Finally Me: Thankful to Be Back Thursday

OK so this feels like my first day blogging like EVER. It's not though... honest. Used to do this all the time, several days a week even.... then sometime earlier this year.... the desire to blog just disappeared. Who knew it could do that? Show of hands? Um no me neither. Neither? Either? Whatever. Yes, Monogirl still has Monobrain hard at work as you can see.

So what is on my mind this first day back? This little guy. Tanner. He is about to be 14 years old on Nov. 1st and here at our house we are dealing with elderly dog issues. Suddenly there have been accidents in the house. He has never been like that since being house broken . Now he isn't making it thru the workday, and now even thru the night. He is also having trouble hearing sometimes (we think) and if he's been sleeping for awhile it takes him a long time to stand up and get the joints moving. Vet also told us he now has a heart murmur also due to age. My heart is feeling kind of heavy and discouraged today because I feel like we are heading down a dead end road here... and I don't like what is at the end. We have a call in to the vet to see if he has any help for the incontinence issues. Is it possible something else is wrong? It would be great if its fixable. Otherwise I sense a decision coming that Darrel and I do not want to make. Praying God will just take care of things when its time.

So what else is new? Um Bible Journaling! I might have mentioned that earlier in the year cause I've been toying with the idea for awhile but now? So loving Bible Journaling. My BFF Lisa and I went to an Illustrated Faith workshop in September and it was awesome. Totally lit my fire to want to study my Bible more and meditate and create cool colorful notes and illustrations based on that reading. I mean reading... note taking.... cool art supplies.... what's not to love?!!

At the workshop one of the other ladies had this fabric made into a Bible cover. LOVE. Shortly thereafter I headed on over to Etsy to see if I could find a cover of my own. First I found this one and fell in love with all the pinkness. I ordered it immediately. Well immediately after I measured to make sure it would fit. Are we remembering that measuring is not Monogirl's best thing? Well proof of that would be when the Bible came I soon discovered that a 7-3/4" cover would not fit an 8" Bible..... Why did Monogirl think it would? Probably cause she tends to measure and say OK... close enough... and then just gets lucky if it fits. Well after this debacle Monogirl and the husband decided that Monogirl is no longer allowed to measure anything and the husband is now officially in charge of all needed measuring. It's totally his thing. I've been known to call him Mr. T-square... Well I decided it couldn't hurt to ask if the shop owner would possibly be willing to exchange my cover. I fessed up that the problem was TOTALLY my fault and that if she'd rather not, I understood, no hard feelings. Well guess what she did? She totally let me exchange, and since there was no more of the banner fabric she sent me links to Hobby Lobby and Joann's and let me custom pick out my fabric!! How fun!! And they totally had the King of Kings fabric! LOVE. So I picked that, and mentioned my um.... LOVE for pink stuff and she outdid herself with pink lining, and pink ribbon markers and then I also ordered a matching pencil bag cause who could resist right? Melinda the shop owner was awesome, and so wonderful to work with. Please go check out her stuff. She will fix you up!

Here is a peek at my first few journaling entries:

The last image is the pages I did at the IF workshop. If you get a chance to attend a workshop... GO! Shanna Noel was the leader and she gave us her wonderful testimony, we listened to a 15 min. sermon, and then we went to town on our pages with notes and illustrations from that sermon and the scriptures in Colossians. I have two more entries penciled in and waiting for some color and lots more notes from the last few weeks of sermons and devotionals.

The journaling has even spilled over into my job! Our pastor just started a sermon series about the Beatitudes. He asked the staff at staff meeting if anyone had any "catchy" title ideas. I didn't have too many thoughts at first, but after I got back to my office and read the Beatitudes and read some of the commentaries and looked it up in the Life Application Study Bible notes.... well then the brainstorming started. Google is also a great help in brainstorming. I had several pages of notes and title ideas and other thoughts.... then I had the urge to go home and draw it up.... Well when I mentioned that to the Pastor when I was telling him my title ideas he said I should draw it up. Scary!! But fun. So I drew it up, and then I re-created it on the computer, and Viola! Sermon series graphic and then I turned that into sermon series powerpoint templates. FUN.... I really liked it and it totally felt like one of those things where you are going um I could totally do this.... all the lights and switches and gears were going! ha.

So yes I am being brave and showing you my graphic.... and here is the original drawing...

Very fun and now I am helping with some ideas and creative stuff for another sermon coming up in November.

And so now I am thinking that is a pretty good start to my returning to the blogging world.... Why don't we close with a short... maybe... thankful list.

Feeling thankful today for....