Cyberscraps August classes and a blooming challenge blog addiction!!!

I've just sorted out the class list for August at Cyberscraps and next month, just in time for Father's Day, we're doing some masculine layouts, an intermediate one and Cass will be doing an advanced one for those who like to get stuck right in. We've also got some new Bella kit classes with new kits from our usual ones and the Making Memories kit classes are available also in beginners' and intermediate versions. The Making Memories classes even come with a heavy duty plastic storage case for your layouts and leftover product. We're also going to be doing the Father's Day mini tag album which is currently in the Basic Grey Ideas Gallery which is great for dads on the go as it will fit into a briefcase or a glovebox or backpack, whatever the man in your life needs to keep his stuff in!!! Kids classes for August will be about Dad too - a cute little gift box with a mini accordion album inside and a gorgeous hand painted canvas for Dad or Grandpa or whoever the special father figure may be.

Now that that's business out of the way, I tell you what - I've developed a real love of challenge blogs lately!!!! I've been a huge fan of HOW DARE YOU for a while now and do my utmost to participate in every single challenge each fortnight. The standard of work done by the contributors is just mind-blowingly good and they are a fab bunch of girls too! The whole site has just been revamped with some familiar faces back plus some new ones and some very exciting new dares which are guaranteed to get the mojo pumping and the creativity flowing. It's definitely become a regular haunt for me and I get all excited every second Friday morning when I jump online to check out the next cool dare. Go have a look if you're in a scrap rut!

The next challenge blog I've discovered and embraced is ALL ABOUT EVE - a blog that encourages us women, who are typically the ones behind the camera, to scrap ourselves and I believe that's so important. I know that from experience because when I was 19 my mother passed away and I barely have any photographs of her at all because she was always the one taking pictures of me and nobody took any of her. It's something I desperately wish could have been different for me and so, because you never know what life will bring, I've started making a conscious effort this year to do layouts about myself so that my kids will know who I was as a person and not just their mother. Sure I do layouts about motherhood sometimes but I'm also quietly compiling an album of layouts that are focussed on personal things about me, stuff that maybe my kids aren't old enough to talk to about yet, the kind of things that we as women don't usually find out about our own mothers until we are adults and sometimes not until we're mothers ourselves, and sometimes not until our own mothers have passed away and we hear the stories of our mothers' lives from friends or family and and maybe wish we'd known about her while she was here to celebrate her history with us. So for now the album is under the bed, in a box, where nobody in the whole house knows about it but me and now you know too!!!! But at least if something ever happens to me it will be there and someone will find it and I hope it gives my kids a more complete idea of who I am and I hope they will be understanding when they read some of too, just because it's so honest and I wouldn't want it any other way. So if you're someone who is always behind the camera too then prepare to step in front of the lens and learn to love scrapping about yourself.

I've also found ONE LITTLE WORD in the last week and while I haven't had a chance to do any layouts yet, I'm very intersted in the concept and also the total freedom it gives scrappers to approach scrapping the word in any way they choose. There are no criteria, only interpretations of one word and we all know that one word can mean a million different things to a million different people. Definitely looking forward to participating in that when I get a minute and I'll be sure to post on my blog as I do them.

Well I have grocery shopping tonight. Doug and I go alone and leave the MIL with the kids. It's kind of like a date night for us. We push the trolley together, crack jokes, steal kisses and laugh alot as we trawl the aisles reading all the labels (food intolerances in the kids is such a pain!!!). It's not exactly a romantic night out but it's lots of fun and sometimes that beats any expensive candlelit dinner. I was meant to go to the gym today but it hasn't happened yet and I don't know if it will. I'm even bloody well dressed in my gym gear because I figure it's much easier if I'm dressed and ready to go all day and I can take the opportunity to go if it arises. It's one of those things that I totally have the best intentions of doing when I go to bed each night. I think to myself that I will get up early, I will get to the gym, but these days it's been so cold that it's really a deterrent to have to get up at all, let alone get out of the warm flannie jammies and have to go outside to get to the gym!!!! lol The gym now has one of those infra-red saunas, it's like a little pine cubby house that you sit in and it apparently makes you sweat without the whole steam and heated rocks thing. I'm not normally claustrophobic but the damned thing is pretty small, about the size of an outdoor spa for four people and the door gets shut and you can control things from inside on a control panel next to the door. The light inside is quite dim as well, I'm sure there's a reason for that but I just don't know what it is so the cramped space coupled with the dimness makes me a little nervy. I keep having doomsday visions of the door getting stuck while it's turned on full pelt and they'll find my body the next day, cooked to perfection like a rotisserie chicken!!!!! lol Ahem, so let's say I'm not overly interested in the new whizz bang sauna just yet........

