fresh and juicy...

This post and layout are also shared today on the blog at Love is in the Details.

So here we are, at the end of November;  Christmas carols are playing from every speaker you walk by, the trees and lights are going up all over the land, but there is no Christmas themed layout here for you today!  Instead, I thought I'd share a layout from last summer about the wonderful cherries I enjoyed!  Lol, seems logical, yes??

You remember the cherries of summer, right?  Nowadays you can get watermelon and Cutie oranges all year 'round, and believe me, I remember when it wasn't always that way! But you can still only get cherries for a few short weeks in the middle of summer.  So when they're in season, we indulge.  Why is this worth mentioning?  Well, because for me, scrapbooking is about documenting what I love as well as who I love.  Or where I go, or with whom.  Y'know? So this layout today is about the cherries I loved last summer and the lovely wooden swing at the lake where I sat, with a book, ALL ALONE enjoying my cherries.  Maybe you had to be there, but it was a memory I love remembering.

I still try to take a photo everyday, a habit I started back in 2008.  Sometimes it's of things I'm doing that day, but quite often it will be a photo of something I saw and really loved and felt thankful for.  Taking a photo helps me both remember and feel gratitude.  As a result, I have many, many photos of things to document, that aren't about a trip or an event or people in my life, but are still significant to me.

Some other things I'm thankful for is gold Heidi Swapp acetate words, and Kaisercraft ephemera die-cuts (I used a lot of those here!), and puffy stickers by Amy Tangerine, and subtle mixes of patterned papers, also by Kaisercraft.

About that mix of patterned papers.  You see them along the left hand side of the layout?  They are a mix of die cuts and papers from a couple of different Kaisercraft paper lines, as well as a scrap or two from my scrap drawer.  I love patterned paper and would use it all over my layouts if my creative brain would let me.  But it's usually way too much.  I often find that it's more effective to patch together, just a few small pieces of the papers that support the overall design.  Piling them up upon themselves this way, and stitching them to the page gives a visual weight that balances the layout and also suggests a playfulness that goes along with photos of bowls of cherries.

Thanks for stopping by today!  I hope I've given you a fresh perspective of what's photo worthy in this day of digital photography, and of what memory keeping can stretch to include.