Hi there, this is Tami Morrison for Big Picture Scrapbooking and I'm hoping you will join me in becoming an Explorer of the World! Picture me on the front of the Titanic while I say that...okay, maybe not.

If you haven't had a chance to read Keri Smith's awesome, How to be an Explorer of the World book yet, then this class is the perfect opportunity to see what you've been missing. And if you have read it, then you already know what an amazing source of inspiration and fun the book is.

This class borrows twenty explorations from the book and adapts them to a daily e-mail format that will be meaningful to you as a scrapbooker and as someone who just wants to infuse more fun and zest into your everyday experiences.

So I have a little story to share to give you an idea of the vision behind this class. I enjoy hiking, but I have a bad knee, so I have to be careful when I'm hiking not to tweak it. I spend a lot of time looking down at the trail in front of me trying to choose the harder packed areas and avoid the loose rocks that could throw off my footing and land me on the couch for a week of soap operas and Advil. But here's the thing, I realize that when I spend so much time looking at the path in front of me, I miss a lot of what's going on around me - the fantastic views, the interesting scenery, and most importantly that feeling of being connected to the environment around me, to nature. So even though it makes me a slower hiker, I do make a conscious effort to stop in my tracks every so often and look around and take it all in. Slowing down is necessary for me because there is a whole world out there that I don't want to miss and I would have a very abbreviated view of the world around me if I only looked at what was directly in front of my feet. I need to look beyond the path to see the big picture all around me and to take notice of what I'm part of. I also need to look ahead to the horizon sometimes to see where I'm heading, and I occasionally need to turn around and look back to see where I've been.

Now exploring life is not all that different from exploring a hiking trail. It's easy to fix your eyes directly in front of you and to stick to the path and forget to look up. It's easy to miss the view, or it's easy to miss a trail branching off to the side that might lead you someplace entirely different from where you intended to go. This class is designed to help you look up. Some of the exercises might seem kind of silly at times, but that's the point. They are designed to avert your eyes from the ordinary, to help you stop worrying for a few minutes about the even footing and just take in what's around you. When you are an explorer of the world, or of your life, you open yourself to new experiences that help you learn more about yourself and the world around you. You deepen your appreciation for the everyday things that define who you are and you learn to take notice and marvel at the ordinary stuff you've been taking for granted.

So if you feel like your life could use more adventure, more variety, more awareness, or even just more lighthearted fun, I really hope that you will come explore with me in class. I think you might be surprised what you find, and I think it's going to be really big!