SPT September 15

Lelly's Self-Portrait Tuesday Challenges for the month of September (2008) are following a "Because of a Blogger ..." theme. Last week I featured Lori of "I Can Be Right, Or I Can Be Happy" and how because of her, I was able to spend a great mother-daughter Breakaway weekend with Brayden at the end of the summer.

This week's "Because of a Blogger ..." actually comes full circle, and highlights the very blogger who introduced me to the SPT Challenge. In fact, this week's SPT is in a sense, a follow-up to one of the first SPT challenges I ever posted, which was to highlight myself doing something that I love.

I posted an entry about how much I love to scrapbook, but "wah, wah, wah, I'm so sad because I don't have any scrapbook friends here in OKC, my life is pitiful ..... world's tiniest violin .... " blah blah blah

And my {quasi-new} friend Alisa from "That's Life, Enjoy It" promptly left me a comment, and then promptly got off the computer, walked over to her phone, and called me to tell me we should scrapbook together.

I barely knew Alisa at that stage, but she, too, had fallen off the scrapbook wagon and was looking to get back on. And then she mentioned Lori also scrapbooks ....

and our little scrapbooking tri-fecta was born.

We've been meeting monthly for evening crops, and I've been enjoying myself immensely. I'm grateful for their new{ish} friendships .... (since we've been scrapping for eight months now, I guess they are no longer new-friends, but just friend-friends, right?) We eat, we chat, we get better acquainted, we discuss our girls, who are all in the same grade at school, we eat some more, and we scrapbook.

Thanks to Lori and Alisa, I was even confident enough to help the girls at our Breakaway Weekend make Friendship albums for themselves:


(and yes, that is my thumb in the photo, holding the album, so it is there TOO a self-portrait!)

We've had probably a half dozen other moms and ladies either join us for a month or two, or talk about joining us. But they don't. Not because we're obnoxious or we stink or our food is bad (at least I hope that's none of it!) but because we all have a tendency to get sidetracked and busy with this thing called LIFE.

But guess what? Life doesn't slow down specifically so you can do the things you enjoy.

Merry Maids isn't going to call me and offer to clean my house so I can scrapbook.

My kids aren't going to offer to cook dinner, or drive themselves to football practice or soccer practice or choir practice, so I can scrapbook.

The principal of the elementary school isn't going to tell me not to volunteer so I will have more time for scrapbooking.

The errands won't run themselves, the laundry won't do itself, the shopping won't buy itself, and the blog entries won't write themselves.

I'm grateful that "Because of ..." Alisa, who picked up the phone and called me, and then called Lori, that I was able to scrapbook once again. To remember that its not only important, but OK, to make time for the hobby I love.

Bonus points is making new, really cool friends while I do it.