My Memories Suite - GIVEAWAY!

Have you heard of My Memories Suite?

This is a wonderful digital scrapbooking software program that makes quick work of digital albums.  Even if you’ve never scrapbooked before, you can use My Memories Suite to create albums, newsletters, slide shows.

Imagine my delight when they contacted me with a free download of their software to give away to one lucky WhimsySmitten reader!  I regularly used My Memories Suite (and loved it) before this, so a giveaway copy for my readers is just icing on the cake. 

I’ve used this software for a bunch of different stuff, but last Christmas, My Memories Suite came to my rescue.  I made digital layouts in a jiffy to create a calendar, then uploaded and had them printed.  Voila – gifts for all the parents/grandparents.  Here are a few examples of things I’ve made with the software:

Aren’t they cute?  (The pages, I mean… I know the kids are cute – wink, wink).

(Note, some elements/embellishments used on those pages were digital files I already had, some were directly from the My Memories Suite software, but the software was used to compile all the pages above.)

Now that I have you itchin’ for your own copy of the software, here’s a few ways to enter:

1)      Visit www.mymemories.com.  Comment here with one feature of the software you like, or your favorite digital paper pack or layout.

2)      Like MyMemoriesSuite on Facebook and “like” them, then leave a comment on this post that you did or follow MyMemoriesSuite on Twitter, then leave a comment on this post that you did.

3)      Become a follower of this here blog via Google Friend Connect or Blogger.com, and leave a comment on this post letting me know.

4)      Blog, tweet, or facebook about this giveaway and post a comment here letting me know that you did.

One entry for each one of the above, multiple entries allowed and encouraged!  Comments will be closed and winner will be announced Tuesday, August 23, 2011 by 10 p.m. CST.  Remember, you must leave a separate comment on this post for each one of the above entries in order to have all entries counted.  Please make sure your email is listed in your profile or I have some other way of contacting you if you win.  Unfortunately, only one of you can win.

But wait!  There’s more!

(Did you picture me saying that in my very best infomercial voice?  I thought so.)

If you just can’t wait for the winner to be announced and for everyone that doesn’t win, My Memories Suite is also giving ALL Whimsy Smitten readers a $10 discount off the purchase of the software AND a $10 coupon for the MyMemories.com store.  What a deal, right?  Just visit www.mymemories.com and enter coupon code: STMMMS75704 for your discount.

Thanks to the fine folks at My Memories Suite for giving away this awesome product.  Now, run…don’t walk… over to MyMemories.com and check this program out!

Five Minute Friday - No Sight for Sore Eyes

Beauty means something else these days, since coming to Texas… maybe since becoming a mother, I’m not entirely sure.

I’m a woman that believes in at least a decent attempt to look like a woman even if I’m really just a mom, and that a killer pair of high heels and knock-em-dead mascara can do wonders for a woman’s energy and self-esteem.

But.

My “uniform” here is usually something made of half-bleached cotton (we have funky and highly chlorinated water and nothing is sacred in the washing machine, it seems).  My hair-do is practically tragic and I haven’t put on a pair of heels all year.  It is easy to feel all run-ragged, to live in pajamas and not recognize my own self in the mirror many days, and eleven kids is sure enough to make my femininity drain right through my chipped toenails.

I can doll myself up and slip into something frilly and feel beautiful.

Or I can dish a second helping of chili mac (don’t judge) onto a kid’s plate and tousle his head and kiss my husband long and deep… and be beautiful.  I can stumble with eyes half-closed in the night hours to soothe a baby and I can gather up the gumption to apologize after an argument, even if I don’t think I’m wrong.  I am not a sight for sore eyes these days, but oh that the Lord would make me, in my weakness and through His strength, a balm for hurting hearts. 

Linking to:  The Gypsy Mama's Five Minute Friday

Winner winner, chicken dinner.

I hate that phrase, but... I couldn't help myself.

Congratulations, Jeniffer Smith!  

Thanks to Random.org.  Jeniffer, you won the DaySpring Back-to-School Giveaway!  Hope you find something nice!  I'll be emailing you shortly with a code/info. 

The Side Effects of Fruit

Last night I cried and into the pitch-black hours where coyotes howled beyond the window I lurched and pitched, shoulders wracking with the sobs so deep they hurt my rib bones.

And I just couldn’t manage the silence another night.  Couldn’t bear to say the things, the words already tumbling out of my howling mouth, making up excuses for the God who stays silent while I thrash and demand an answer, demand a word to free me, and instead make my own way in impatience, walking barefoot on proverbial broken glass and know that I don’t want it to be this way.  No, no… this will never work, and I am forgetting what to hope will come of all this.

But I have come this far under my own influence.  I have come all this way and now, He nods in my direction.  “Go on.  Have it your way.”  

