Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

greater faith, greater growth

Mar 26


this morning, i am overwhelmed with the goodness of God. sometimes i feel silly writing statements like that, because really? write something you haven’t written before, Jamie. oops, sorry. can’t. i truly am overwhelmed afresh each month with His goodness. i summed up 2011 with the word growth… and for 2012, i chose the word faith. three months into 2012, i am discovering that perhaps more accurately, my word should be greater faith to believe for even greater growth.

God is stretching, pushing, challenging, breaking, restoring, transforming, healing me — and i feel loved. isn’t that crazy? i feel loved because He has not allowed me to be comfortable. comfortable people sit fat and happy. comfortable people don’t cover any new territory. comfortable people are passive. God keeps calling me forward while continually pushing me from behind. Psalm 139:5 — “You hem me in, behind and before & lay your hand upon me.”

i want what God has because i know with such conviction it’s an incredible, blessed, abundant future. leanne once observed how i can always wrap seasons of my life into this is the lesson God taught me & this is why it was necessary for me to learn that. it’s true. it’s nerdy but i do this. it’s why i write for hours and spend time alone. it’s what makes me excited about life — actively seeking opportunities to learn about God — and finding He is actively seeking opportunities to teach me!

it’s such a cool gift. God wants me to grow.
i like these blogs from this winter — it’s my heart for you to read:
sheer gift, serve & trust and dictating truth.

growing is cool.
i am in a great season.

[i only wish i had a more relevant picture to add to this post. but hey, sydney's pretty.]

 

 

 

bedroom tour: before & after

Mar 12


when we moved into a different house this past summer, i was excited about the chance to start fresh with a new bedroom. we had lived in our previous house for fifteen years. i had a mondo-bedroom. we built and designed the house with my bedroom as “two in one” — framed to easily have a wall added for re-sale. we never added the wall, so consequently, i had a bedroom twice the size [if not more than that] of my bedroom now. it was the biggest challenge to go from tons of space & two big closets to… this. check out the sweet before photo of my bedroom in june. no furniture. nothing on the walls. ugly beige paint colour. orange flooring. lovely box in the corner.

and… TA-DAHHHH.
after photo.

i had a ton of ideas for my bedroom; it was overwhelming. in september i made seven trips to ikea. seven. i haven’t been back since and i rejoice! ikea is fun times if you’re going to browse and party and spend a lazy day trying out all the couches and pretending you live in the little rooms. when you’re rushing in and making notes and going to the warehouse and standing in return lines it suddenly becomes annoying. the biggest project in my room was the photo wall. i have traveled my face off in the last three years and i was craving a way to  surround myself with the world.

i was very systematic with how i planned out this business. it took HOURS. first, i had to comb through thousands of files to find the photos i wanted to print. that was a hard decision. then i had to map out in photoshop the layout of the photos, with the size of frames i wanted, on the amount of wall space i had available. then i had to choose metal, white or black frames, write down how many of which i needed. then i had to hang them over the course of a few evenings. i say, a few evenings, and not one, because i felt like giving up multiple times. my friend leah & i used her iPhone as a level [cool app!] and marked my entire wall with a pencil and a ruler. not to mention the times we pounded a nail in the wall only to realize, oh crap, that needed to be one inch up. do not look behind these frames. there is some serious destruction. but it’s pretty on the outside & i feel good about this.

i mainly chose prints from our cannon beach road trip, my UK trip [london, scotland, ireland] & one or two images from montreal — unfortunately it wasn’t my most-recent montreal trip [that was after this wall was already done] but from autumn of 2010.  i also found three prints on etsy that i love — i’m all about typography. obviously, the one above my bed is the alphabet & the two on the side say “small acts transform the world” and “i like boring things.”

left: a project above the white chair in my bedroom. little clipboards of people and notes i love. my BFFs kristen and leanne, my brother brandon & my friend sam at my twenty-first birthday party, my friend kelsey the morning i took photos of her & jon, a little note from my friend jess, a prayer card for my friend jayme who’s serving in uganda for six months.

right: i adore this print from my trip with sarah for joanna & alex’s tofino wedding. tofino is such a rainy, cold, beautiful, magical place. i want to go back to that cabin and dance in the rain. i like that i look at this moody scene every day. i also have a nice little collection of candles that i should light more often & my earring tree.

above: more little trinkets. my jewellery box, two old photos of my family — about four years ago. an instax polaroid camera i don’t use near enough, three bottles of perfume, a lantern from urban outfitters.

there’s another half of my room, the closet we renovated, that i still need to show off. but it needs a tad more work! ;)
hope you enjoyed this little look into my world.

uppercase journal: giveaway

Feb 17


in salt lake city at alt design summit, uppercase journal was giving away a copy of their latest issue at one of the mini-parties! they also mentioned we could feel free to grab a second one for a blog giveaway and i thought, hey. that’d be fun. i like giving stuff away. i read this issue from cover to cover on the flight home and it’s fantastic. incredibly designed; so simple but crammed with great design and quirky typography — and full of stories about artists that are living out their dreams. comment on this blog post if you’d like to win! i’ll ship this copy to a random commenter. ;)

contest is open until monday morning. good luck!