Back to reality

Well, the Cybercrop is over. I've scrapped my little heart out. My team the Lions won... and now its back to reality. What an anti-climax!! To top it all the weather is horrible outside and even with the heating on I'm frozen. So, if you don't mind, I think I shall indulge myself in a little nostalgia with a look at all the layouts I managed to complete this weekend..... just to cheer me up a bit!

Mojo Convention

I recently asked a question on UKScrappers: "Is there a mojo convention somewhere? Cause mine seems to have disappeared to sunnier climes to meet up with other mojo's!" My scrapping mojo has gone. Well, actually, its not just applicable to scrapping... unfortunately my mojo also influenced my ability to type stuff on my blog too! So, my most sincere apologies to all those people who have been looking at this page eagerly for an update, only to find the longest silence in the history of blogs.

There is, happily, a very good reason for this sudden lack of mojo.... I'm pregnant! Yup, #2 is on the way and is expected on or around the 3rd September. Which when I first intended to tell you seemed ages away; but now is far too close for my liking! Unfortunately for me, lack of mojo goes hand-in-hand with being pregnant... as I found out with #1. I was doing a Fine Arts course when I fell pregnant with herself, but found it impossible to complete as I kept just staring dumbly at the paints and canvas. Now this time, my scrapping has completely stopped, my writing has stopped and all creative thought has completely failed to materialise. Its only in the last week or so that I've picked up my knitting again and made a very feeble attempt at scrapping - which has yet to be completed. Someone on UKScrappers mentioned that they had checked on here and found it quiet, so I figured I needed to somehow get typing again. Well, at least for long enough to update here!

The second reason for my lack of updating is that my PC has been packed away. We have converted the study/scraproom back into a usable bedroom and all the study stuff; including PC, books, scrapping stuff etc has all been put into storage. This is because we have put our house on the market. There is a long, involved explanation/background to this decision - but the upshot is that himself has transferred with his company to Glasgow and we are moving back up to Scotland. Himself has already started work and we are currently living with my parents while our house sells. We are hoping for an offer any day now as we have had a fair amount of interest and viewings. I'm trying to resist looking at houses here in Kilsyth until our house has been sold. I just know that if I start viewing houses I'm going to fall in love with one and not be able to do anything about it until our own house has sold. However, patience is not one of my virtues so I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to resist! I shall have to tell you the whole story of our move up here at a later date, but as its incredibly long it will have to wait.

Other than that, I'm afraid all the rest I have to report would be mundane, boring, everyday stuff. Our focus so far this year has pretty much been to get ourselves out of Bradford and up to Glasgow, so everything else seems to have paled into insignificance.

I hope your life is a little less hectic than mine is at the moment!

Honey, I'm home!

Oh My Giddy Aunt! How long has it been??  Well, the two weeks suddenly turned into 5 weeks... mostly due to horrible plasterwork that was lurking under all that 80's wallpaper.  Yup, you guessed it... 1930's horsehair plaster!! Ugh!! What a nightmare that was to work with!  Everytime we filled and sanded one patch, another patch crumbled... we did eventually catch up with it tho'... until we put a coat of white paint on, to find sooooo many more crevases suddenly showed themselves.  We also had to have the ceiling replastered due to finding artexing hiding behind the wallpaper - (I wish now that I'd had the money to replaster the walls too).  However, all the hardwork is now finished and is soooooo worth it.  The room looks FAB!  I'll have to take few pictures later on this week to show you, but want himself to get a few finishing touches installed before I take them.  Also, it needs a serious tidy up as I've just dumped my scrapping and art stuff on the shelves... Need to make another trip to IKEA for storage boxes. Not sure himself is going to be too pleased with that idea - considering how much I've spent at IKEA just recently!

The other reason that it's taken so long is that we've had loads of weekends being taken up with other stuff... like seeing friends, going camping, visiting family, going shopping... oh and the UKS Mad Hatters Cybercrop!!

Camping
The camping was seriously good fun!  Thanks to Tim, Tammy, Sarah and Jonathan for wanting to take us newbies along.   Six adults and 4 kids in 3 tents near Birmingham made for a really great weekend.  I realised that the last time I'd been camping was 14 years ago!!  Himself, on the other hand, had NEVER been camping. We borrowed my parents camping gear, just to try it out and see if we enjoyed the experience. Needless to say, we came back from that weekend away, completely hooked! Which meant we simply HAD to go shopping for a tent the following weekend.  Managed to get a great deal, but now need to get all the other stuff... before July when we go camping with the 'crowd' again.

Oh, ought to mention that we had our 7th Wedding Anniversary during the camping weekend too.  What a day that was... we spent all day in Cadbury World eating chocolate!!  It was a great experience... not particularly romantic, but definitely very delicious!

