I am trying to squeeze in all of the fun art challenges that I love to take part in, during this slightly hectic time of year. This months GPP STREET TEAM challenge is to add the sense of ‘smell’ to your journal pages. How yummy is that? While pondering this challenge in the back of my mind, in the midst of baking cookies like a mad woman, and wishing I could capture the smell of the roasting, candied pecans, I opened my personal journal and realized that I had already added a scent to the pages that marks some exciting happenings in this holiday season. These pages were done while on the way to visit my son during his Basic Training. Only having limited supplies on hand, and being stuck in the airport, waiting for a flight, forced me to get creative. Isn’t that a GREAT thing?! I decided I would only use things found in the airport. As you can see, there are ticket stubs, some old Jeps (pilot talk for maps, as DH was doing revisions to his charts while we waited)I sketched DH’s aviator glasses, ripped off old tags on our luggage, and wondered how to add some background color to the page. I took a sip of my Starbucks and the light bulb went off! So much to my families dismay (they never know what I might use in my journal and always ask before throwing anything out-lol) I started dripping my coffee right onto the page and smooshing it around with my fingers.

Now when I open my journal, the scent of coffee wafts out and reminds me of early mornings, travel, and warmth. This Christmas, said son is coming home on leave and getting married to his sweetheart. We will again be traveling, this time to Washington, to take part in the wedding and welcoming a daughter to our family. She called me the other day and asked if I wanted to go and get my hair done with her for the wedding, now that is something I have waited for my whole life, Mother-daughter time! I love my boys dearly, but it will be so wonderful to have a daughter in our family.

A little Shout Out to Michelle, ‘Somerset Art Journals’ is featuring an article of mine and some journal pages, due out January 1. 2009, and one of the pages uses some stamps from Michelle Ward, and another page was done using handcarved stamps from one of her earlier challenges. This page talks about GPP Street team and Michelle! So very cool that these are some of the pages that they chose to use!