So He waits quiet to see what I will do next but of course already knows and I wait but don’t know already and I mumble-pray-weep-plead that He just have something up His sleeve.  And all the while I am Eve and I long for that fruit of selfishness and I too wonder why He is keeping good things from me, and the serpent winds between my feet while my pillow swallows tears and before I know it, I’m hissing along with the serpent’s song.  I have it in my head that what God wants for me is only hard living.  I am parched and licking lips for what I’m sure He must be keeping beyond my grasp.

And isn’t that the lie that gets us every time?

That He is keeping something good from us?  That He is the God Who Holds Back?

And the hours pass ‘til I stir with fever and the delirium hasn’t faded.  How does a girl paralyzed learn to walk in silence?  How do I move an inch without knowing the way, and I am filled with doubt and fear and all the side effects of being Eve and eating fruit. 

Back-to-School Giveaway!

I am now and always have been a bit of a word nerd, a girl made happy with book pages and fresh paper.  For that and many reasons, Fall is my favorite time of year. 

It always started in early August, though there would be a month still until the school year began.  I began my plea early and often, pestering my mother to take me on the best shopping trip of the year.

For me, it was never about fashion.  New school clothes were fine, but a girl like me really got jazzed about rows of unsharpened pencils, Pee-Chee folders, and piles of college-ruled notebook paper.  Back-to-school was always an exciting adventure – the thrill of scaling the mountain ahead, fully equipped with all the right supplies for the journey.

Now, it’s my kids’ turn to oooh and aaah over fresh new school gear, blank pages, and the shavings of brand-new pencils.  Our classroom is the dining table, but also the meadow, the zoo, the Internet, the beach, the factory, and the shade tree, and our education is ever-widening, often on display for the world to see.  It is a little far-reaching, this thing we call school, in that we try and incorporate as much life into our education as we incorporate education into our life.

This year, we’ll be rocking DaySpring’s new Back to School with a Purpose collection, and showing those in and around our not-always-at-home-school that love and grace and faith and fun rolls right in there with the way we educate.  It’s true.  I do know where love comes from, and I gotta smile when the joy of new school supplies helps us spread the word.  After all, it’s no secret.

It’s also no secret that I love my readers, and just for sticking through me here, I’ve got a little somethin’ for one of you.  Who wants $20 to spend in the DaySpring Online store?  Ooooh, all those hands raised – now it’s really looking like back-to-school time around here! 

Entry is easy-peasy:  Leave a comment with your favorite DaySpring product/product line, “like” WhimsySmitten on Facebook (link on sidebar), follow me on Twitter (link on sidebar), or become a new follower of this blog, and each one will get you one entry.  For more than one entry, please leave a separate comment here on this post (one comment for each entry), and make sure your blog or profile gives an e-mail address where I can notify you.  Comments/entries will be closed at 10 p.m. central time on Thursday, August 11^th. Winner will be randomly chosen among entries on Friday, August 12.

A Hole in My Wholeness

Five Minute Friday:  "Whole".

Join us?  Write for just 5 minutes, no editing, no fussing, no stressing.  

Then, link up here.

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GO

I used to be whole.  I know what it looks like.  I’m aware of the source.

And yet.

I chase wholeness down with good deeds, commitments, conversations.  Pursue it with perfection-set eyes, just so very sure that if I was only good enough, I would be whole again.

All the while, there is a hole in my wholeness.

And in all my chasing down goodness, the hole widens and looms, gaping, and my tennis shoes scuff the edge as I brace and try not to fall in to the chasm between my goodness and His goodness – the hole that leads down the rabbit hole, into the unknown, into the giving up of all I ever thought I knew.

(I seem to be channeling Lewis Carroll these days, but I digress.) 

Goodness is not wholeness.

And man, how I have gotten it confused.

So my shoes toe closer to that widening pit and I peer down into the black and spin around, then throw my arms wide and…

…freefall…

Into my own imperfection.  Into the unknown.  Into the gap of all I cannot and never will be in control of. 

I freefall into grace.

In the hole where I can be made whole.  In the vast wide hole of faith and trust and stretching arms and heart wide open to receive what I can never do and never be and never give without Him.

Grace.

Big and wide and long and deep.

Crazy, extravagant, stunning, radiant grace.

And in this gap where the grace rains down, I am filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:18).  And my goodness floods in the light of His goodness and I can take a breath and stop striving for anything I can do in my own strength.  The grace…just…floods.  And this is what it means to be whole. 

STOP

On Rest and Kind Words

As for my little vacation, I'll just leave ya with a few lingering images.  It was wonderful...albeit too short, but restful nonetheless -- precisely what the doctor ordered.

A true delight, though, was coming home to discover that David Rupert at The High Calling had featured Whimsy Smitten in this month's Around the Network post.  He had some delightful and encouraging things to say about this little blog, and I am blessed by the feature, particularly to be included with the other talented bloggers featured along with me.  Thanks David! Go see the post here.