I did scrap a little over the weekend, although let’s face it, NSD is more about shopping than scrapping.

I think I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I have fallen in love with Paislee Press. I just love the clean simplicity of her designs and the fact that I can get a page done in less than 30 minutes and still LOVE the result.

Paislee Press was in the spotlight at Oscraps last week and hosting a few challenges so I took the opportunity to scrap a few very quick pages. The best part is that I had pretty much already done the journaling thanks to my photo a day posts so they were SUPER quick. One of the challenges was to crop a photo in an unusual way (I did two of those) and one was using a very simple template.

This first one was also posted on the Gallery Standouts blog. 🙂 Click on images for credits.

And to close, a few things I am enjoying this week:

• Ali Edwards Words+Photos week
• That Holly McCaig from my My Digital Muse days “found” me (and we are both Taureans). MDM was my very first CT and I still miss that store.
• This artwork – I would love to get three different prints and hang them somewhere in my house. Just need to work out where. They are very girly for a house full of boys and I really don’t have a room to myself.
• New glass baby bottles that just arrived from Amazon – safe from plastic leeching. (Fingers crossed that this child will nurse well and we can actually start using bottles early – Thomas didn’t have one until he was three months old!)
• Also this and this (I am nesting)
• The fact that I am arranging for someone to come and clean my home before my mother arrives next week. (couldn’t face it this weekend – too much to do)
• $30 in Gift Certificates to Barnes and Noble that I won for some scrapping challenges a little while ago – Need suggestions for a couple of good reads while I am in the hospital please. 
• That I am in full “clean up” mode at work and starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Have a great Wednesday. (I thought it was Tuesday so I just moved one day closer – whoo hoo!)

Nicole

Exciting things happening with the house. The insulation is in and they start on the drywall today. You can’t imagine how much difference it makes having insulation (REAL insulation) on the second floor for the very first time.

Yes, they had something up there before but it more closely resembelled a rat’s nest rather than a product designed to keep the heat in and the cold out.

And anyone who has been on our second floor in the peak summer months could tell you that it was difficult to even find any air to breathe, never mind a cool place to hide. The air just did not move up there. But now it will thanks to the modern miracles of well-placed ventilation and those big pink (well beige) pieces of who-knows-what that manage to keep our heating bill in the “I can actually pay it” range.

The amazing thing is that the difference is INSTANTANEOUS! Amazing, amazing stuff. (My dad actually worked for a company in Australia that made insulation for about 20 years. He has always been a stong proponent and will be so impressed by my excitement. It may make up for the fact that I failed chemistry in year 12 – he is a Chemical Engineer.)

Ok moving on. I have a LO to share and I have to say it is one of my favourite LOs for a long time. Sometimes I see LOs in the galleries and they have so much STUFF on them. I love the way they look but I have a really hard time going through my files and finding the right stuff. Then I get frustrated and I am not happy with the result and… you get the gist.

So I am giving myself permission to keep it simple. Here’s the result.

View credits by clicking on the image.

ETA – Just found out I am on the catwalk at SISTV. So exciting!

In other news – think I have been having some Braxton Hicks contractions the last couple of days. Hard to tell, but I feeling uncomfortable today. This baby is not allowed to come early – we have a house building schedule to adhere to and it would mess things up. OK – he could come the week after next if he really wanted to. As long as the hardwoods are installed while we are in the hospital. Not too much to ask right?

Have a very happy humpday.

Thomas was an early talker. His first word was “bubble” at about 10 or 11 months and he hasn’t stopped talking since. In fact lately he has kicked it up a few notches with most of his statements arriving in the form of a question. For example… “Is that Miguel?” (one of the builders who he has taken a shining to) “Are those my shoes?”, “Are you eating something?”, “Is that a chair?” and on and on it goes.

It’s very cute and I LOVE that Thomas has a good vocabulary – but lately I have been very tired thanks to interrupted sleep and my patience level is not as high as it was a couple of weeks ago. Last night I found myself just willing him to “Shut Up!” It didn’t help that Kei was late home from work and I was the only person there to listen to, and answer, the thousands of questions that came from his mouth in the hour we were alone together. I feel like such a bad mother. Some parents would be thrilled to have a child who can properly express himself through language and I know we are very lucky. I just have so much going on right now that I dream of just a little bit of silence. The opportunity to shut everything out for a while and not have to say for the 50th time “No, you can not watch the wiggles!” (only a time out threat stopped that conversation).

So – not feeling like the best mummy in the world today, although I am pleased with myself for keeping it contained so Thomas didn’t understand the full extent of my frustration.

Coincidentally, I scrapped this page a week or two ago for the You Rock Lift on Lauren’s CT blog. Appropriate, don’t you think?

One more thing before I go… I receeived my digital copy of Digital Scrapbooks Mag today and there he is on page 81! Thomas is in print and I am officially published. Whoo hoo! Can’t wait to get the hard copy.

I have reached 1000 hits. Now I know that is small potatoes for some but I can’t believe that I have had so many people show even a teeny tiny interest in what I have to say. I mean seriously – you don’t have anything better to do? hahaha.

And to fittingly mark this incredible milestone, I am unable to post anything of great interest today. I left the house this morning without my computer AND without my phone. Sheesh! So no P365 pics today but I will hopefully get about 5 days worth uploaded tonight so come back tomorrow for more than you ever cared to know about the past five days of my life. 🙂

Oh the other thing – I am using a loaner laptop at work so I am not able to check in on my favourite blogs and I don’t have the link to my CT forums so I may as well have dropped off the face of the earth.

I do have one LO I can share thanks to that magical internet capability called linking. I have been sitting on this one for a while just waiting for the big LDD anniversary sale.

Is he too cute? Using some new stuff from Lauren Reid available at Little Dreamer Designs right now at 35% off.

So that’s about it for now. Back later with some pics.

I am feeling a little stalled creatively. Weeks of overtiredness and overwork have taken their toll on  my (Gasp!)scrapbooking. I am just not feeling inspired and don’t feel like I have the time to get inspired. I have dozens of idea books, scrapping mags and galleries to browse and I just can’t bring myself to do it right now.

To be honest I think part of the reason is that I need a new subject. Don’t get me wrong, I love Thomas and all but I feel like 2 years on the same topic (albeit, many different stories) is starting to take a toll. Maybe it’s the impending arrival of this baby. I have so many ideas going through my head about how to scrap brand new baby pictures as well as how Thomas responds to being a big brother, that I am having trouble focusing on the right now.

And did I say that I am tired?

Nevertheless, I did manage to scrap a couple of LOs in the past week. Not sure how I feel about this first one. It was for a sketch challenge on the Jen Wilson blog and I don’t think I would have chosen this sketch to begin with. The good news is that it pushed me out of my comfort zone and I did manage to scrap a story that I have wanted to record for some time.

I really like this next one using Dani Mogstad and Manda Bean’s Very Merry Unbirthday. It’s a very girly kit but I fell in love with some of the patterned papers, many of which are great for boys too. You can actually see where my creativity stalled. Check out the inventive title (haha).

LOVE the colours though and that photo is too cute. You can click on the images for full credits.

So there is my tale of woe for this week. To be honest I think I just need a good night’s sleep to revitilize. Oh, that’s right. There’s unlikely to be a good night’s sleep anywhere in my immediate future… OK then, I’ll settle for a block of good belgian chocolate and a couple of hours on the couch watching first runs of my fav TV shows. (Note to self: substitute wine for chocolate after the baby is born).

Ahhh – feeling better just thinking about it. 🙂