UPDATING!!!

I am in the process of trying to restart this blog again. Hope to have it done soon!

...i'm still in here...somewhere....

So I was invited to guest-host a scrapbook challenge this weekend at Skrap N' Chat, and looking over my post I noticed my blog link was still in my signature. It's been over 2 years since I've posted here. If you have me on Facebook, you'll probably notice (or not) that I post maybe 2 or 3 times a year, always claiming I'm going to try and post more. It just never happens. I get into this introverted thing where the longer I haven't done something (posted on Facebook, blogged, called someone on the phone), the harder it gets for me to do it. So if you haven't heard from me in ages, chances are I've probably thought about you, and miss you, and am just too socially awkward to do anything about it!

Partially it's the sssllllllllooooooowwwwwness of this laptop I've been using. I just took me an hour to post a scrapbook challenge, mostly because of waiting for pages to load...and all morning to prepare images for it. You may have noticed my last post was about me getting full time overnights. I still have those, and though it's been good financially, it's been a killer on the spare time and with so many creative ideas on the go, I have to pick and choose what to invest my time on. A slow laptop kills my motivation for online activity.

That said, I miss my scrapbook forums. I miss scrapbooking in general. I haven't done much of it since 2011 because I really haven't been in the mood. 2011 may have STARTED well, but it ended pretty lousy with losing my mum to cancer, and it's been hard to get motivated to think about scrapbooking since then. Like how do you reminisce on fond memories when you're feeling so sad...and how do you not let that show through in your layouts? Even if I managed to pull it off, I'd still remember how I felt when I was scrapping them. Take this layout:

Minutes after I finished it, I got a not-so-nice call from work. Now when I look at that layout, it reminds me of that lousy phonecall. I wish I didn't get so emotionally attached to my creative stuff.

Anyway, I'll try to cut off this rant here and say I've thought about blogging again too. The slow laptop is an issue, but maybe...just maybe...I can post like this every few months or so and actually tell people when I update, then who knows? Maybe it'll pick up once I get started. We'll see. Thanks for checking in :)

2011 is off to a fantastic start

And I mean that seriously. I just found out yesterday that as of January 23rd I am going to full-time nights at work, in my regular house, for the next year, and I couldn't be happier. Perhaps it seems anti-climactic considering how excited my cryptic Facebook update was yesterday, a level of celebration women normally reserve for announcing their newly discovered pregnancy or recent lottery win, but this is a big change for me in the right direction. Granted I was already happy at work with my part-time rotation and frequent on-call shiftwork, but this will bring consistency into my life, not to mention weekends. I love my regular house and am happy that for the next year my shifts will be all there. Except for the days I get moved (and I'm sure it'll happen. That's what I get for being feeding tube and diabetic trained).

So now the biggest challenge is re-booking my vacation time with only 2 months before Disneyworld. Hopefully they'll be able to work something for me, considering I had my original vacation time booked way in advance, but my hours are a wee bit different now and I'll need more of them off. But like Don always says, this is a high class problem. If my new awesome job conflicting with my Disneyworld vacation is the biggest of my worries, I really have nothing to complain about in the grand scheme.

Many scrapbookers adopt a new "word of the year" in January. I like to see where the year goes before choosing a "theme" word...some of mine have been Create, Inspire, Balance and Harmony. Last year's was definitely Gratitude...and I would like to start out this year with a lot of it. I have been praying about this position ever since I heard the regular person was thinking about leaving, but didn't want to make it one of those "give me what I want" prayers. I knew I would be a great fit but am always uncomfortable acknowledging that I'm the best at anything even when I actually might be...it feels like setting myself up to be proven a phony. So I prayed that things would unfold they way they're supposed to and for no anxiety regardless of what happens. It's just so nice when God's plan works out they way you were hoping your own would.

If anyone is out there, thanks for listening and letting me share some of my joy with you. Have a blessed 2011 and may your hopes and wishes be made possible in it.

Christmas Memories: let's wrap up the old millenium

96: Christmas Eve church service


97: The year I met Don


98: First Christmas as a married couple


99: I never did find that picture I was looking for....

Christmas Memories...catching up on the early 90s

Yep, missed a few days again. Yep, night shifts.

So today I will cover 3 years at once. Though there is no shortage of memories, they were all of the teenage variety and involve ex-boyfriends and other such drama which I didn't really wish to include in a decade-spanning Christmas memory album. Which created a nice opportunity to do a few of those fun-to-make design-based pages where the focus is more on the style and doesn't require much journalling if any.



