March

I am combining my One Little Word, the Unplanner from Art to the 5th and the 'I am' statements from His Kingdom Come in one binder.

I have ignored the Unplanner art challenges during March and just kept a record of what I've done.  Where there's gaps on the pages it's because I can't remember what I did or I didn't do anything special.

For the divider page for March I stuck the card that came with the bouquet of flowers for Mother's Day and then stuck some of the cellophane over the top.

Lots of the doodled pages and dividers in this binder can be coloured in but I haven't got round to it yet.

You can see the 'I am' tags that I am making for a bible verse each week.

The last few days of March are on the same page as the beginning of April so I have put that page into this month's pages.

The challenge in One Little Word for March was to create a large collage using bits and pieces cut from magazines.  I toook a photo of it for my binder.

I have tried to exercise every day and although I haven't lost any weight, I have lost inches!  Yeah!

Here's a better photo of my OLW collage.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

January

This year I am combining the Unplanner from Art to the 5th with One Little Word from Ali Edwards.  I didn't buy the kit from either site but found similar items online.

I wanted to make it simple and bought the Bo Bunny calendar dividers and the weekly pages.  However the weekly pages start on a Sunday and I like my diary pages to start on a Monday!

I am also making 'I am' tags every week.  The project for this is on His Kingdom Come where the 'I am' verses are released in the 2nd and 4th weeks of each month.   I decided I wanted to make one per week so I have found verses for the intervening weeks.

Week 1
I printed out a small photo for each day of our holiday in Texas and stuck these onto my pages.

Week 2
To change the weekly pages to start on Monday, I made some days of the week printouts using a scan of a gelli print that I had done as a background.

Week 3

Week 4

The task for this week was to list 10 books that had changed my life.  Currently I can only think of 5.

On the back of the List Ten, I glued the little card I had made for Roger to show the theatre visit I had booked for him.  This was his Christmas present and the show was on January 23rd.

Week 5

Another Art to the 5th idea is a word for the month under the Dare2B heading.  I chose Dare2B organised.   There are still boxes to go through but at least the room was generally tidy.  I blogged about it here.   I printed the photos on the back of a piece of scrapbooking cardstock.

On each week's page of my Unplanner I have been sticking a word that is a synonym of my word of the year: Purpose.  My OLW pages are in the same binder following on from the planner section.

I put a photo of the storyboard from the Reflections class on the left (the scrapbook cardstock).

Ali provides the fancy lettered headers.

Ali very kindly provided the 'synonyms' header in the February class pack.

I made myself some weight and exercise charts to help keep track.  Unfortunately due to raging toothache and then a muscle injury the exercise hasn't happened for a little while.  Never mind, there's always February.

Thanks for stopping by.

Bernice

Purpose

Last week I wrote about the background to my choice of one word for 2016: Purpose although I didn't really spell it out and maybe at the end of the blog post you were wondering the connection between what you had read and my choice of word.

When I stood down from the Foundation Team at His Kingdom Come I felt a real peace about it but also a sense of loss.  The formation and running of HKC had been my focus and purpose for over 12 months.  And as I said in my post introducing my word: 'But giving up something that is successful without God saying what is next is bittersweet and I'm not good at just resting or not knowing what is coming next.'

I felt that I needed a purpose or a vision for what is coming next.  And I seriously thought about having Vision as my word.   'Where there is no vision, the people perish ..' Proverbs 29:18

But Purpose kept coming back into my mind.  I also prayed about it.

And various books and articles kept showing up which helped confirm the right choice.

I looked online for a dictionary definition of purpose
• : the reason why something is done or used : the aim or intention of something
• : the feeling of being determined to do or achieve something
• : the aim or goal of a person : what a person is trying to do, become, etc.

A friend posted a link on Facebook to a website which also led me to a book: Chazown - the book and the website

In May, Mary wrote some devotions for His Kingdom Come based on self-care and I intend to return to those and to look at the links Mary provided:

• Personality test resources: I (Mary) personally prefer the Myers-Briggs personality assessment. It is very in-depth and used by many churches and employers.   16 Personalities   or  Typefinder Personality test
• Spiritual gifts test resources:
• Saddleback Church, home of pastor Rick Warren has a great tool called SHAPE to help understand how you are wired.

I have signed up for One Little Word and downloaded the ebook from logos365 and will use the ideas from both to combine to make my own exploration of Purpose throughout 2016.

Listen to the words of this song.

