Did we really do that?

I'm a bit gutted that I haven't kept up with my writing but you know how it is.  I wanted to catch up on my scrap booking journals but daily life with children has slowed the process somewhat and thus the writing has taken a back seat yet again.  This week however, a couple of things have happened that have given me a bit of a prod.

in 2001/2, DH and I went travelling around the world for a year.  It had a massive effect on us and still continues to now, nearly 10 years later.  Digital photography and the internet was really only just taking off for the hoi polloi then so our memories are filed in several journals and boxes of photos with negative strips.  Some of the memories are gone and some are still very very fresh.  When things happen in the places we visited, those memories are brought back with incredible force sometimes and we can find ourselves far more moved or troubled by them than if we were right there at the time, particularly now we are parents with a sense of responsbility.

Last week several people were drowned in Halong Bay in Vietnam on a wooden cruise boat.  We ourselves sailed through those beautiful islands on a wooden boat just like the one that sank but we didn't stay overnight on it like the poor travellers and guide who lost their lives.

And then this week of course there was the devastating earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand which has a death toll so far of at least 85.  Seeing the destruction there was awful and we recognised some of the buildings that had been destroyed.

Of course these things happen frequently.  Somewhere in the world every day there is a disaster of some form  or another and it doesn't always happen far from home.  When it happens to somewhere you have been or have family though, it takes on an extra significance.  We had been in many of the places affected by the tsunami and every time I see anything about it, I wonder what would have happened to us if we had been there at the time.  It makes me want to record more about our travels and perhaps do some writing around how our trip continues to affect us. We wrote about how we felt at the time and what we did but I think it would be interesting to explore who we are now and how we feel about what we saw and experienced back then.

Today again, something happened to increase my desire to write about our travels again from our current point of view, thankfully something very minor!  We went to Marwell Zoo where Louis and I have annual passes (Isabella doesnt need one yet).  We really dont feel we have gotten our money's worth since he has started school so we are keen to make the most of it.  We always love to see the tigers but they are rarely in sight.  Today though there were two romping around, one of them very close to the fence.  One of them sleeps by a window inside the shelter so you can be within inches of a fully grown male bengal tiger.  THEY ARE HUGE!!!!  Their paws are bigger than my head and they are like small horses in their height.  How does this relate to our travels you are wondering?  Well, we took one for a walk one day.  Not a trained circus tiger, but a wild orphaned tiger who had lived in a buddhist temple for a while.  I kid you not.  I will share the full story and some scanned photos in a little while but today we stood alongside this tiger thinking about our little walk, and had a bit of a squeaky bottom moment.  What a crazy thing to do?!  Did we really do that?!

So, there are a lot of photos for me to scrap and a lot of stories to share.  I cant wait to get started!  In the meantime though, I have been doing a lot of scrapping recently so I'll try and do a full update on that tomorrow.

Thanks for looking, bye for now! xx

Final pages for LSNED

How about that?  2 posts in 2 days!  I honestly did complete these pages last year for Learn Something New Every Day, but with Journal Your Christmas and my Open University Creative Writing course, and then of course Christmas itself, I just didn't get around to posting them up here.  I also need to update the forums with these pics as well, and then I can start on my Christmas Journal.  I've really missed my scrapping as I just had to concentrate on my writing course but I am looking forward to getting crafty again in the next few days.  I also miss my crafting buddy J who has been as busy as a busy thing too and so our weekly meetings have slipped a bit for one reason or another.  Her baby house is getting bigger by the day and the space around my crop table is diminishing!  We're just hoping she can hang on until after Scrap-a-Mia before she says hello to her new bubba.

So, here is the final LSNED instalment...

 18th - on having to actually TRY to diet, not just pay the money and go to the meetings :-)

20th - on the importance of certain factors to enable that elusive "good night's sleep"....

17th - on the need to think about Christmas preparations before September if you want to go "home-made".

30th (oops where is my journalling?!) It should say something about learning the date of Scrap-a-Mia 2011.

19th - (oops where is my journalling.. again?!)  Should say something about my new gym programme.

14th - on not choosing a large embellishment and / or small pages for daily journals such as this.

Hope to be back soon with some Christmas Journal photos.

Thanks for looking, bye for now xx

Welcome to 2011!

Good grief, I cant believe this is my first post of the year!  Things have been a little tricky over the past couple of months and I have let my blogging slip so much - I am so sorry!  So, time for a little update...

Writing
I signed up for a Creative Writing course back in September which started a few weeks before Christmas.  Just like last year with the photography course, I wished I had chosen another time of year to do it!  I have just submitted my second and last assessed piece and I can honestly say that I have loved every minute.  I've "met" some really great people and we have promised to keep up the momentum of writing on another blog where we can critique each others work much like we did on this course.  I hope to continue my writing and so I will be posting some efforts here once the course officially finishes.

Scrapbooking
I finally finished my Learn Something New Everyday pages so I will be posting up the last of those in the next couple of days.  Despite my best intentions, I didnt keep up with Journal Your Christmas past day 3 but I am catching up slowly.  I'll pop these on another post in a few days and the rest will appear as they get done.  I'm actually going to a paid crop next week with someone I've never met so that will be very interesting.  I'm looking forward to being around like minded people and seeing what other people achieve in a couple of hours.

Depression
Well this has been pretty bad over the last couple of months but at last I think there may be some light at the end of the tunnel.  I'm on my 3rd different medication so fingers crossed this one is the one.  I've also been taking part in some counselling delivered by phone called iTalk which has been interesting.  My hubs, as always, has been my rock and has pulled me up out of this current dip.  I've gone from being near suicidal to feeling almost positive and actually approaching cheerful.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Well I'm off to bed now to catch up on some reading, something I have been badly neglecting recently.  I'll be reading on my iPad which I got for my birthday last week so if anyone can recommend any "must-have" apps then please let me know!

