Exactly Enough Time

When I realized that my 100th episode would fall on Christmas Eve, I wondered what topic I could share that might both celebrate my favorite holiday and this podcasting milestone. I decided to give you the gift of words and music—to create a short mash-up if you will that combines some of my favorite words in quotes and scripture mingled with (in my opinion) some of the BEST Christmas music available. I hope as you wrap up details for the big day tomorrow, this will be cause for smiling, singing or both!

For 100 hundred consecutive weeks I’ve managed to show up for myself and this effort to put something light and happy into the world. I’m not podcasting to grow a massive audience or become rich and famous. I’m podcasting simply because God gave me a voice and because I am curious about people and ideas.

I love the work that I’ve been blessed to do in the memory keeping space for so many years and I’m truly thankful for YOU (anyone and everyone) that has participated with me in recognizing the importance of personal stories and the opportunity we all have to celebrate life by lending some permanence to a few of the moments we experience and treasure.

I’ve created a handful of shareable images that you can use to multiply my message today (in the show notes at stacyjulian.com) Feel free to grab anyone of these to keep, use or pass on in any way you choose.

And, THANK YOU for listening.
❤️ I LOVE hearing from you, via comments here, on social media or through SpeakPipe messages.

Let me know what you’d enjoy hearing more of in the next 100 episodes of Exactly Enough Time and please enjoy a Merry Christmas!

My guest today leans into the left side of her brain, so that she can more fully enjoy the right-brained aspects of her craft. She is Jennifer Wilson and she is the creator of the Simple Scrapper membership—which launched in 2008 to better explore in a community setting how modern memory keeping can fill you up and fit your busy life. Through Simple Scrapper, Jennifer helps thousands not get stuck doing what they love AND in 2019, Jennifer launched the Scrapbook Your Way podcast to extend the conversation about breaking the rules and documenting in your own way.

➡️ If you’ve been thinking about documenting more or differently next year, go to simplescrapper.com/stacy to get in on what’s called a Planning Party. This is a unique page that Jennifer set up just for my listeners—and it’s the kind of guidance you can expect with Simple Scrapper membership.

I have great respect for Jennifer and the work she does in the memory keeping space. She brings people together and does a fantastic job of encouraging, inspiring and supporting them as they pursue their own version of scrapbooking success. She is a true storyteller and always willing to share her process. Check out one of her recent videos—a story about a beloved pillow!

You can see much more like this over on the Simple Scrapper YouTube channel.

Back in 2013, Jennifer and I team taught a BPC class called, The Art + Science of Scrapbooking, which was such kick in the pants. We both enjoy whole brains—obviously—but for this class, we led out with our creative preferences to give each other (and everyone else) assignments that would be challenging and prove to move us out of our individual comfort zones. Pages that I made in response of Jennifer’s challenges remain some of my most favorite!

I LOVED hearing Jennifer’s response to my People, Places & Things question. She shared about her transformative experience traveling to Sweden earlier this year and being introduced to people who shared a scrapbook of her ancestors. What an amazing treasure that speaks to the power and importance of family history in our scrapbooking.

And finally, Jennifer and I talk about how she has adapted principles I wrote about in my book, Photo Freedom. Since I am refreshing this content for an online course for 2021, I wanted to catch up and hear her thoughts and some details about her current organizational approach when it comes to both storytelling and storing or displaying finished pages. We are both big believers in sharing what works, but doing it in a way that can be readily customized.

Don’t forget you can SAVE $30 on registration for Photo Freedom when you use promo code ENOUGHTIME

Topics for this podcast are definitely varied, but I regularly circle back around to my passion for storytelling and this is one of those episodes. I know you’ll enjoy learning more about Jennifer’s journey and the work she does to help others.

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I played ABBA’s Slipping Through My Fingers song as my intro—not only because it represents a desire to slow time but also because ABBA is a Swedish pop group. Both this song and Jennifer have Swedish roots!

Monica Wihongi is president of the Utah-based, papercrafting company, Close To My Heart AND a mother of seven—need I say more?

For reals though, you’re in for a treat today—I adore Monica. We’ve known each other for nearly 30 years and she is the real deal—she is family and future focused and dedicated to doing what’s right in business and life. I love my history with CTMH, so I’m tickled that you have this opportunity to get to know Monica and her work a bit better. You’ll get to hear first-hand what its been like to be at the helm of a direct sales company with thousands of independent contractors in the middle of a pandemic. What has changed? What hasn’t? How is Close To My Heart staying relevant and robust?

Monica will also share some exciting changes at CTMH. You’ll get to learn about at the name change for CTMH independent contractors, from consultants to makers and about a new VIP customer appreciation and incentive program.

Follow these links to learn more:
1. Love CTMH? Take advantage of VIP Special Pricing through December, 2020
2. Join a community of Makers and you can operate your own paper crafting business with products you love and all the support you need.

Also, here’s the blog post that outlines my Story Starter Covid style. There’s a link about half way down to the class I taught with CTMH on Facebook.

Since recording this episode with Monica, she has welcomed grandson #2 and announced the imminent arrival of grand baby #3. She has a beautiful and growing family!

I think you’ll leave feeling inspired by Monica’s story, her open heart and her commitment to seeing founder, Jeanette Lynton’s vision honored and upheld. I’m truly grateful for the gateway into memory keeping that I experienced because of Jeanette and (now) Close To My Heart. I have LOVED partnering with them on my Story by Stacy line of products.

In fact, I played a SpeakPipe message from Kim, who will be receiving a Story Starter kit!