1993. Here's my brother and me, who had enjoyed for many years getting up in the middle of the night to see what Santa had left. This year was no different, nor was getting up early on Christmas morning, but it was around this year that it actually started making me tired. As far as I can recall. I do know this was the first year I consciously opted to take an afternoon nap on Christmas day. I guess the drive to Toronto had been helpful in that respect, when we were younger.



I'm happy with how this one came together so easily yet so effectively. It was a happier year all round, but most of the festivities took place at my ex-boyfriend's house (where this picture was taken) so for future-friendliness I made it simple.



1995 was a peaceful Christmas. My mum and I had started going to church shortly before, and had joined the choir, and the spiritual inspiration was still young and fresh in my heart after years of teenage blues. Maybe that's why this page is mostly blue. I love how the sun shines through the window...makes you wanna sing Joy To The World or something. Actually, this was the only picture I had of Christmas 1995. But I still like it.

Christmas Memories: 1992

I love using my title as my journalling.

I also love not having an 80s haircut anymore.

Christmas Memories: 1991

Grade 8. My family had this tradition for a few years of eating dinner out on Christmas Eve, and in 1991 they booked us at an overpriced and overrated Chinese buffet because there was karaoke there, and I liked to sing. It would have been my first time at karaoke, and then when Christmas Eve rolled around I got a cold and had totally lost my voice. Very heartbreaking for a 14-year-old, made worse by having iceberg lettuce and saltines for dinner, which appeared to my then discriminating tastes as the only edible-looking food the buffet had to offer.

Christmas Day was enjoyable enough, with a few surprise gifts and a lot of delicious goodies. There were a few pictures, but my cold had left me looking pretty lousy in all of them, to say nothing of the hideous 80s haircut I was still growing out.

So I opted for a Christmas tree/gift shot, colour-reversed on the computer for effect, and a story that happened a few days before Christmas when we were picking up my dad from the airport. Though my mum might think otherwise, my memories of that night are actually good in hindsight and don't remind me of how crummy I felt on Christmas Eve, so that's what I chose to journal for 1991. There's always a good way to look back on things.

Christmas Memories: 1990

One of my favourite pages in this entire album. The colours and patterns aren't exactly traditional for Christmas, yet in every way remind me of this exact day. It has a feel very different from the rest of the pages but fits in perfectly somehow.

After a lovely Saturday out with my favourite boy, we're going to snuggle in and watch Return of the Jedi in our PJ's. Sweet dreams!

Christmas Memories: 1989

This was our first Christmas in BC. It was also my year as the crazy cat girl, and most of my gifts were cat-related...stuffed kitties, porcelain kitties, a kitty calendar, and various other things with kitties on them. I believe the paper is from My Mind's Eye, and the rub-ons from Fancy Pants.

I'm working on a new scrappy project right now called December Daily from which the inspiration was again taken from Ali Edwards' blog via a Skrap N' Chat link. It's been longer than I can remember since I scrapped and Christmas always puts me in the mood again. Right now I'm just focusing on getting pictures and journalling though, I'll put it all together in January sometime. My goal is to have each day represent a different activity, theme or idea. Doing the Week In The Life project back in April really inspired me to make the most of my days and my hope is this December Daily will do the same...with a festive twist.

Here's how it goes so far:


December 1: Trimming the tree


December 2: Our sent gifts have arrived safely in BC


December 3: Snow!

Christmas Memories: 1988

And once again, we have pictures. The title on this page was fun to make, though I don't remember exactly how I did it. I do know it involved a Xyron, a stencil, and different coloured foil leafing. And do I spy some Basic Grey Blitzen scraps? Looks like I had some left after all! I think this was also one of the first pages I ever used metallic filigree stickers on. Definitely a fave of mine.

Christmas Memories: 1986-1987

This is the only 2-page spread in this album and probably always will be, as the album's up-to-date and it's hard to plan 2-page spreads over the course of a year. It's also the only layout with no actual photos. Now if I'm going to do a photo-less layout there needs to be a good reason explained in the journalling, and the short answer is there were no pictures of '86 or '87. The longer answer is that my dad got a video camera in 1986 and the 2-4 year gap in photos in my family history is replaced by 2-4 years of classic home videos, which still remain on VHS and I haven't figured out how to convert into any other format yet.




These pages use my second favourite Basic Grey Christmas paper line, Figgy Pudding. (my #1 fave Christmas paper line is Basic Grey Blitzen, their first Christmas line, which I pretty much had used up by the time this album was started). My other fave part of these 2 pages is the date snaps (top corners on both ends, sort of cut off on this scan). There were a ton of these on clearance and I snagged up the dates I needed with this page already in mind.

