Catching up!

This week has been a time of catching up in all sorts of ways.  Hubby will no longer be under my feet from next week so I have been making him help with some of the little jobs that could have been done at any time during the year but of course have not!  I caught up with some friends for some geocaching and I caught up with the ironing - unfortunately it's getting away from me again :o)

Yesterday I finally caught up with my LSNED album - just seven pages and the sign-off page - everything was ready last weekend, but somehow the rest of the catching up took priority!

For some reason Warburtons were handing out free loaves in town today - never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I gratefully accepted one.

The wrong direction!

Some more catching up for my LSNED album ... not all the completed pages, but enough for now; I'm still way behind but have been scrapping before work again in an effort to catch up. By the evenings my creative juices seem to have drained away.
The wrong direction?  I took it several times during the week of these pages and noticed its effects as well, but there are signs that some things are changing direction for the better too. :o)

My current efforts to lose weight involve me attempting to drink more water - 4 pints to be precise - it's not the drinking that's the problem - it's the processing!

September 17th has already been blogged here!

Early morning lessons

I've been catching up a little on LSNED and thought I'd better blog the pages before I get even further behind.  I quite often scrap late at night, but was able to start relatively early yesterday and produced five simple pages in less time than normal.

I'm thankful for my Satnav which helped me reach Golborne crop a couple of weeks ago and gives me courage to attempt long drives to new places on my own.

Smile :o)

Just a quick page this evening - I needed to create something after struggling all evening with my borrowed Bind-it-all! I got there in the end (with thanks to Dan99 for a great video tutorial) and my pages and covers for my LSNED album are now punched which will save me making mistakes as to where to leave a binding gap like I did last week.

This page for September 17th shows that No.2 Son can smile for the camera when he wants a decent photo - this time he needed some passport sized photos to take to university for ID cards and such like.
I've used a sketch from Alix's Blog. She designed a brilliant page for her crop but was ill the day she was meant to teach the class, so didn't get to see the results. To make up for that she invited people to have a go via her blog.  I love her example page which is here - sooooo many brads used!  I cheated a bit and just used card backed sequins.

I've always been a fan of The Studio and recently discovered that they have a sister site Scrap That! which reviews products.  I wondered if they would be generally favourable to the products that they are given to review, but was pleasantly surprised to discover that the cons are discussed along with the pros, giving you a better idea of whether the product would suit or not.  They have a give-away running at present - see my Candy & Competitions section in the sidebar.

Latest life lessons

I had a smashing day at the Golborne Crop yesterday - thank you ladies for welcoming me and supplying the danish pastries :o) I normally attend a crop much closer to home, but as I'm attending the Pink Booby Crop next month I wanted to do a test drive and put some faces to names. On top of the delicious pastries and friendly atmosphere, I also achieved a mahoosive SEVEN pages for my LSNED album (and that's including re-doing two pages because I'd mixed up which side the binding space has to go!).

It's good to share

Still learning ...

Well as usual I'm not really managing to keep up with my projects.  It's day 6 of September and I've completed just 3 pages of my LSNED book.  In my defence the colour printer ink packed up on Friday night while I was getting ready for my Saturday crop (thankfully, after I'd printed some photos to take!), and I'm  waiting for them to arrive from Amazon.  There's a lesson in itself - when the printer starts warning you that the ink is running low - order ink straight away! 

September 2nd saw Child No.3's return to school, wearing one of  the new blouses that I had bought to replace the too small and heavily stained ones (why do kids these days not wear aprons in Art lessons???).  So far, so efficient.  Unfortunately, despite having tried them on for size, neither she nor I had spotted that the collar was wrong: she needs a rever collar as they no longer have a tie as part of their uniform.  Unbuttoning the top button of a normal blouse simply will not do.  So, it was time to fish an old blouse back out of the charity rag bag for her to wear (creased) to school and I had an emergency trip to the shops to exchange the blouses.  I knew there was a reason I hadn't got around to sewing name labels into them!

I am not a particularly punctual bod ... as my friends will attest! Things have become even more erratic for the last few months as the buckle on my watch strap broke, leaving me watchless. I couldn't just go and get any old watch strap - it needed to match the watch face. With hindsight I could probably have just fitted a new buckle, but that didn't occur to me at the time. Eventually watchstrap searching came to the top of my To-Do list and within two days I could wear it again ... and annoy my friends with the LOUD ticking it makes. Funnily enough today I was on time!

Learn Something New Every Day

My UKS team-mate, Mary "Buttons" was lucky enough to win two places on Shimelle's Learn Something New Every Day course ... and offered the spare place to the first team-mate who wanted it ... ME! Thank you again Mary :o)

Anyway, I've managed the cover and the first page for my Learn Something New Every Day album from Shimelle's class.  I decided I would use up a 6x6 paper pad that was in a goody box from Indigo Mill's retreat last year - beautiful papers, but I don't really do 6x6 ... so I've combined this with some A5-ish white card and we'll see what happens.  The front cover has another example of decorated chipboard to show the ladies at the Pink Booby Crop next month as well as trimmings from the first few sheets of the Black Market Society papers - waste not want not remember!  I changed the title from "Learn Something New Every Day"  to "30 days hath September" because I still haven't quite got my head around the learning something new part ... so my book will just be a collection of thoughts that I've "thunked" each day during September.

The first page for September shows the supplies that I have collected together from Mount Stashion ... all based around the three rather bright colours of the papers .... lime, pink and yellow ... should be an eye-watering eye-catching book by the end!

Eventually I will borrow my friend's Bind It All to fix the pages together.  I have learnt my lesson with projects like this and find it far more sensible to bind them at the end, after I have rectified things like putting the photos in upside down, spilling wine/tea/blood (yes, those craft knives are sharp!) on my pages or touching the Diamond Glaze before it has dried!