Bye for now! xx

Manifesto for JYC

This is the most important part of Journal Your Christmas for me as it sets the scene and reminds us of why we are doing what we're doing.  Shimelle's gave us a wonderful manifesto to use if we wanted and I liked it so I put it on the inside cover and made a seperate page for my own manifesto of sorts.  Its really just journalling (is it ever JUST journalling?!) about why I want to record the season but its great to open the album and remind yourself of the importance of it all.  I dont know if it is the change in medication (first one had too many side effects) but the second one is not working yet and I'm feeling a bit of pressure to complete this journal in case it is the only chance I get.  How crazy is that?!  I guess there's just been a fair amount of bad news about recently and sometimes the preciousness of life is at the forefront of my mind.  But what they heck, if it helps me craft then its okay right?!  I'm feeling VERY miserable today with a sore throat, cough and head cold that have really knocked me for 6.  The snow days last week have also delayed all the school events so this week is proving to be very busy and hard work already!  Louis will only get more and more tired so we are watching TV after school to try and enforce some chill out time! I've also cleared my craft table so I can wrap all the presents in an orderly fashion (seriously, anal?  Moi?)  Once its done, I can crack on with JYC and I cant wait!

So without further ado, here are the Manifesto pages.

Thanks for looking, bye for now xx

Snow days and Journal Your Christmas album

Oh my goodness it has been cold and snowy here!

 It is unusual for us to get any snow at all really and if we do then it tends to be February or so.  We saw it affecting the rest of the country and thought we would avoid it but Wednesday night it came down hard!  It was the most snow I remember having in this country and of course it meant the inevitable snow days from school and work.

        

 Sadly for us, with today's technology, the Husband was still able to work from home after a brief play in the thick snow with Louis.  It wasn't sticky enough to make a snowman so they just played snowballs.

Isabella and I went out for a few minutes but she suffers so badly with her circulation that we didn't last long.  Plus it was up to her thighs and she was so padded with clothing that she kept falling over and couldn't get up!

Our house is on a slope and we are right on the peak of that slope which causes us no end of problems when the weather is cold.  It is now Saturday and even with lots of digging and gritting yesterday, heavy rain overnight, and lots of scraping and gritting again today, it was still an ordeal to get the car out and up the road.  Thankfully we made it though and managed to get to the supermarket and have a much needed change of scenery.

On the first snow day, I had some sort of unexpected guests call in, in the form of 2 mums from school and their 4 boys.  I had just put Isabella down for a nap and made Louis comfy with his CDs so I could study so it was bad timing but actually they all played really nicely and it was good to chat to some new mums from school.  I was so embarrassed though as the house was a mess and I looked awful so I set about cleaning the very next morning ;-)

With both of the children at home all the time, and everyone in the house feeling poorly and trapped, I havent made much headway with Journal Your Christmas but I do have my album cover to share.

Hopefully I should have a couple of pages to share tomorrow but for now I need to clear a space so that I can get some wrapping done.  I'm so excited, I just love this season, and each year it gets better and better!

Bye for now xx

True Stories

I know I havent finished Learn Something New Everyday, but today sees the start of Shimelle's new class True Stories.  I can already see links between this and my other current course with Open University - Creative Writing.  I have notebooks at the ready as I am trying to do most of these things in pen for a number of reasons.

If you want to know more about True Stories, take a look at this video, so cute!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmnpcRLETNw


Hopefully I can get the last few pages of LSNED completed in the next few days too but time seems to be on warp speed right now.


On non-crafting matters, I have taken the decision to try some medication for my mood swings and depression so we shall see what happens.  It is going to be on one of my lessons for September as I really didnt want to go down this road but sometimes we need to do something for the greater good, dont we?  And ultimately I can stop feeling so overwhelmed with life then I will get much more out of it and enjoy the things I take on like my writing courses!  We shall see.


Bye for now.

Addicted to Shimelle.... (photo heavy!)

Good grief the time does fly when you have a little one at school!  Louis had his first assembly today which was a Harvest Festival celebration and I was so proud of him.  He grinned all the way through and blew me kisses and was clearly proud of his paper-crafted efforts (I dont think he gets those skills from me!!)

Anyway, the time just seems to whizz past at the moment so I've only done another 4 pages of LSNED, all out of date order, but just done by whichever photo came first in the pile.

So with the prompts for LSNED finished, I started to think about Journal Your Christmas and Jane and I sorted out a few bits of our Christmas stash (and I bought a few more...)  I just hoped that I would be able to complete this LSNED first.  But wait!!  Shimelle then threw in another class called True Stories which starts on 25th October and lasts for 3 weeks.  I didnt even consider it, I just signed up, I love these classes so much.  The downside is that I have taken on far too much at an already crazy time of year but the upside is that it will enhance the Open University creative writing course and that you dont have to scrap every day, you can just use the prompts when you feel like.

I met Shimelle at Scrap-A-Mia in May and with the release of the date and venue for next year, I am really really hoping she is there again.  Her class was crazy fast and it was the first one so we really hit the ground running.  Here is what we ended up with (and which I just finished this week, finally putting the rings on!)

It truly is my papercrafting, and my wonderful family, that get me through the dark days and I have now had to accept that I will need some help in the form of medication.  The PMT mood swings have been so severe that I just couldnt continue without at least trying it as I have done so much myself already (like altering sleep patterns and getting fresh air and exercise).  I've been taking the meds now for 4 days and they are making me feel sick, dizzy and heavy headed but it should pass.  If you've got any tips for beating depression, black moods, PMT etc, then I'd love to hear them!  I'll let you know how I get on.

Bye for now xx