September, October & November Monthly Layouts

Graphic 45 are posting my September, October and November Layouts which are long overdue so first of all I would like to apologise for the delay. The months have just flown by and so much has been happening I haven't had a chance to get them to Graphic 45 on time.
I always appreciate the patience of the lovely Graphic 45 team.

September

For me September is all about the Father’s Day celebration, so it was an easy choice to do a layout on Malcom.

We have been married for over 32 years. We met through our Church youth group, I was a city girl and he was a country boy. We dated for nearly three years before we got married. 

We have five children so life for us while they were little was very busy.  We both are very active members of our church so there is always a lot happening in our lives. Malcolm works very hard at his day job and has been with the same company for his whole working life to date, having started as an apprentice at age 17. He also helps me with my two businesses in his not so spare time.

 Malcolm has a wonderful tenor voice and has had years of training.  He has performed many solo pieces at performances over the years of our married life. His singing in the shower is amazing and I love listening to it.   Marriage is a work in progress and requires commitment, patience, and understanding along with a lot of love.

The secret is to not take each other for granted and to put the other person first.  With everything happening in our busy life this doesn’t always happen every time, but we both are committed to our marriage.  I am so grateful for having Malcolm in my life and I do love him very much. We have so many things in common, our children, our faith, love of music and more.  We are now starting another stage in our marriage with our grandchildren starting to arrive and old age becoming something we are starting to think about and plan for.

I am very grateful to have Malcom alongside me and for his support in everything I do.  Without him, my life would be so much harder and without his love – a lot lonelier.

October

Well, October is my month; I was born on the 26^th of October 1962 in New Zealand.

I wasn’t even sure if anything happened of any great importance that year, so I googled it.

I discovered the following:

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was Linus Pauling.

The USSR announced that it was going to build missile bases in Cuba until Kennedy ordered a Cuban blockage which he lifted after Russia backed down.

The Yankees won the World Series over the San Francisco Giants.

Rod Laver won the men’s single title at Wimbledon.

The Oscar for best picture went to West Side Story.

The song of the year was Moon River.

Marilyn Monroe passed away.

I am sure there were many other important things that happened that year, but these are just some of the high lights I chose.

My life so far has been pretty easy. I didn’t have a great time at school though, due to being dyslexic and my teachers telling me I was just lazy. I knew I wasn’t but a lot of what I was learning just didn’t make any sense. I wanted to be a school teacher, but with my learning difficulties I would have found UNI too hard. So I worked in retail and really enjoyed helping & serving customers.

 

I grew up in a Christian family and from a young age attended everything happening at our Ecclesia.  I  met and married my husband over 33 years ago.  Have 5 wonderful children and now have three lovely sons-in-law.  My grandchildren are now starting to arrive and I am loving this next stage in my life.

I have had some interesting events in my life and some challenging ones too, but with my faith and support from family and friends nothing has been too big to handle.

So on the whole it has been really good and I am so grateful for this. Not everyone can say that about their lives like I can.  Through scrapbooking I have met some lovely ladies who have had not so good lives. Some have really sad stories to tell and I am always touched that they feel they can share with me. I always hope they feel better for sharing and not so alone or at least that their load feels lighter afterwards. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone had an easy life and could be grateful like me?

 I know we need to have sad times in our life so we appreciate the good times. I always think of our lives as quilts or now a scrapbook layout – that we work on as our life happens. The highs in our lives are the bright colours – the reds, yellows and oranges. The lows in our lives are the blues, greens and browns, and the really sad events and tragedies are the greys and blacks. A quilt or layout in bright colours is too much to take in. It’s the lows and the sad events that give us the shadows against which our bright colours really stand out and make our quilt or layout really beautiful.

So I am grateful for how my layout is turning out, at this stage it is very bright but with a little blue, green and brown. It has a touch of grey but thankfully no black.

Hopefully there are still quite a few more years for me to work on my layout. It will be interesting to see how it changes as time goes by.

I would love to hear how everyone else’s quilts/layouts are going.  Please share in the comments so I can read them all.

 

 

November

 

 

 

We are so blessed – our first grandchild has arrived safely with all 10 toes and fingers.

Harry James is just beautiful and I know that you may think I am biased but I did ask around at church and everyone assures me that he really is beautiful and I’m not just imagining it.

I didn’t think I would be such a doting Grandmother, but I am. I had taken 200 photos of Harry by day 4! I have to keep stopping myself from showing everyone I meet all of them!

I can’t go more than a couple of days without a cuddle and I can’t believe how fast he is growing. It’s going to be so hard next time around as our second grandchild, due in March, will live in a different state.  I won’t be able to visit this little treasure as often as Harry. Hopefully we will be able to skype and watch this one grow daily.

Babies are a miracle and not to be taken for granted. I didn’t really understand how precious and fragile babies were until at age 22 I had Anna.  She was so sick and needed major surgery to live, we were given the option of not having the operation and leaving her to die in the hospital – unthinkable now, but we were given that choice back then.

I didn’t even consider it – she was mine and our responsibility. She was given to me for a reason and I just needed to work it out. Well, after so many years, I have worked it out; she teaches me more about myself and life than I have taught her. She teaches me to be compassionate, patience and loving.  Not to take life for granted anymore and to treasure each day. Her life is quite simple, she doesn’t worry about too much – she leaves that to me. She doesn’t want much, her needs are quite simple – she has no concept of needing everything she sees or what brand names are.  She has her likes and dislikes and she doesn’t bear a grudge. If she is angry with me, she forgets quite quickly and forgives even quicker. She finds delight in little things and loves sharing. She’s not an angel by any means and sometime drives me batty but we love each other and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters. If I had my time again I would not change anything.

So my November month started out with me being grateful for my first grandchild. Feeling so blessed that he arrived safely with everything as it should be. Watching my daughter take to mother hood, like she has been doing it all her life, has been so rewarding. Watching my son in law being so protective of his first child is a real delight. But I know that it isn’t always like this for everyone and from my own experience I know how hard it can be when it doesn’t go according to the plans we make.

In our family, we have so much to be grateful for. My children are quite close to each other and supportive. They keep in touch and watch out for each other. They help each other out  and they all know that they are there for each other when needed. For that we are very grateful and with another grandchild on the way there is even more to be thankful for.

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Jane