Visiting Friends and Family
What can I say about this?? You go, you stay, you chat and eat and drink and sleep. You do a few interesting things (such as Crich Tramway Museum and a lovely old windmill) and you get to meet a new little 5 month old friend, who was just gorgeous!!  Bronwyn was born 13th December to our friends Nick and Wendy... what a beautiful baby she is!! I even got to have a cuddle without her crying too much, which only made me broody again! LOL. I think I can wait for another one, but then I see a new little baby and it sets me off all over again!

Some friends from Inverness came to visit us too, in the past week.  What a joy it was to see them.  It was lovely just to have a good chat, do some shopping and see the kids playing together.

UKS Mad Hatters Cybercrop
Oh what a fabby job was done by the leadership team on UKScrappers again for this cybercrop.  Yet again the classes were fabulous and the LO's produced were gorgeous.  I temporarily moved all my scrapping stuff down to Tammy's house where the two of us spent the whole weekend producing yummy new Layouts. The menfolk entertained themselves and our little monster for the whole weekend. What bliss! No kids, lots of scrapping, lots of chatting and lots and lots of hot chocolate to drink.  Sooo looking forward to the next one!!

Well, that's about it I think.  I shall be updating regularly again, now that I have my PC back and the room all nicely decorated around it.  Hopefully I'll see you all around!!

PS. Pictures to follow as soon as I've downloaded them all from various cameras and mobile phones!

Creative Overdrive

Think I ought to share some of my recent Layouts with you. It seems that the last few months haven't been particularly creative, but now the creativity has kicked in again.  Only did 2 layouts in February (one of which was a lift of a beautiful LO in the Scrapbook Inspirations Magazine) but have already done one in March and have another planned.  Hoping to do loads this month for a scraplift challenge on UKScrappers. The challenge for me is to do 20-odd LO's in a month. It's not quite as difficult as it sounds tho' as these LO's are to be based on or 'copied' from a set list of layouts that other people have done.  Consequently the first scraplift LO only took me 3 hours to do (rather than the week and a bit it normally takes). Want to have a peek??

The first LO was the lift of the magazine layout and all credit goes to SuzyB who made her original so wonderfully inspiring!  She is also a member of UKScrappers but I didn't know that until after I'd started work on my version.  Thanks to SuzyB for giving me permission to copy her beautiful work.  The second LO is all mine and the third LO is from the UKS scraplift challenge.  The original LO was done by UKScrapper Debly.

The other thing that has been particularly inspiring this past week was a little crafting evening that I hosted at home on Wednesday. Nothing big or fancy, just myself and 3 other ladies who are all into crafting in one way or another.  We all sat around the dining table and did our thing while having a good chatter and some nibbles.. although I might have over catered on the nibbles as himself and myself have been eating them for days afterwards to finish them off!  Still, it was great fun and a good time was had by all.  I think this might become a regular thing rotating at the four houses.  So I'm seriously looking forward to the next one!


Anyway, I shall have to go wake up herself yet again... otherwise we won't get any sleep tonight.  I'd better warn the cat before I do so as Erin has taken to chasing it around the house shouting "Tat" at the top of her lungs. The Tat in question is actually settling down fairly well, but still legs it everytime she sees the toddling monster coming towards her.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Here's a blog prompt from UKScrappers today that caught my eye. Thought it might be a good one to try out...
"What changes do you plan to make in your life in the coming months. Do you like or loath change?"
Changes I would like to make are rather different to changes that I'm going to make. Firstly, I would like to put an extension on our house that could give us a study/scraproom downstairs and another bedroom upstairs. The change I'm going to make is that the spare bedroom is going to do double duty as study(scraproom) and guest bedroom.  This is going to involve ripping out some really dated fitted wardrobes, stripping wallpaper, ripping up carpet and then painting, laying laminate floor and installing some desks and shelving. Secondly, I would like to have someone to do all the housework for me so that I can spend my time doing the stuff I really like. However, I'm going to be following the FLYlady (www.flylady.net) to learn how to break the housework down into more manageable chunks.  I'm hoping that doing it this way will mean that I can actually do the stuff I like too! Some other changes I would liketo make are:

1. Lose weight
2. Finish decorating the house
3. Move back to Inverness
4. Have another baby
5. Find a job I can do from home
6. Go back to college to finish my Fine Arts studies
7. Re-model the back garden

Somehow, I really can't see me actually accomplishing all of those in the next year.... but I will give it my best shot!  Change isn't something I have a huge problem with. In fact, I love change! To the extent that every 2 years I start getting restless and wanting to move house... that isn't normal is it?!  But then, who is?!