encouragement needed...

I'm in the midst of a huge purging of scrap stuff, it's 11:30 pm, and I have approximately 14 hours left before the guys come home from the camping trip. ( which, by the way, has been kind of a bust b/c of all the rain we've had this weekend). There's piles of stuff in my dining room and living room, semi -organized into 'give away,' throw away', and 'keep & sort' piles. I kind of feel like I'm losing my mind, b/c I honestly don't know if I can do it. I'm totally overwhelmed. It makes me dizzy, like I have adult ADD or something akin to it. Have I mentioned that I'm just not the organize-y type? AT ALL. But I need to get this done for my own sanity. Not just throwing out the odd thing here and there, but really cleaning out at least half ( if not more) of what I own. It's hard when you're not organized. Scrapping becomes tedious, b/c you can't find anything, and nothing is in it's place. It's very frustrating, spending the greater portion of your precious scrap time looking for stuff. The final straw was last week when I had to do something for AC, and I ended up scrapping on the floor, b/c my table was piled too high with papers and accumulation of stuff from months past. I've never had to do that.

The scary part in all this is that I was totally blind about how much crap I really do have. It's embarrassing, and depressing, realizing I've blown all this money, and haven't used even a 1/3 of it all. I mean, you guys have seen my pages, and it's not like I use alot of stuff, kwim?
So, my goal is to get back to basics, and keeping only what I love, which would be my beloved AC & KI stuff, and not much else. Ok, maybe a bit more than that, but I'll try to be reasonable, ha!
Wish me luck, and send me some type A brain cell waves to keep me on track, will you?
I'll let you know how it turns out, if I ever finish....

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so much to do, so little time...

My guys are going to their annual Cub camp out for the weekend starting tomorrow, so I'll have 4 glorious *( 3 really, since I'll be at work Saturday) days alone this weekend. It's a long weekend here again with Canada day weekend coming up. I love this time of year. :) So much to do outside, lots of festivities, and a general feeling of vacation is setting in now. Ahhh. I'm hoping to take in a few free concerts at the International Jazz Festival which kicked off today. It's such an amazing atmosphere downtown while this is going on. If you've never experienced it, I HIGHLY recommend booking a trip here to see it at least once in your life- it's amazing!

So far this week:

we attended some St.Jean Baptiste festivities the other night. The kids loved it- there were fireworks, music and ice cream ( but too many drunk and stupid teenagers for me, lol!) and they stayed up way past 11 pm. What's more fun for a kid than that? And that old fashioned Quebecois fiddle music just gets me every time. It's very quaint and kind of touristy, but it works on this particular day.

Swimming lessons for the kiddos started this week at our neighbourhood pool. I LOVE this pool. I'm feeling the need to do a mini album about said pool, b/c it's just so dear to my heart. When I took the kids for their first swim of the season last week on opening weekend, I actually did a little jig. I remember walking through the park in the dead of this winter, with all the tons of snow we had, and gazing longingly at the pool... summer seemed so far away then! It's an amazing community pool , very small, very intimate, and it felt so good to see all these cool people, most of whom I haven't seen much of since the closing last August. It's pretty much my social life for the summer, and I'm looking forward to fun times there this season. The gang we've got there is great, and I wonder why the heck we don't hang out in the winter too.

Signed the boys up for a summer reading program at our local library. They're psyched, b/c there are games, prizes and cool stuff involved. I'm just grateful that they'll have something fun to work toward ( there's a neato photo contest too for the Moms) and we always really enjoy a trip there. I could spend an entire day just looking through all the good stuff they've got ( apart from every book you'd ever want to read) .I will be renting somefreebie movies and hoping to expand my musical knowledge with the enormous CD library they've got there. Love that part. :)

Tomorrow I'm meeting up with my friend Danielle, who some of you may know better as the very talented Daniellemarieclaire from 2Peas. I usually don't have time to spend with her b/c I'm always working when she comes into town and shops at the store, so this will be a treat for me to be able to sit and talk with her for more than a few minutes here and there.