I want to dig down into what makes me the person I am and to tell my story.  To get that going I signed up for a class from Jeanne Oliver: Reflections.

I much prefer to choose a word for the year - something that I want to see more of in my life.  Do you choose a word for the year?  If so, why not share it in the comments below.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

My word for 2016

Over recent years I have chosen a word for the year that I focus on.  I shared about my word for 2015 last December.

The word for 2015 was Thirst.  And it really didn't grab me.  I did some journal pages for the first three months.

January

February

March

But to be honest, my heart wasn't in it and at the beginning of April I gave up on it altogether.

I have spent most of 2015 being really busy helping to run His Kingdom Come.   You can read about how I became to be involved with HKC at A Story & a Giveaway (the giveaway is now closed!) and I expected to be involved with it still through 2016.  In fact we started discussing Take Me Deeper - DNA back in April.

However towards the end of October I began to feel that it was time for me to move on.

Several times in my ministry career I have worked on things that God has asked me to do – setting up new ministries, organising conferences and even helping set up a new company – and then passing them on to others to run.   To be sure that I was hearing correctly about HKC, I asked a friend to pray for me without saying the reason why and she said ‘You are gifted and know sometimes things are for seasons.’    This confirmed for me that the season was ending for me with regard to the Foundation Team at His Kingdom Come.

But giving up something that is successful without God saying what is next is bittersweet and I'm not good at just resting or not knowing what is coming next.

So what is next for me?  And what is my word for 2016?

Regular readers will know that I am involved in a new weekly online Bible study from my church: Glimpses of Jesus in the Old Testament.   And that I have signed up for rather a lot of online classes.

And my word?

Purpose

I'll explain why in another post on Sunday.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Christmas Countdown

Today I'm going to share with you my top 5 UK Christmas adverts for 2015.  I'm not getting paid to post them here and I apologise to my US readers if the videos don't play in your region.

#5  Because Cadbury's is my favourite chocolate

#4  I just love the clever boxes in this one

#3 Mog's nightmare

#2 John Lewis
The John Lewis Christmas advert is usually my number one choice.  This one is still great but there is one that supercedes it.

Drum roll please
At #1

Of course the whole point of these adverts is to sell stuff.  Not to point us towards the real meaning of Christmas.

There is a new advent study starting on His Kingdom Come today or you could use the study I wrote with Diane Marra last year: Pause, Ponder & Prepare.

Today is the first Sunday in Advent.  This is the period from now until Christmas Day when we consider the coming of Jesus.  And the world needs Jesus more than ever.

Continue the story

TMD:ReWind November week 4

This is the last of the ReWind posts before we start our Advent Study at His Kingdom Come.  The theme for this week was Promises - the promises of God.

Continuing with using my new Gelatos I scribbled 2 different colours - one on each page.

I wet the pages and then pressed one onto the other.

And peeled them apart to reveal this.

I left it to dry naturally.

I put two types of washi tape around the edge of the pages.

I put washi tape in random places on the page.  At this point I still had no idea where the page was going.

I printed out 5 verses and coloured the paper with Distress Ink.  I put the verses onto the pages and drew round them with a turquoise pen.  The pen didn't work well over the gelatos so some of the lines are a bit wonky!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

TMD:ReWind November week 3

This week's ReWind looks back to August's Shaped by Gratitude.

I used some shaped post-it type sheets onto my page and put gesso on the page.  The shapes acted as a mask.

When the gesso was dry I scribbled with the gelato colours.

I used a wet wipe to blend them together.

When I removed the green shapes some of them had bits stuck to the gesso but I left them  - added texture?

I wrote the theme word for each month of Take Me Deeper in oone of the shapes with a coloured pen.

Then I wrote prayers of gratitude based on that theme.

Only one more week of ReWind to go.   Come back next Saturday to see my journal page.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

TMD: ReWind November week 2

We are continuing with the ReWind theme in Take Me Deeper at His Kingdom Come.  This week's them looks back to Honour, the theme for July.

I used some of stick on letters to put the word honour in several places.

At this point I had no idea what I was going to do and then as I had the black gesso out I put black gesso over the whole page.

I wasn't quite sure how gelatos would work with this but I decided to give it a go.  As you can see in the photo below I scribbled on the page and then blended the colours.  I tried a small section with a wet wipe which wiped off some of the colour so I used a piece of paper towel instead.

I went over the letters with a silver gelato.

I added words and a border with a white Sharpie

It's not one of my favourite pages but at least I learned that you can put gelato colours on black gesso.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice