When I was home at Christmas, I spent more time in my hometown than I had in many, many years. Living about an hour from there, I always drove to my parents' house and then drove home, but now that we live in Colorado, driving home every night wasn't an option.
While I was there, it really sunk in for me how much your heart can be tied to a place. Whether it's the place where you grew up or the place you spent every summer or your grandmother's house...places are so much more than places...
When I was working for Memory Makers, I wrote an article about "Scrapbooking Your Stomping Ground." I guess even then, I knew there was special significance to the park I went to to practice for that audition and the train tressels where the entire senior class signed their names.
I suppose that's why creating a small midwestern town where the streets are named after flowers and the Main Street is still a brick road came naturally to me...Sweethaven is every good feeling about small town USA I could muster...and believe me, I could muster a lot.
I asked two amazingly talented friends to scrapbook a place with special significance, and these girls have created layouts that are sure to inspire. They're gorgeous!
First, look at Linda Barber's (do you think she's related to Luke? A long lost cousin, maybe?) ode to LA. She moved there not long ago, and the city is finding a way into her heart...
I can't begin to tell you all the things I love about this layout. The colors, the sewing, the design... but I especially love the story...
I know first-hand how moving can challenge everything you thought you knew about yourself. There are still days I wonder if Colorado will ever feel like home...but Linda's layout, documenting this moment in her journey, reminds me that I need to do the same...
I don't even know what to say about this:
I told Linda this is why she's so "dream-teamy" (because she's on the Creating Keepsakes Dream Team.) I mean, really? A stitched title? It makes me want to send her all my photos and have her scrap them for me.
And this sub-title treatment with the photo in the stitched frame is killing me...
I have sewing machine envy. It makes me want to learn how to use mine already!
Have you scrapped your hometown? Your stomping ground?
What about a vacation spot that holds a special place in your heart? Lisa VanderVeen, another California girl, created a two-page spread about Mackinac Island, a place where no cars are allowed...
It sounds heavenly to me...and it has a lot of the same elements that Sweethaven has...a town that takes you back in time somehow, to a day when things were just a little simpler. And even if things got complicated, they still felt simpler.
It's funny how small-town living can do that. Lisa's layout is full of adorable little details (the wooden bike is such a cute addition to her title, I can hardly stand it.)
And it spoke to my intense love of scallops...
So, what about you...is there a place you love, one that's captured your heart? One that you were smitten with from the very moment you stepped foot in it?
Have you ever created a piece of art about it?
Who knows...
Maybe that place is waiting for you right on the pages of a book...if you're looking to be transported, I've got just the one.
Escape to Sweethaven (in paperback or on Kindle) right HERE.
Maybe I'll see you walking down Main Street or having a donut in Sweets on Sweethaven... or perhaps we'll ride the old wooden carousel together or dip our feet in the lake down by the Boardwalk...
