back to the land of the living

Well, I've survived what has quite possibly been the busiest month of my entire life, and the most sleep deprived as well.

Since I last posted here, I have packed, moved, and then unpacked my Dad into his new apartment, managed by some miracle to get the Grade 6 yearbook finished VERY under the gun, all the while trying to maintain our crazy busy lives. And all this being done mostly without my dh around, who was away on numerous long business trips all month, the start of baseball season for both kids, and my regular job. I've had to come up with some pretty creative and last minute ideas about how to pick the kids up from daycare after work @ 5:30, get them home to feed them, and out the door by 6:05 to two different parks at the same time without the better half here to help. Haha! There were some days I thought I would be certifiable if the chaos kept up any longer.

I haven't had a second to think about scrapbooking, or taking photos, or gardening, or doing anything for myself this past month. I'm so happy that it's all over. Now I can get back to my own life. It was a draining project, much bigger and challenging than I originally thought it would be. I'm happy to have done it, because I would never go back on my word, but there were many times that I was this close to wanting to ditch the entire thing. And so,I'm marking my words here: I will never take on a project like that ever again!



Here's a card I made for one of my AC projects for last month. I really think I was subconciously making this for myself at the time. ;)





I'll be back soon, once my house looks less like a hurricane came through it...

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A little something to pique your interest...

sound exciting? :)

The launch is in 5 days... stay tuned!

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I want to win this...

Isn't it lovely? I can so see myself riding around on one of these this summer. I think it's probably the coolest bike I've ever seen. If you want to win this beauty too, all you have to do is post a link on your blog. I'm not even sure that Canadians are allowed to enter the contest, but if by some miracle I end up winning, I'll try my darndest to convince them to send it over the border. ;p
Click on the cute button below to get the info. Good luck!

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Because I don't already have enough to do...

I've decided to add this to my list:

Now, before you shudder in complete horror at this mid-century classic ( re: butt ugly piece of furniture), I'm going to show you this:

I fell in love with that 'credenza' on the cover , ( as well as the rest of this house, which is completely cool and gorgeous) and set about trying to find a reasonable facsimilie somewhere. Last week at Ikea with my good friend & neighbour (who is moving this week and is doing a major cleaning of her basement) I saw that they have come out with an uncannily similar version of it, only theirs is about $300 and made of presswood, as is most of Ikea's stuff. Not the greatest quality. Take it from someone who has a lot of Ikea furniture, most of which hasn't aged too well. So my buddy says to me, "Mel, I have the exact same thing sitting in my basement, and you're welcome to it". Score!!

Even when I saw the sorry state it was in when they hauled it over here Saturday morning , I still think I can make it look pretty nice with some paint and alot of elbow grease. I want to take off those legs somehow (although they're attached to the whole thing, hmmm) and replace them with some nice brushed stainless ones. I'll have to browse the Apartment Therapy blog for a bit of inspiration.

The monstrosity is now sitting in my backyard, and I'm itching to get at it. Once I get that pesky yearbook out of my way, then I'll be moving on to redoing this, and hoping it will make a lovely storage unit for the millions of CD's and DVD's I'm running out of room for. I'm having a hard time figuring out what colour to paint it though, and leaving it 'au natural' isn't really an option since it's not real teak- bummer. Suggestions are more than welcome. :)

Some of you have asked to see what I've been working on with the yearbook, so here's a peek at the baby page I did- I figure that's safe to put on here since these pics are pretty incognito. (Sorry I can't make it go bigger when you click on it)

This page took me an entire day to do. I'm not kidding. I had to resize and crop every photo on here, which was completely tedious and labour intensive. And the quality of a lot of them was *ahem* less than stellar. I did a million and one redo's, because I'm picky like that. But I like how cute and simple it is. The rest of the book will be a bit more slapped together, because I'm running out of time until my (self- imposed) deadline of June 1st. And I have some assignment stuff I need to scrap, so I'm really hoping I'll have something scrappy to post here in the next week.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend! ( for the Canadian gals reading this).
Mine was a blur...

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How not to organize. Or, How to not organize.

I got this in the mail today. My issue of RS arriving always makes for a happy day- I just wish I had time to read it right now. But the cover copy caught my eye immediately, and I was freakishly motivated (I'm feeling a public shaming may do the trick here) to take a photo of what my scrap space looks like at the present moment. I give you my dining room, aka scrap table:
( amd I purposely posted these so you can't make them bigger, ha.)




And the floor of said dining room:


Keep in mind this is just one part of the room, even though it's small. There are piles and mounds of stuff EVERYWHERE. That pretty green bag full of stuff is from the NSD crop I worked at 2 weekends ago, and I haven't even looked inside it.

