Well how far behind am I now?! Hey ho, I never did think I would keep up, even with Louis starting school. Yes, that's right, my little boy, my baby, is all growed up and a real school boy now. At the moment he is just doing mornings and as he is one of the younger ones it means he is one of the last to go for lunches and then full days. Some of the parents have opted to send their young children full time earlier than scheduled but I have no great desire to do this and he is so tired anyway, despite his full day experiences at pre-school. So of course I had to scrap a photo of him in his uniform. I dont know who was more proud, him or us. I did this layout as part of LSNED as I was helping him to hang up his uniform for the first time at the end of the day. I thought it was fitting to remember such an event and to focus on the learning for him.

As expected, he loved his first day and took it all in his stride without seeming to notice this momentous occasion. He went in as if he had been there for years and in fact he went into school by himself from the Thursday morning after starting on the Tuesday. He has now done 2 weeks and is still one of only a very small handful of children going in by themselves. We dont know where he gets his confidence from.

I also wanted to do a "proper" layout and by that I mean a more standard size and with more freedom than the parameters I had set myself (isnt hindsight a wonderful thing...) I got the chance to do a bigger layout this week using a sketch and product list set by Kirsty Wiseman on her, what now seems to be regular, Wednesday night challenge. At 8pm she sets the challenge and sometimes does a live Ustream so we can watch her scrap too and chat on-line with other people doing the challenge. At 10pm the challenge ends and we post up photos of what we have done. We can replace the photos the next day once we have taken a better version in daylight.

Its so fab on a number of levels - I found it inspiring and challenging as is made me fit parameters but meant that some of the "I could use this or this, here or here" was removed which made it much less overwhelming. The feedback from the other participants was fantastic too - everyone was very positive and encouraging and there was a great sense of belonging. It was lovely to scrap with others in what can be a very singular activity.

So, once I have tidied up the resultant mess in the craft room, I will try and catch up a bit more on the LSNED!

Bye for now.

xx