This layout is going into a special album I have for the women in my family, I call it Portraits of Ladies. My unoffical rules for that album are that I use the maiden name of each women, make the main picture one of them in their young adult years, include at least one fairly current picture, include hidden journaling with their story and my relationship them and tell how they have affected my life.

supplies used:
American Crafts monogram paper (it's ironic that the papers with her initials are these colors, because she works at Auburn University, lol)
American Crafts alphas
rubons - What's New, It Takes Two, Basic Grey, Maisy Mo
ink - Technique Tuesday
stamps -
Creative Memories corner rounder
pocket - 7Gypsies

journaling (very long):
Toni Cumpton, born in Eufaula, Alabama, grew up in the turmoil known to all children of soldiers. The youngest of five children until her parents adopted a baby girl; she accepted life such as it was – constant movement across country, making friends in new schools every other year and often little food on the table as her parents struggled to make ends meet. Yet when she speaks of her childhood she shows no resentment for the difficulties they faced. She learned to be pleasant to strangers and yearned for the day that she could put down solid roots for a family of her own. Unfortunately the wanderlust that plagued her mother and grandmother also lives deep in her soul and my mother is never more motivated than when she senses a change.

My mother is a good person. It sounds simple, and perhaps mundane, but I can tell you she is neither simple nor mundane. She is passionate, creative, talented, motivated, hard-working, caring, devoted, honest, and generous. And at the heart of it, she has a beautiful soul. Mom’s first instinct is to do what is right: to protect the unprotected, to feed the hungry, to care for the sick and wounded, to teach the children and to minister to the lost. She is a blessing in this world where too many others are a burden. When she is needed, she is there. She packed up her life and moved 400 miles to care for her aging parents, and just when she could grasp at the freedom that comes with seeing your children into adulthood she took on the added responsibility of raising a granddaughter who needed a stable force in her life.

There was never anyone as suited to motherhood as Toni Cumpton, for she possesses every motherly instinct a child could hope their mother would have. My earliest memories are of my mother reading to us by porch light on hot summer nights and singing us to sleep in her rocking chair on cold winter evenings. I can still close my eyes and hear hymns such as “Bringing in the Sheaths” and “That Old Rugged Cross” in her soft, clear voice. I believe I fell in love with reading during those evenings when she would balance Aesop’s Fables on her lap and encourage our interest in the written word. My first remembered experience with the Bible was to look over her shoulder and marvel at the red words that represented the voice of Jesus as she read to us from the New Testament.

Mom always lived by the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” She taught us to “Love your neighbor as yourself” and we watched her embody that teaching on a daily basis. She explained to us that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life” and believed it with a faith that could move mountains, and so we believed. Her faith has been rock-solid through the years; I’ve seen her turn to God time and again when it seemed that no one else in the world cared or would listen to her, and at times I’m ashamed to say that might have included her own daughters. And yet, each time, again she lived her teachings, to “turn the other cheek.” She forgives and asks to be forgiven, she moves ahead with the belief that Christ will provide exactly the amount of strength she needs to make it through the rainy days and freely worships him without a moments hesitation when the sun shines through the clouds.

More than any of the wonderful gifts she has given us, more than any of the good traits she possesses, more than any of the good deeds she has accomplished, my mother’s faith, much larger than a mustard seed, absolutely formed the foundation of the woman I am today. This is the portrait of Toni Cumpton Hession, a woman I am proud to call my mom. Mom is an honest woman, a hard-working woman, a loving woman, a woman of faith – Mom is a woman of strength.