A long long wind

Found this blog through Ali's. A couple things resonated with me.

"You must give up perfection! Perfectionism only provokes fear and fear is what holds us back in pretty much every area of our lives."

Now, he was talking about photography... but really... how true. On so many levels. With life, art, scrapbooking, etc. After kids I learned to give up perfection in my daily life. The house won't always be clean. I will have piles of laundry on the floor. I will pick up toys everyday. I loose more things in one day than ever before. And I'm okay with that. I am. At the end of the day I have a wonderful life. The things I complain about (in the grand scheme of things) don't matter. I don't have a finished house. Our days are busy busy busy... rarely time for a break. The bills keep on coming. My truck is freezing cold in the mornings.

My kids draw on my floors more than they do on paper.

But, so what.

Does it matter?

No. Not really.

My family loves me. I love me. I love them. We have shelter and food. We treat each other with respect, kindness and love. We are us. We are complete... and completely happy. We have what we need.... not what society tries to tell us we need.

"Life is for living". See... you can learn something from Buffy.

And, one from from that same post.

"There's an old saying that goes something like "always remember you're unique... just like everyone else." It's true, so many people are out there trying so hard to be different that they end up looking the same. What I'm saying is, be yourself, and don't let fear hold you back. Forget all the rules you learned in school or from your mentors for a while and get out and shoot the way you've always wanted to shoot. Do something YOU like, not what you think your clients expect."

I relate this totally to scrapbooking (including the publishing world). I tell stories with paper and photos. For me. For my family. To remember. That is all. Simple as that.

Art is subjective. What's liked by one, is not by the other. I love my pages. My art. They are unique to me. A reflection of me. My art is unique to me. That is it's specialness.

Now, I intended just to post the quotes and link and, of course, this went on a bit long. Sorry.

And so... it's February 1st. That means new layouts in the Design Shoppe on MSS. These are using the February Kit - Truly, Madly Deeply. The kit will be out by tomorrow (hopefully). Check the Red Star blog for details.

Happy Thursday everyone.

On a shoppe note I'm placing CHA preorders from the following companies in the next few days.

- Crate

- Cosmo Cricket

- Lil' Davis

- American Crafts

- 7 Gypsies

- Fancy Pants
Let me know if you have any special requests.