Christmas Memories: 1985

Looks like I missed a day...working nights does that to ya sometimes. It'll all even out though, because tomorrow's a 2-pager.



Anyway, here's 1985, which has suddenly made me realize that up to this point every page has included at least one picture of actual Christmas Day. This was all I could find from 1985, but I like these pics. That pink dress was one of my favourites, though my mum never really put me in it that often. I never wore much little girl pink back then. The hair makes me think this must have been my Annie-fan days.

Christmas Memories: 1984

Yay for the 80's! I still remember this Christmas and all those toys. And getting up at 5 in the morning when it was still dark.

Christmas Memories: 1983

In the process of making this album, it was apparent there were some years with lots of pictures and not a lot of memories (the 70's), or lots of memories and no pictures ('86 and '87). Then you get 1983, a year where I had ample family pics full of memories, and then after inheriting most of my Gran & Gramps's old photos...even more. This is an example of a Christmas where good memories were kept fresh by having lots of pictures. Which, of course, makes scrapbooking them a bit of a challenge...I wanted to include as many pictures as I could, and also a lot of journalling, since I do have very specific memories of that exact day. So I did my best to incorporate both here. These are my favourite kind of pages to make.

Christmas Memories: 1982

These last 2 pages were from the years we actually started unwrapping our own gifts at home before driving down to Toronto, which was by the way 2 hours from where we lived at the time. Or at least when my parents started taking pictures at home first. It's interesting how your memories are shaped (and maintained) by what was actually captured on camera, especially when you're someone who loves looking through photo albums. That's the main reason I started scrapbooking.

Christmas Memories: 1981

Christmas pages are my favourite to scrapbook...there is just so much beautiful paper out there! The papers on this page and the last are both from Daisy D's...I just love the vintage wrapping paper look. It's so perfect for these old Christmas photos.

Christmas Memories: 1980

This picture is actually a scanned and enlarged Polaroid. You can barely make out my month-old baby brother on the corner of the couch. But once again we're in Toronto with family...and is that the same outfit I had on in last year's Christmas pictures? It always took me a while to grow out of (or into) things. Happy Tuesday!

Christmas Memories: 1979

Good morning! I'm enjoying my morning (1:53 in the afternoon) cup o'tea and a late breakfast while thinking about Christmas. Yes, I worked nights this weekend.

Today we move along to 1979. I was just over 1 1/2 and still an only child, and once again we celebrated in Toronto with all the family. I still had baby hair. It never grew all that quickly.



Both this page and yesterday's were created with Karen Foster Christmas papers which I received in a kit from the scrapbook store I designed for in 2006. These 2 were the first ones I made for the album, though by no means did it get completed in total chronological order It mostly went by what years I had pictures for at the time.

I actually did my first Christmas baking of the year yesterday! Gingerbread cookies, of course. My special recipe. December is getting closer!

Christmas Memories: 1978

So like I mentioned, this year I'm counting down to Christmas with pages from my all-Christmas album. It begins in 1978...the first Christmas I had pictures of, at least that I could pin a year to...as it was my first Christmas ever. This began the tradition of celebrating Christmas day in Toronto with my grandparents, cousins, and other extended family. Surrounded by loving family...what could be better?

Attitude and Gratitude

It's been a while. My apologies for my flaky online presence...once I get momentum with something, that tends to be all I do for the next little while, whether it be a streak of scrapbook pages, Sculpey figures with my boy, or renovating all the closets. I'm sure some of you know the feeling!

I noticed something yesterday that I wanted to mention while it was still with me. After talking with people in the last couple days it's really become clear that you reap what you sow with your attitude. Cynical people will tell you not to trust this person or that, or not to go out of your way for anyone because you will never be appreciated and any extra efforts will become expectations. The thing is, that has not been my experience. Gratitude is important to me and I do my best to always show it, for things large and small. In return I have also been aware of it when it is directed to me, in word or in action, even in situations where cynics have told me I would not find it.

I don't stir things up. Sure, my aversion to competition and confrontation is perhaps extreme in many ways and admittedly has caused me anxiety in certain situations, but it also makes for a more positive world around me, one with more trust and less tension. It basically creates a world where I don't have to use things I'm not good at, like assertiveness, as often.

You can't change everything, but you can control your attitude, and that's often enough to effect change. So keep it positive.

Thanks for listening. I hope to try something new on my blog this year as Christmas gets closer (I wrote it in my daytimer so the chances of me getting it done are better!) I love Christmas pages...my favourite album to look through is my all-Christmas album. So I would like to feature it here, one page per day, starting November 21st. Come see it, if you like!