Multitude Monday - October 11 (warning: picture heavy)

In honour of Canadian Thanksgiving...and because I've skipped a couple of weeks of MM's, oh - and also because I really do have a lot to be thankful for, today's Multitude Monday is long, and picture heavy. Hope you can handle it :)

I am thankful for:
#131. Cards. If you're a friend of mine, chances are pretty good that I've forgotten your birthday at one time or another. I am in no way saying I'm good at giving cards. But I love to make them and I'm thankful for the creativity to make 'em :)

#132. A long, long weekend. 4 days, actually. How lovely.

#133. The opportunity to spend 2 of those lovely days off by myself, scrapbooking in my home. I know that Thanksgiving is a holiday to spend with family but considering that's not how mine was going to go down....this was by far, the next best thing. I had projects that had to be finished and this was a great chance for me to do that!

#134. Mandarin Oranges. Oh how I love these sweet delicious treats and Oh how I love when the "Christmas" season rolls around and they're available in the grocery stores!

#135. An assignment from a magazine. It's been awhile but Scrapbook Magazine in the UK has renewed my Design Team position with them and asked for some layouts. I'm thankful to have some work and also thankful that these 2 layouts came quite easily considering it'd been a long time since I've made layouts on a regular basis.

#136. TV online. I love watching old TV series online - seasons at a time - without the commercials and without having to wait a whole week for the next installment. Over the past few years I've watched all the seasons of Friends, Scrubs, Lost, Heroes, The Office, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, Private Practice...and more recently: Glee and Castle. Fun!

#137. Fresh buns. Better yet, fresh buns from my MIL. Thanks Mom.

#138. Fresh bread. Similar to #137...but not exactly the same. This one came from a friend of a friend who just wanted to say she cared. Thanks for caring J...and also thanks for a great breakfast the next day!

#139. My printer. I have an Epson Artisan 810 and I absolutely love it. I even got to print out some photos this weekend with it - very, very handy!

#140. This red pepper. I know it doesn't look like much but this lonely little pepper is my entire pepper crop this year. That may not seem like something to be thankful for but if you had seen my garden this year and it's horrible state, you would know just how brave and tough this one little pepper is and you would be just as proud of it, and thankful for it as I am.

#141. These crazy boys....looking a little wiped here after climbing in a straw-bail-pyramid for 2 hours at the Corn Maze south of Winnipeg. I'm thankful too for the gorgeous weather we've had this Thanksgiving weekend and the chance to enjoy some of it outside.

Here's another shot of the corn maze. The last time we went there it was earlier in the season and a better corn crop year so the corn was thick and lush and green and tall. This year it was already dry and quite a bit shorter - funny for someone like me who is 6' tall and can practically see over the corn to see my friends' heads in the corn.

#142. I'm thankful for the unexpected. Chickens nestling in a tree. What the...? I had no idea chickens could even GET up in a tree....let alone like to sit there. These 2, at the corn maze, must have been sitting here for a several hours, probably trying to avoid the grimy little toddler hands at the petting zoo.

#143. The end of football season. I love that my boys play football - it's a smart, disciplined sport and I adore watching them (even though sometimes I have to watch through splayed fingers to avoid seeing the potential injuries). BUT, as fun as it is...my boys are exhausted and it will be SO good for them to not have to be somewhere 2 nights a week. They could really use the down-time over the next few weeks/months.

#144. Fall cleaning. I've never really been one for Spring Cleaning. When the weather finally gets nice in Spring, the last thing I feel like doing is cleaning anything. On the other hand, every Fall seems like New Years' to me. It might be that I work in a school, but every September/October seems like a new chance, a new year and I love to clean stuff up to start that new chapter in my life. This Fall, in the last 2 weeks, I've done the yard, the garden, the shed (hasn't been done for a couple of years) and the garage (8-hour job but now it's done!). It feels great to be done those jobs.


#145. Buttons. I may have posted something like this in the past because I really have a thing for buttons....I'm sorry - they just make me happy :) I've got mine sorted by colour into jars on my scrapbook-room desk. Is that weird?


#146. Safety for this guy. If there was a yearbook for our family, he'd be voted "Most likely to get hurt" I think....considering the way he plays at 110%. This particular week it was a roller blade to the eye. Sheesh. How in the world does that happen, you ask? It happens when your boys and the neighbour boy are intentionally "crashing" onto the lawn and doing combat rolls with roller blades on and one of them happens to be standing too close to the other one when his feet flip up over his head. Oops.


#147. Magnetic box toys. Have you ever played with these? I had several sets when my kids were small - Firetrucks, "paper" dolls, etc...but this last set that the kids got came as a gift when they were almost too old for it so it hasn't gotten much use...until this past week when Egan & I sat down to play with it before bed one night. I think maybe we were ultra-over-tired but we howled with laughter at the funny faces and creatures we made.
These are the ones I made....they started with guitars and a harmonica but somehow they seemed funnier with an accordion and bagpipes.

And these are a joint effort. The broccoli reminds me of a Simpsons character I think but I can't put my finger on which one.

#148. Challenges. In the scrapbooking (and card-making) world online, there's no shortage of challenges out there - some are contests with prizes, some are just to get your creative juices flowing again...and there's no way in the world a person could do everything but every once and awhile a challenge piques my interest like this one did from Unity Stamps. I love their stamps. Don't own very many, but I loved putting together some little mini-cards for one of their 20+ challenges over World Card Making Day last week.

#149. A photo op. Often when I'm driving somewhere, I'll see something out the window and think, "Man..I wish I had my camera here - that's really cool" but I can't remember a time, with the exception maybe of seeing Bears driving through BC, that I actually stopped, and took a picture. This week though, I was driving back from Wpg by myself and as I drove by this field, a huge cloud of black birds flew up out of it. Almost as soon as I was past, they all settled down again in the same spot. Very cool. So, I pulled over just past the field and waited for another car to come by and scare them up :) It was very funny watching them. I wonder if they genuinely thought that they were in danger each time and by flying up they were staying safe...or if maybe this was a game they were playing too - seeing who would be the last one up every time a car drove by.

#150. These verses.
^{I Peter 1:6-8}
In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

I've been reading and re-reading the "count it all joy, my brothers..." verses from James but I've missed this verse in all my recent studies for some reason, and yet this one describes what I've been saying all along - that my goal is that someday, somehow, something in this season of my life, would bring Glory to God. I needed to be reminded that this trial is only "for a little while" and that whatever happens, my faith is growing.