Ooooh my life already

Where does the time go?
How many times have I said that on my blog?
I HATE it when I only update once a week.
But time is not always my friend and I am supposed to be working full time
(that is a joke, church people. I am working full time honest)

Since I last updated I have
been to camp
it was sunnyit was rainy
I slept (a little) in the little blue tent. I didn't have to make a night time walk. Result!
I played rounders (and that counts as work to me. I have no hand eye co-ordination. Sadly at one point my team had one brilliant player still in and two others including me which meant a lot of humiliation at the crease, or whatever it is called in rounders, and a LOT of running.)
I made a button bracelet - sadly it was for 5 year old Adam and not 44 year old Lythan so can't show you mine...
It was sunny again
I got to play a celtic harp - haven't played one since I was 8. People took photos. I haven't seen them yet but I could feel the double chin growing as they did so.

made cards for an Imagine That class
which is a big thing as Emma, Emma and Judy make the most bestest and beautiful cards ever and I don't rate mine as much! I didn't photograph them but you can see them on the class details here. What I do like is that I came up with the design of the card on the right all by myself. OK it is not unique but when it is shut the slider part is completely hidden. All using the fab WRMK nonsense range

had meetings and meetings and wrote minutes of meetings and prayed some
that is basically what a Minister does. And prepares worship. And puts that off by writing a blog post.

Did my Salt layout of the week
OK fortnight but the Harry Hill tune popped into my head as I wrote that. Never heard it? Click here
The Salt challenge was a great one by Mona about Prayer

In the last few weeks I have been studying Hagar and Sarah. Genesis 16:11 struck a cord in my heart - "God has heard your cry of distress." I was also touched by Psalm 56:8 (The Message).

"You've kept track of every toss and turn through the sleepless nights. Each tear you've entered into your ledger, each ache has been written into your book."

These verses touched my heart because every affliction, every thought, every worry are heard and remembered by the Father. He loves and cares about every single thing that happens in our lives every day, no matter how big or small. There have been times when I think that my problems are too big or small to share with God, but my 11 year old autistic child showed me that you can pray about anything.

I knew that I wanted a photo of one of my children crying. (!) I don't know whether I am sad or pleased that it was hard to track one down. Maybe I did spend more time comforting them than documenting their distress. Maybe they just didn't cry very much! I remembered a photo from when we went to Carnac in 1995. Emrys had been crawling around and it was time to go home. For some reason he had loved crawling among big stones and was not happy at being back in the buggy. Oh I remember those heartfelt sobs. It turned out to be a great photo to reflect the words in the Bible

When I dropped off the cards at Imagine That on Monday I accidentally bought the new pack of Basic Grey June Bug papers. Which is what I have used for this layout
Everything including the grungy background paper is June Bug. I just added a chatterbox bird, three flowers and gems from elsewhere. Here is my journalling close up (pen started to run out grrrr)
And finally
its Daring day!
Rein made us work this week with her rather lovely theme

Russian

as our Russian girl Irina is here staying with us again my dare is put a matryoshka or another typical Russian element like dress, architecture, or... ..... on your card.

I partly bought the Junebug papers as I thought they had a russian vibe to them. I was wondering what to do wih this dare and remembered that google is my friend. I found a template on the Papercraft Inspirations site. When I printed it out it was A4 size! So I just used it as a guide to hand cut my own card one using a folded A6 card.
Again all the papers are June Bug apart from her face which is Urban Prairie. The eyes are blue stickers and the leaves were cut with a QK die.

Right time to get some work done - it is our choir concert tonight so I must get worship preparation done and dusted by then!