Every once in awhile you will find me just "going off" in my blog posts here.  So I am going to warn you – this is one of those posts!  So skip it now or hang in there with me.

It may be that I am living off of about 3 hours of sleep right now or just the fact that I have been heavily immersed in a project that has little to do with scrapbooking, but I woke up this morning with some seriously cool tutorials I want to record for you all – but don't have the time to do right now.

Such is the story of my life.  When I took a break this summer from seriously teaching to produce an income, taking a step back to find the passion I have for this hobby again, I seriously wondered if I would still be writing this blog at this point in the summer.

The good news (or bad news depending on your perspective) is that I am still here.  The more I have focused on my family and home, the more inspired I am with projects and ideas for this blog.  Granted, some weeks you get three big posts like last week, and others you don't hear from me at all.  Being a little inconsistent would have scared me three months ago.  Today I recognize it as the ebb and flow of life and creativity.

Everyday I keep up with several blogs.  A blog reader saves me so much time because I don't have to go to 172 sites everyday to check and see if they have written a new post - Google Blog Reader just fetches any new content and delivers it to me on my home page with my favorite newspaper feeds, etc. via iGoogle.

The interesting thing is that of all the blogs I read, I am finding that most of my favorite blogs don't write everyday just for the sake of posting.  My favorite blogs share things of value when they have them to share.  (To learn more about using a blog reader to streamline your online reading and make your own personalized content go here).

So that is what I am doing here.  There may be weeks where you will see a lot of posts from me – like the past seven days.  There are other days you won't see anything.  My commitment here is to only post when I feel like I have something to share that will help others.   A lot of my content is personal projects I am working on – most aren't professional enough to qualify for real teaching.

Thinking a lot this summer about who I am and what I want to share here has brought me to an interesting conclusion.  I share here what I would share with friends who wanted to know what I was up to in my personal projects and scrapbooking.  Much like if you came over to my home and were looking over my shoulder as I took you step by step through what made a project click for me.

Some of my ideas are controversial and over the top crazy – but they are still mine.  This is my creative journey and I'm just keeping it real.  What you also get here is a place where you can contact me and ask questions, and I will answer them the best I can.  I may not always be quick (especially when the answer to questions could be a class in itself) but I will get to them eventually.

That is the fun of the worldwide web.  So many people sharing so much – some of it paid content, other content free.  What you get here is free.  Not always perfect, but free.

So thank you for reading.  If you got this far in this post, you deserve an award!  When you read this, I will be up in the Utah mountains with 30+ girls and some other fun and fearless leaders for girls' camp.  I am looking forward to unplugging for a week and spending some time in the beautiful great outdoors.  I can't wait to sneak away for some early morning hikes with my camera in hand.  When I'm in the great outdoors, it just nourishes my soul, and after missing Yellowstone for two years, I can't wait.

I hope you all take some time to do something in this last weeks of summer that feeds your soul. If there is one thing I have learned this summer, it is that taking time away from this hobby has only reminded me of how much I love it and WHY.  I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for that…