be the *perfect* option for anyone doing digital lists this month …. Plus Blurb offers several different sizes (and covers) so you should be able to find what you need.

And if you do order a Blurb book, be sure to use this discount code: BLURBBOOK15OFF

I genuinely love Blurb and all the books I’ve ordered from them. This one is already sitting proudly on my shelf.

Don’t forget to sign up for 30 Days of Lists if you haven’t yet! The list prompts begin SATURDAY!

Here’s another (better) look at the image-wrap hardcover and first few pages….

REMINDER: Blurb provided this particular book because I am a Blurb affiliate. And I am an affiliate because I love them and all the books I’ve ever ordered.

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Memories at every turn

by Amy on August 24, 2012

Our house is about 3 blocks from my old high school

The weather is changing. The break in the heat came this week – that exact feeling the first week of school brings.

And then all of a sudden a friend’s mom started posting all kinds of high school theatre photos on facebook. And considering said friend and I played leads opposite each other in 4 consecutive shows ….yea. A lot of me at 15 and 16 years old.

I’m being assaulted by high school memories at every turn….

Guys and Dolls Overture scene - June 1996 - that's me in the pink shirt, faux velvet pedal pushers and character shoes

It’s not that I MISS high school, but I truly did enjoy that period of my life. I had amazing friends that cared about me. I was doing what I loved in theater (and choir and speech). And I had none of the burdens and responsibilities that come with adulthood.

And because I remember enjoying high school … And because I know that’s not a super common reaction …. I worry that I’m losing the memories.

Between living near the school and the photos and all – I have genuinely toyed with the idea of re-scrapbooking my high school years.
Or, rather, rejournaling them.

I imagine scanning all my negatives. I imagine really sitting down and giving myself the time to WRITE all the memories I have. The big stories (like the general rehearsal schedule every semester) aren’t recorded anywhere. So, lots of photos + journaling the big stories and memories I still have all out together in a Blurb book (or 4)

It’s a big project. And it is completely ridiculous since I already have all those photos in scrapbooks already.

But I don’t have all the stories.

And it’s the completed stories that I want.

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