I'm a Southern Gal

I issued a challenge to all the gals at Pages in Time to step out of their comfort zones and do a LO that was not in their customary style.  And I gave that challenge to myself as well.  I had a tough time with this, I just have a hard time keeping in simple!  After messing up several sheets of paper and wasting a lot of time, I finally met the challenge and came up with this.  I really like the simplicity of this.  I have a wide carriage printer so I was able to print my journaling directly on my cardstock.

The background CS is BasicGrey, the embellies are K& Co Tim Coffey and the rose colored mat is also K & Co.

We moved back to Nc in 2008 and I just love being here and I'm a little suprised by that.  The journal expresses my feelings about that.

The journal says:

I’m a Southern Gal
I don’t think I realized how much I love red clay dirt under my fingernails until we moved back to North Carolina. I’ve always claimed the world as my home since Dad was in the Army and we lived on 3 different continents while I was growing up. However, I recently realized how much southern blood runs through these world-traveled veins of mine.
I wondered if I would like being back here in the south where the pace is just a bit slower and people are just a little different. However, the decision was based on a need to be close to my parents in their final years so the decision was really a no-brainer. This is where I belong right now, I reasoned with myself, because my parents need me.
From the moment we moved into our home, I fell in love with my south all over again It has been more than 30 years since I called this place home and yet it felt so right from the very beginning. How I loved it when the FedEx man delivered a package to me and called me Shug. Now you may think that silly or disrespectful, but it’s not, it’s the south. It’s how we love each other, just because we are friends and neighbors. How I love going to “town” and I still marvel at the gentle smiles from strangers who say good morning to me.
And I love that age-old southern question, who are your people? I’ve been asked that so many times when I mention the name of the small southern town near here where my parents grew up. Do you know so and so? Yes, I know them, I went to school with them or my brother did. We are bound by tobacco fields and pig pickins. Our grandparents dipped snuff, we all know what real barbeque is, and they don’t make it in Texas! Basketball is a religion second only to being a Baptist or Methodist.
When I think of the south, I see rafts of azaleas seeming to float around the ancient live oaks and tall pines that they surround. I see white and pink lacey dogwoods dressing up the understory of the tall trees. The first fall I set about turning our house into a southern oasis by planting 30 some azalea bushes. I was rewarded the following spring with beautiful pink, white and red blooms. When the first azaleas bloomed, it brought a smile to my heart and I knew I had found my forever home after 30 years of wandering. Those bright flowers just wrapped their blooms around my soul and vested it with a calming peace.

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