Making my New Year better.

A few weeks ago, Family Christian Stores sent me a couple of appreciation certificates to buy some things in their store, in exchange for me telling them (and you) how I was going to use products from their company to make my New Year better.  I was thinking about what to write about, went to the website and found out that they sell craft supplies!!!!  Excitement!   I responded saying that I would buy supplies to do art journaling.  In the meantime, while shopping online I also found out that they sell yarn.  Joy!  I held on to the certificates for a little while, shopping off and on when I got a chance on the website and then finally (it was like 3 or 4 whole DAYS!), got to go to the store.  

In the store, I picked up a new bible, which is awesome and I needed a new one for the art journaling.  The store was nice and I saw a lot of things that I really liked.  I bought a few Christmas presents.

 I got some really good deals on some Christmas music and impulsively bought this cute little ornament.

I didn't find the crafty goodness though.  Turns out, they have so incredibly much on their website, it just won't fit in a normal sized store.  So off to the website I went again.  I found yarn !  There are good prices too, competitive prices.  I spend a lot of time in the yarn aisle of some major craft store chains, so I know.  I put some wonderful 100% wool yarn in my cart.  :-)

Then off I went to look at markers and paint.  Fun!!!  If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know that I've been doing a lot of art journaling and that I draw and color a bunch of flowers and trees and consequently, go through a TON of green markers.  I have been looking, for nearly a year, for a reasonably priced package of all green markers and guess what, I found it!  Six various shades of green for 11:99.  They are the alcohol based markers which are similar to the very expensive Copic markers.  I got these and have been using them on pretty much every page I have made lately.  They are awesome!

So, to summarize, in my quest to make my new year better, I went to Family Christian, got free shipping to the store, got a new cool bible (!), new yarn (!), new markers (!) and 100% of the profits went to help widows and orphans in need.   One of the days I was shopping was during the week that they were sending 100% of the profits to a charity that works in the Dominican Republic to house and free young girls who are victims of human trafficking, which means, that I am not only making my own new year better with my crafting therapy, I made someone else's new year better as well!  Here's the afghan I'm making with the wool yarn ... it's wonderfully soft and warm.

And here are some new art journal pages featuring the new greens cause no matter what colors I choose for the flowers, the leaves are pretty much always green.  :-)

Something else I kind of want to make my new year better is this Blessing Jar   This picture has been going around Facebook and I think this one from Family Christian is way cuter. In case you don't open the link, it's white ceramic and on the side it says Count Your Blessings.  I do think that making a point to focus on the good is what makes life bearable during the hard times and helping others is just about the best thing ever so my experiences shopping at Family Christian this season have been a win-win.