Here's my latest layout. Pretty darned basic, but I like how it turned out for the most part. I often admire other people's more elaborate and technique-y stuff, but I honestly really love a simple page best of all. :)

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

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officially summer..

tomorrow is St. Jean Baptiste day here in Quebec, and for me, it always marks the official start of summer. It's a provincial holiday, and there's lots of activities, fireworks, and a good excuse for drinking too. ;) We'll be taking in the fireworks tonight if the weather cooperates, and tomorrow we'll be lounging around the pool (once again, depending on if the darned rain ever decides to go away) and the temperature warms up. What's with the cold all of a sudden?? Argh!

I'm still cleaning my scrap mess, and hoping that by the weekend I will be able to sit in a very clean, organized space and actually be able to sit and make something.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with some quick cards I did for friends. And I've been fooling around with trying to make a banner after Candice put the bug in me, so please don't laugh too hard at my novice attempt. I'll keep trying!

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friends in high places...

a HUGE thank you to Candice, who took pity on me , and offered to make me a very cool banner for my sorry blog. I've been playing around for a while, trying to do one myself, but haven't had time to really sit and figure it out. So now, ( at least for a little while) I won't have to, because I've got a really pretty one to look at.
Thank you C! You are so awesome. :)
So, I've got one more day of work left, and then I'm a lady of leisure for the summer. Woot! Although I do think I've set myself up for a whole lotta house projects/cleaning/organizing that I will have no excuse for now. This would be one instance where money would solve my problems quite nicely. Having a housekeeper while I'm at the pool with the kiddos every day would really be sweet, don't you think?

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just a test.

..because this picture thing is bugging the crap out of me, I'm trying something to see if it's not the page layout that's the glitch. Bear with me please!

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Weekend goodness...

Father's day weekend was good- the weatherman was wrong, (surprise!) and we ended up having hot and humid weather with no rain, except for a magnificent hail storm last night around suppertime that lasted about 20 minutes before the sun came out again. No biggie, it cooled things off nicely.

Saturday am, the Cubs had a car wash to raise money for their troop, and the kids had a blast. Seriously, give a boy a hose, and he's in paradise. My guys LOVE playing in water, and even after 4 hours of washing cars, they wanted to keep going. I'm not sure how much money they actually ended up raising, but they sure had fun. That's my car they're working so hard on in the pics.

And after the car wash, we headed to an amazing warehouse sale at Clarins, the French cosmetic company, where I scored this:

My beloved perfume, at the rock bottom price of 65$, which is incredible, since the bottle alone is worth at least twice that in the department stores, and it's not something you can find everywhere. I was so seriously giddy when I saw it sitting there that I actually broke into a sweat. In retrospect, I should have grabbed two, but there's another sale in October and I think I'll be good until then. I got a lot of yummy Clarins stuff too since the prices were incredible- it was too good to resist even though I totally busted my set budget. Bob decided to go in after I was done ( kids under 12 weren't allowed in, so he was waiting outside with them) and he scored some good man perfume for himself. Now maybe he'll leave my Eau d'Hadrien alone. ;p

I went ahead and got the dog shaved Thursday. So, after not even recognizing her when we went to pick her up, I was really regretting it, but it's growing on me. I'm not sure I'll ever do it again though, at least not this drastic. Her colour is already starting to come back (she was white blonde underneath all that fur- who knew?) and I think she actually looks kind of cute, not to mention the fact that she's way more comfortable now. Weird looking maybe, with a two-toned head and body, but it doesn't seem to fizz her. ;p

She looks like a hardened criminal of the canine variety in the after pic here, but it's really not so bad.

Nothing scrappy to share today. I did a layout for SS over the weekend that I really love, but I can't post it here. And I have so many pics to scrap since I've been taking over 100 or so /day the past while, so hopefully after this week, I can get to it. I have 1 week left of work, and then I'm off for the summer with the kids. Yeah! I'll be poor, but relaxed, hehe. Today is my last official 'alone' day before the kids are finished on Friday, so I want to enjoy my last bit of freedom. It's the end of peace and quiet for the next 2 months!

eta: I'm starting to hate Blogger. It won't let me format the text, so the big run-on paragraph is not intentional, I swear. And the pics, I still haven't been able to figure out why they won't enlarge when clicked on. Can someone help me? I'm really not blog savvy, I'm afraid.

