Virtuous Scrapbooking frustrations and Homestead learning tools

Here are my beautiful maidens. If you have been reading my blog recently you know that I've been leading a Bible Study on Raising Maidens of Virtue using Stacy McDonald's book by the same name. Using a suggestion at the back of the book we also have been scrapbooking the lessons.

I am not a scrapper booker. While it is fun, I just don't find it as relaxing as other crafts because the lay out and creativeness just doesn't come naturally to me. I worry too much about if my pictures are in the right place and if I've done the best layout I could. I've checked out books on scrapbooking from the library and the time and creativity people put into their pages is just amazing. I can come up with great quilt designs with no problem but for some reason scrap booking is just not my creative forte'. Any whoo how... I am trying to put together pages that go with the theme of each lesson. The pictures are easy enough to take and print out but finding the right embellishments is a bit frustrating.

I went to look for some tonight at a local scrap store. (A little local one, not a national chain craft store.) I wanted stickers that show modest fashion. Yes, I was naive enough to think that this little store in the Bible belt of Michigan, that is closed Sundays and plays Christian music over their sound system, might just have something in that category. At least something historical or even with a Parisian twist. Nope. I also wanted something that celebrated Godly feminity. Ahhh... nope. I mean I did find a few things that passed but they were more of a make do kind of thing and not what I really wanted. Most of the stuff in the store spoke worldly messages showing women as party going, shop happy, girlfriend celebrating, self-centered vixens. The girl selections were either cutesy ponies and lollipops or hot pink zebra designs shouting the virtues of rock star glam. I know this is what most people want and that the store is in the business to sell things but surely there are other people like me out there that desire something else. Can someone point me in the direction of a scrapbooking supplier/designer that caters to home-centered, Proverbs 31 women?


It was a relief to come home to the mailbox after scrapbook shopping to find some good rural reading and homestead how-to learning.

We have a free subscription to Living the Country Life and that came today. (John snatched it up to read first.)

Also our little local power company sends out a free country type magazine every month. That came today.

And at the Grocery store I noticed the new edition of Mary Jane's Farm was out, so I came home with it. Like I don't have enough reading. Mary Jane's Farm is a fun magazine to read with beautiful pictures but it does have a feminist bent to it. I get it to spur my homestead creativity (I like pretty and functional) and I filter out the "woman power" mumbo-jumbo. Contrary to public opinion these days life's not "all about me."

Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels this way!