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I opened today’s episode with Rise Up, from Andra Day’s debut album, Cheers to the Fall.
When I Googled Andra to learn more, I found this commercial for Apple TV that beautifully showcases Andra talent and welcomes in the holiday season.

Thanks (as always) for listening.
I’ve got exciting plans for 2021, so make sure you’re on my email list and that you’re following along on Instagram, @stacyjulian

AND, remember that podcast listeners can save $30 off Photo Freedom with code ENOUGHTIME
Register here.

My guest today understands media. He has been working with it his whole career, so when he retired to spend time organizing and archiving his private collection of photos and home movies AND couldn’t find what he was looking for, he created it. I’m excited for you to listen and learn about Collectionaire a virtual hub or gathering of links to ALL of your digitized stuff. All of it. You know the idiom, a place for everything and everything in its place—that’s what Stanley (Stan) Kinsey has built and it is a remarkable solution for family connection and sharing.

I discovered Collectionaire this past winter at RootsTech and I knew immediately that it was exactly what I didn’t know I could be looking for—it was the best kind of exhibition hall surprise—and I signed up on the spot. Now I enthusiastically recommend it for anyone and everyone who feels overwhelmed by all the content they’ve digitized and are storing in the cloud—or maybe yet on thumb drives—because this is how we are going to organize it all and curate it to become a beautiful and sharable legacy collection.

After listening, you can begin your personal exploration by watching one of these introductory videos—but then you’ll want to head to Collectionaire.com for additional getting started guidance. Don’t go without the Exactly Enough Time PROMO code that will save you 50% on the first two years of a subscription. That code is EET2020 and it expires on December 31st—so you’ll want to act fast.

An index in the cloud to content in the cloud is my favorite explanation (to date) of what Collectionaire does. Pictured here are some of the cloud-based services that provide share links that can be gathered together in your personal of collection.

If you’re familiar with the structure of a family tree then you’ll find the organization at Collectionaire to be very intuitive. Each person on your tree can have their own collection—the number of links noted just below their photo—and family collections are accessed by clicking the link icon between a couple. This feature is one of my personal favorites, because there are so many aspects of my story that I actually share with my family—and now I have a way to show and share that!

I’m so excited for you to give Collectionaire a try—as I’ve gotten to know its features more, I’m convinced it is the future of memory keeping (archiving) especially for families. My children and grandchildren are already most comfortable consuming media on mobile devices and now with my growing collections, they can view family media in that same, familiar and super accessible way.

NOTE: Stan talked briefly about creating a digitized “flip book” of a physical scrapbook. This is done by photographing or scanning scrapbook pages and creating a digital PDF version. This is something I will teach in Photo Freedom 2021, but there are also services that will do the scanning for you. EverPresent is one such company. Scanning is quite pricy—about $2.99—per scrapbook page.

For an interesting read on ALL that Stan has done in his long and storied career, read his wikipedia page.

In February my son, Taft was extended a call to serve a 2-year church mission with the assignment to labor in Lima, Peru. According to that original plan, we would have put him on an airplane to the missionary training center (MTC) in Lima this morning—June 25th. Of course a worldwide pandemic in March has altered many of the hows and wheres of missionary preparation and service since then.

Note: You can read more about the feat of bringing tens of thousands of foreign-serving missionaries home safely, here.

My son, Trey, who was serving in Sonora, Mexico was one who’s mission was cut short. He returned home on March 31st.

Without hesitation, our biggest pandemic perk has been having these boys at home together—in this unexpected way—and I couldn’t resist sitting them down to talk openly about returning home from and heading out to a mission—this most fascinating aspect of our religious culture.

We are definitely a missionary family. Both Geoff and I served as young adults (Geoff served in Boise, Idaho and I served in Frankfurt, Germany) and Taft is now my 4th son to serve. Clark served in Salt Lake City (the south mission, speaking Spanish) and Chase served in the Missouri, St. Louis mission. For this conversation I solicited questions via social media and we were able to discuss most of them. I hope you’ll don your curiosity cap and listen with an open mind. This is not about what we believe so much as it is about the life and experiences of a young missionary.

Of course I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, and there is plenty more to explore if you keep reading.

[photo] Meeting Elder Trey Julian at the Spokane airport on March 31st.

[photo] Elder Taft Julian attending his first day of missionary training in Peru (via Zoom) June 24th.

[photo] Trey tells a story of La Familia Fierro—this is the photo I promised to share!

I must admit that recording this conversation with my boys is selfishly motivated—we’re living through such an interesting time in world history—that I am grateful to add this to my growing collection of Covid-19 experiences.

[photo] There’s a decent chance that you either know someone who has or is currently serving a mission for the LDS church—you’ve likely seen two white-shirted men on biking or walking on the street before and you have even had a pair of Elders or Sisters on your doorstep, but they and what they do may still be unfamiliar to you. For this reason, here are a few additional resources ...

A concise list of 10 Things to know about missionaries.

LDS missionaries on Wikipedia

Life in a Missionary Training Center (video)

What missionaries teach and what we believe can be explore at comeuntochrist.org . Right now, missionaries are doing most of their teaching online, via Facebook and Zoom, so it’s easy to connect with them.

We (the Julians) respect everyone’s right to believe or not believe as they choose, but I love the scripture my son, Clark sent in a text message to Taft this morning (see below.)

He added, “Elder Julian has been sent!”

“For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tiding of good things? ” — Romans 10:12-15

[video] A glimpse into the life of a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

[video] I opened this episode with the song, Called to Serve as sung by a choir of missionaries.

As always, thank YOU for listening!