Lots of Shares this week.

What a busy busy week it has been - lots of visitors, and lots of afternoon teas, and meetings, but I did manage to find some time last night to scrap three of the August challenges for Scrap of Faith this month, and I was really happy with them too. Nice to get a bit of paper scrapbooking done again. I now just have a huge mess to clean up. I also managed to finish a double layout that I started at our last scrapbooking crop day a week an a half ago.

Ro Fields (Willro&Co Designs) has a new kit coming out and I had a play with the yummy new Sorbet Dream kit which is due to be released next month. I love this kit, Ro has excelled herself with this one- It is definately one you want to keep a look out for and well worth the investment cause you will use it again and again.

Have been playing around with Photoshop a lot these last couple of weeks, I love this layout of Steve and his new camera. I had a lot of fun playing around with editing the photo and combining two photos to make one.
Credits for this layout are
Patterned Papers by Bassinet Designs
Frame - Designs by Dawn
Title - Willro&Co "Typewritter Alpha Kit" and Beyond Wonderland" font.

Another busy weekend coming up, Steve is off to Brissie to go visit the International Boat Show. This is something he has been looking forward to going to for a number of years and heis finally getting to go. He and a mate are flying down for the weekend and staying at Sarah's place, although she won't be home - they are flying to Mackay for a wedding.

I am a little behind with my "JOY Journal". I have several photos that I need to have developed before I can keep going, but I came accross this article on a blog this week - thought it was definately worth sharing.

THE GRATITUDE JOURNAL

It is the beginning of the list season: lists of menus, lists of hand-made projects, lists of addresses, lists of baking goodies ... lists of gifts.I too begin... but only, currently, one list: A List of a Thousand Things, beginning with #1. I am daily jotting down items on my Thousand Gifts List, working, one-by-one, up to a thousand gifts. Not of gifts I want. But of gifts I have.
As the moments slip down the hour glass of time, I am scratching down the gifts---just as they happen, as they arrive, as they are unwrapped---that God has given that make my life grace, the daily graces that He gives in an infinite number of ways, that stir me."...windmills lazying in twilight's last breeze.... soft wool sweaters with turtle neck collars.... the faint smell of cattle and straw...."I am seeing things I have never seen before, atuned and aware of this constant, endless stream of gifts from His hand. I am one waking from slumber....from the stupor of indifference and ignorance. I have sight, fresh and keen---the world is new and full of His gifts.
Too often I miss Him, oblivious, blind. I don't see all the good things that He is giving me, gracing me with, brushing my life with. True, He is everywhere, always. But maybe, before The Gift List, I thought of Him as further off, not so close. When I started to see all the things that I love bestowed upon me, I started to see Him as near, present, everywhere, showering me with good things. Seeing the things I love all around me gives me eyes to see that I am loved, that He loves me.It is happening to me as John Milton wrote: "Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world."Everyday epiphanies everywhere, indeed: gifts....Grace."... the smell of the florist’s... the sound of kernels of corn streaming, tinkling.... leaves floating in puddles..." Just writing them down as they happen.Yet my list is different than another's for a reason: God has made me uniquely me. The Gift List is about gratitude... but it is more. It is about what defines me and my own personal identity. Reflecting on The Thousand Gifts List... "...cracking open a new book... pushing children on the swing.... old men looking at cards in the stationery aisle..." I am thankful for the things on it, yes, but I am also thankful that He has given the gift of me; that God made me who I am and I am one who sees and experiences the world in a way uniquely her own. The Thousand Gifts list
is about the gifts Abba gives this child every day... and, ultimately, about the very gift of self, life as I know it.George MacDonald wrote, "No gift unrecognized as coming from God is at its own best...when in all gifts we find Him, then in Him we shall find all things."it is the season of lists. Care to begin a list of a Thousand Gifts? You’ll find Him in all things….. the very best gift of all.

Father, You are the Giver of all Good Gifts. They are everywhere. I can hardly jot them down fast enough. How You love.

Will you too begin your list of a Thousand Gifts? It will change your life. Guaranteed.

Researchers studying those who kept gratitude journals concluded:

At the end of the 10 weeks, participants who’d kept a gratitude journal felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic aboauat the future than participants in either of the other two conditions. To put it into numbers, according to the scale we used to calculate well-being, they were a full 25 percent happier than the other participants. Those in the gratitude condition reported fewer health complaints.

People who kept a gratitude journal reported feeling more joyful, enthusiastic, interested, attentive, energetic, excited, determined, and strong than those in the hassles condition. They also reported offering others more emotional support or help with a personal problem – supporting the notion that gratitude motivates people to do good. And this was not limited to what they said about themselves. We sent surveys to people who knew them well, and these significant others rated participants in the gratitude group as more helpful than those in the other groups.

Hope that this has been as much an encouragement to you as it has to me. Don't forget to drop in and say Hi - I love hearing from you all. I am planning on putting the names of all of you who have visited and left comments in this and the last post in a hat and sending out a little RAK to some lucky person.