The Studio Challenges - Looking Back

Hello, everyone! Happy Sunday to you! I hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas! Poor Ada was sick on Christmas eve but she woke up bright and early on Christmas morning feeling much better and ready to see what Santa had brought for her.

It's time for a new challenge at The Studio Challenges today and since we are at the end of 2020 we thought we want you to look back and review the year. What did you learn? Or what would you prefer to forget?

2020 has been quite a year, and thankfully, it has not been too terribly bad for us considering everything that has gone on. Don't get me wrong - living through a pandemic is something I hope I never have to live through again, but all in all, it has been a pretty decent year for us.

Here is my layout:

So, when I started this layout, my first thought was to do my journaling on the white paper circle. I did not realize I would have so much to say! I had to create a pocket on the back of my layout to stick my journaling down into.

Here is a close-up of my embellishment cluster - and what I based all of my journaling on for this layout. Yes, the flair piece is purple and there isn't another purple thing on this layout, but I don't care, it needed to be used!

I based my layout on Sketch #214 from Sketch N Scrap:

I tend to not want to dwell on the bad and focus more on the good of things, so I picked one of my favorite photos from this year for my layout. As I said above, the stamped piece and the flair piece are the focus of my journaling. I feel like we have been in training for the past 10 or 15 years, not for a pandemic, of course, but for the staying at home part. 

We are homebodies at heart and living with Shane where you have to plan, and prepare, and try to anticipate anything that might come up while you are out, and plan some more...well, being a homebody is not that bad. I mean let's be real here -when we go shopping with Shane we have a very limited amount of time that we can be out because when Shane is done shopping, everyone is done shopping! It doesn't matter if you are only half done with grocery shopping, when he is done you better hurry or things can get to be a hot mess in a second! So we learned long ago to get in, get what we need, and get out as fast as we can! Not a bad thing to know how to do this year! I can't even remember what a leisurely shopping trip - to just go and look - is! Staying home and only going out for the essentials is nothing new to us.

I can't believe that I am saying this, but it has also done wonders for Shane. When the shutdowns started it was only the three of us - Scott, Shane, and myself - for so long. We kept Shane mostly at home those first few weeks - only going for a drive, or to go pick up some food to get him out of the house - because with him being nonverbal the thought of him getting sick is not something I like to even think about. 

Visits from Abby, Shawn, and Ada, and Matthew coming home for a day or two were very few and far between early on. When they finally started coming back over for a visit now and then, he was genuinely happy to see them and interacted more with them than ever before. 

He now happily puts on a mask to go shopping and enjoys our weekly trips to the store and to his favorite flea market to look for movies.

I picked my favorite photo of the three of us - on our way to pick something up to eat.  Scott and I were being goofy and Shane was giving a look like - sheesh, my parents are such nerds!  So 2020 for most has been a pretty crappy year, but for us, we've actually had a few positives come from it. 

Be sure to stop by The Studio Challenges to see the beautiful layouts from the rest of the design team. I hope you can find some time to play along with us.