Clean & Simple: Week 12 - The final lesson

How did twelve weeks just fly by like that? It's the very last lesson in Cathy Zielske's Clean & Simple workshop. Thursdays won't be the same now I'm no longer logging on to watch Cathy's latest videos. And though it's the end, I can at least console myself that there are two weeks I missed doing whilst on holiday, so I can still look forward to those.

It's the same philosophy I've applied to watching my newly acquired Will & Grace Box Set. I've begun at season 6. When I come to the last episode of the final season, I'll still have season 1-5 to sit through. By the time I watch up to where I began, it won't feel like the end.

Anyway, I'm, digressing. Here's my interpretation of this seek's assignment.

This time around, using guidelines from Cathy, we were asked to produce a double A4 spread. The theme was to write about what it means to have arrived in 2013. When we were younger, we may have  wondered what life would be like as an adult. Same as a lot of kids, when I imagined myself when older, it was usually what will I be doing & look like when I hit thirty. Anything older, was inconceivable.

I didn't have room in the journaling space allotted, to dwell on how unhappy I felt as a teen and the dark outlook I saw for my future. I would be completely gobsmacked if I'd had a sneak peek into my life in my thirties and forties. My peers at school took it for granted that their lives would probably fall into a standard template; get married, have kids, grand kids etc. I didn't have a clue what I would be doing or what would be out there for me. I had to find out for myself.

What would have shaken my whole world back then, would be to have seen that here I am in 2013, to all intents, married, sharing a home with someone I've been with for seventeen years. I may have had some sad, lonely years in my teens but it didn't take long before it all started to look a whole lot brighter. It does indeed get better.

Which is what this very last homework reminded me about. There's a brilliant project called It Gets Better. You may even know about it already. It's a beautiful idea. It's a hopeful proclamation from those of us who've gone through the bad times and come through to the other side. Both celebrities and everyday folk have lent their voice to it. And I know, my younger self would have benefitted enormously from it's message.

Oh and I don't know if you can remember how I told you I kinda cheated on the last project? Well I did it again. I appreciate that you can use Photoshop to take your scrapbooking into the digital realm but if you're going to go down that route and you know all your memory keeping will be done on the computer, invest in Adobe InDesign. It's so much easier.

Have a great weekend my lovelies. I'm off to enjoy the last of the good weather and prepare for someone's birthday celebrations.