A Tribute to my Mom

I was hoping to have my Mom's Mother's day card ready to share- but I'm in the process of a entire Craft Studio re-org, so my work space is a challenge right now as well as the time.  Even so, I really didn't want to miss this opportunity to pay tribute to my Mom and share with you the wonderful person that she is. 

I've been blessed with the most amazing Mom!  She is such a very special woman in so many ways.  She has so many amazing talents, and I remember when I was growing up thinking there just wasn't anything she couldn't do or was good at.  She just made everything 'nice' or better in whatever she took on.  She has such a calming way about her in any situation.  She's as beautiful inside as she is on the outside.  I guess you could say she is the total package!
    

My latest scrapbooking projects have been centered around my heritage album, and it's through those earlier pictures of her as a young girl and than a young woman that I really felt like I got to know her and see her as more than my Mom. 

One of the first projects I did was a class using an accordian 8 page chipboard book, featuring Basic Grey papers and their large alphabet chipboard letters.  The class was called "My Loves" and each page contained a letter spelling out "my loves" featuring photos of the teacher's daughters. The kit included the entire package of letters, so I used "by design", with pictures that I featured my Mother as a young girl, holding either a kitten, cat or dog.  Now I have always had a huge heart for animals, and I had always thought my love for animals had probably come from my Father, who I knew grew up on a farm where my Grandfather raised Guernsey Cows and Percheron Horses.  And later he himself, got our family into raising and breeding Arabian horses.  But seeing these pictures of my mother, I realized she too had a huge heart for animals!  I decided that I was who I was 'by design'.  In the software industry often that phrase is used, if an issue or bug is found in the application, and a developer will return it saying this is not a bug, it is working "by design". 

So good, or bad that is what it is and how it was intended to be.  

This is where the title of my blog came from.  Besides the creative sound that it has - it also carries this 'other' meaning for me.  That we are who we are by the people that make up our lives, and good or bad, it is what it is and how it was intended to be, "by design".

Here is another small album project that I did during CKU- Nashville -2009!  Using the 8" Mixed Media album with pages made out of chipboard, acetate and a thick felt. This was teamed up with the Vintage look of October Afternoon Paper and embellishments.  So I knew it would be a good home for pictures I had of my Mom.   It still to this day needs some much needed journaling, but here is the intro page... my Mother at age 5...

And I finished it with a picture that was taken when she was 21 I believe.

The rest of pages are a mixture of her as she was growing up.  And a lot of them are her on her Grandparents farm in Grand Meadow, Minnesota.

I'm going to close with a recent picture of My Mom and on her latest visit here - have a wonderful Mother's Day everyone!