Don't judge me too hard ok? (Or do, maybe it will anger me into doing something?! LOL) I've been working every possible spare minute I have on that yearbook, and have seriously neglected any attempt at clean up from the last time I scrapped a page, which was approximately a week or so ago, for the American Crafts blog this month. Once it gets to this stage, I just close the door, and we eat in the kitchen until the next cleaning bonanza. Which may be a while. I'm thinking about a month, or until I hand off that book to the printer. (At which time, I will probably spend 3 days in bed, trying to catch up on the many lost hours of sleep.)
In my fantasies, my scrap area looks like my scrap pages ( ie, clean, uncluttered, and lotsa white space- no dust bunnies or ink spots) but I just can't seem to get a handle on it. EVER. It's a vicious circle of cleaning and messing up, and soemtimes it just makes me want to throw it all away and be gone with it once and for all. Dramatic, I know. But true.

PS- Barb, this post is for you. I owed you one from way back, remember? ;p And see, I wasn't exaggerating!


Now, do you think I should even bother reading that RS article, or just call in the professionals? Any Stacey & Clintons of the scrap world out there? ;p

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Yes, I'm alive...

I'm here! Sorry. I just stink at blogging on a regular basis... I'm still recovering from last weekend's NSD activities, and then my normal work week. I worked almost 30 hours in 2 days last weekend, so I was a bit of a vegetable after the fact. It was a fun, if exhausting 2 days, and I think most everyone had a great time. It's really cool to walk around a room full of 100+ scrappers, and see so many different styles of scrapping. Seeing people's stuff in person does not compare one iota to the internet, that always amazes me. So, even in my exhausted state, after I finally got home late Saturday night I felt inspired to scrap, but sleep won out over creativity, I'm afraid. I haven't had time to do any scrapping since then, and I miss it. I have some ideas in my head, but just no time to sit and work them out. I also got a DT box full of some very beautiful American Crafts stamps last week, and haven't really had time to admire them. Maybe this weekend, between packing my Dad and working on the yearbook, I might have a second to scrap, but I'm not counting on it. I need to get going on that yearbook or I may be looking for a graphic designer who does 24 hour rush jobs. ;p



Some fun stuff happening here:


Did a bit of Ebay shopping a few weeks back for my birthday, and nabbed myself not one, but 2 Kate Spade bags. This is one of them. :) So cute and tiny, and I'm in love with it. I'm a huge KS fan and if I could afford it, I think I'd probably own a least 100 of her bags, they are pure gorgeousness.




seeing this guy next Tuesday night. Ben Harper is a genius, and the show ( sold out) is gonna ROCK. Have I mentioned that before Ray, I listened to BH almost exclusively for more than a year? Yeah, I'm obsessive like that. LOVE him. He's got a new album out, which I need to download from Itunes this weekend.



Still on the music topic, here' s Bobby a few Sundays ago, during his 1st 'non-official' guitar lesson with our (kind of) eccentric next door neighbour, who happens to play a very mean blues guitar. The lesson went really well, so I think we're going to try this for the summer, backyard style and relaxed. No pressure, and best of all, no driving back and forth to the lesson, lazy me. ;p


More music news, if you can stand it...




My concert 'hat trick' is complete for this year. :) We were lucky to get Green Day tickets on July 18th, and will be in the company of this gal and her dh, who I have yet to meet, but I have no doubt we will get on just fine. Can't wait to meet you Peg!

I"ll leave you with a pretty pic of a tulip from my garden, taken yesterday in the rain. I wish these bloomed year round, I love them so much.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

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bogged down...

I'm feeling quite like this right now :



I have way too much on my plate at the moment, and I'm feeling quite stressed out about all I have to do in the coming month. May is gonna be a rough one. I don't think I've mentioned it here on the blog that I took on the 'job' of designing the Grade 6 Yearbook ( my son is graduating this year from Elementary) and I really haven't had a whole lotta time to work on it. And yes, I've procrastinated, because I have a bad habit of leaving things to the last minute. The pressure usually gets me revved up and motivated, but I now have about a month + left to complete everything, and I feel panicked. To top it off, my Dad is moving at the end of the month, so trying to get him packed and organized in the midst of everything else is just really getting to me. He needs a lot of help because he really isn't able to do much on his own. I don't like to wish away time, but I'm looking very forward to the end of the school year when I can finally relax.


This Saturday is National Scrapbooking Day, (hey, I couldn't believe this actually was a real thing when I first heard of it!) and the store I work at is having a huge crop both Saturday and Sunday, (100 women each on both days) and that means I'll be at said crop, as a worker bee, and not enjoying some leisurely scrap time. WAH!! So, happy NSD to all of you.. I hope you can all find the time to enjoy creating something this weekend. I won't be posting a layout here Monday, just so ya know..... I probably won't want to look at scrap products for a while after it's all over. In fact, wish me luck that I won't feel the urge to stab someone with an exacto this weekend... ;p

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