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dog days of summer

Meet my dog, Lily.


The past few days have been all of a sudden sweltering here, and she's beside herself. She's just SO uncomfortable. She hadn't even begun to shed her winter coat yet until 2 days ago when the temp skyrocketed into the 30's. This is her this afternoon- she's looked pretty much like this 24/7 the past few days with her giant tongue hanging out, panting like crazy. I made an appointment for this coming Thursday ( after much back and forth about it) to get her shaved for summer because...

1.- I don't want to deal with the fur situation all over the house- UGH! It's nasty folks, trust me.

and 2.- I really do think she'll be so much more comfortable. Who cares if she looks like a shorn sheep? ;p I know she'll be grateful to be cool, even if she's a tad embarrassed about how she'll look.

I'll be sure to post before and after pics!

Some more pics from the weekend...

Noah and our neighbour friend having a swing this afternoon in the backyard.

I love Noah's expression here.... and look at those eyes- he's already got girls on his tail, this kid.

One of Noah and Bob... Love how he's looking at his Dad. Pure adoration at this age. :)




Here's one of my sweetie Bobby.. looking very grown-up. *sigh*.

And note the Ipod earbuds, they're pretty much there on a permanent basis these days.

Some bachelor's buttons from my garden- their colours are so amazing!

And last but not least, a layout I did Friday night. It's not what I was going for at all, but it's done, and since I am not the most prolific scrapper, I'm moving on instead of re-doing it. ;) This is my niece, who bears a very striking resemblance to Noah. It's almost freaky how alike they are, almost like siblings. I haven't seen her since she was a baby, and I am always amazed when I get pics from my brother.

That's it folks.. I have a busy week ahead, so I'm putting this all into one post since I probably won't have time for the blog. 2 more weeks of school and work ahead, and then it's va-cay-shon!

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Historic...

I was thrilled to see this headline on the front page this morning:

OBAMA MAKES HISTORY

Even though I'm Canadian, I've been following the race for the presidency for months with great interest, and reading the paper this morning ( I was out the entire day and evening yesterday, so I didn't hear the news), it actually brought a tear to my eye.

I have great hope that Obama will bring a much needed breath of fresh air to world politics. I believe in this man, I sense that he's honest and forthright, and really does want to be the change. And that is uplifting.

I'm going to talk to my boys tonight to try to convey to them the enormity of this. I'm not sure they'll understand, but my hope is that in years to come they will realize they were there when history was made.

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fun stuff...

American Crafts is having a cool contest for all you fab photographers out there. Check out the Studio blog here for details on how to enter, or, (DUH me!) click on the photo above for the details. They're a fantastically generous company, and I'm pretty sure the winners will be spoiled rotten. Speaking of which, I finally got my DT box last week, and was stunned and amazed by the sheer amount of product they sent me. I will be good to scrap with only that for the next 5 years. Seriously. And that would be okay, because as everyone already knows, I'm an AC freak. Their stuff makes me VERY happy. So I was thrilled to open up my newsletter this week and see this layout in there, b/c I had no clue they were going to use it. :)

Not much going on this weekend. It's rainy and cold and blah out, and I've been trying ( operative word is trying) to organize and purge some supplies. I've not gotten very far, but my goal is to be able to see the table by tonight. ;p My guys are gone for the afternoon, but I took this pic of hubs and Bobby before they left this morning, and I love it- this kid sure adores his Dad.

And with all this wacky weather we've been having, we were lucky to be treated to this display of beauty the other afternoon.. it was amazing!

I took this shot from my bedroom window. It was not easy to get a decent pic without phone wires in the way though.

Enjoy what's left of the weekend everyone. :)

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