I'm off to check on Blayd the Invalid - yep that's his official title. I'm sure every family must have a raving hypochondriac and he's mine. Every cough is pneumonia, every sniffle is the plague! He actually does have the flu right now but he only just got it and it's been hanging around the house for about a month now, Caeligh had it for a whole month and is only better this week and I had it for three weeks and I'm only better this week too. Now of course as we get better Blayd has come down with it. He does look a bit like death warmed up so he won't be going to karate tonight but I sure hope he's capable of putting in an appearance at school tomorrow. I'd hate to have to take him to the shop tomorrow. I'd have to give him a pillow and tell him to sleep under the big work table at the back of the shop!!!! lol

Cass's little sister Trisha just had her beautiful baby boy Toby yesterday and wow is he cute!!! The beauty of finally knowing when I don't want any more of my own is that I can appreciate the serious cuteness of someone else's baby but not get that clucky longing feeling of wanting to be pregnant again myself. These days the thought of being pregnant again makes me shudder!!! Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy being pregnant but instead of post-natal depression I used to get pre-natal depression. I'd literally go basketcase and it would start from about 20 weeks and just get worse and worse until by the time I was 8 months or so I just about wanted to slit my wrists. It was a horrible, dreadful feeling of not being able to cope with anything, hating everyone and even having the occasional, very calm and perfectly rational (to me at the time anyway) thought of driving my car into a tree. My doctor said it was just the way my body chemistry reacted to the pregnancy hormones and the moment my kids were born, well within a few hours anyway, I was absolutely, totally back to normal. It was like waking up from a nightmare. I could sit and smile philosophically and say that yes both of my last two kids were worth it (it has only happened the last two times) and that a new baby would be worth it too but if it was any worse next time than it was last time then I can honestly say I might not live to see any of my kids. That's how bad it was and there was nothing I was prescribed that helped, nothing even took the edge off that horrible, spinning out of control psychotic feeling and the things that might have helped couldn't be given to pregnant women. I'm sure you understand when I say I wouldn't risk placing myself, an innocent little life and my family in that position again. So I'm resigned to the fact that my preggie days are over and I'm enjoying this new phase of my life where I don't have to start planning for the next little one to come along now that my youngest is at that magic age - anywhere between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 is when my body started thinking I should be getting knocked up again. I'm enjoying giving away the baby toys to people who really need them, giving the baby clothes to charity, whizzing past the baby aisle in the supermarket without even a glance except to admire the super-cute dummies and itty bitty socks. It's a bit scary to wonder who I am if I'm not the mother of a baby. Now I'm the mother of an almost teenager, school kids and a little girl who is independent as she can possibly be. It's a redefining of myself and who I am, where I fit into life these days but it's a good change iykwim? It's a horizon full of possibilities that can only come from having children who are not entirely dependent on you for every single need, it's a little bit more mummy freedom, a little bit more time to focus on myself (gee maybe she should be able to fit in a visit to the gym they snicker!!!! lol) and it's a chance to find out what I want to be when I grow up (if I decide to grow up that is.....!). I used to wonder what the mothers of school kids did all day and now I'm starting to find out. I guess part of me is scared of the unknown, what is it I'm meant to do now and part of me is horrified at the speed in which my babies are growing up and away from me. Now I think about it maybe what I really worry about is that I'll get left behind and not have a life to go back to after my kids don't need me to mother them 24/7 anymore. You know that scenario about how empty nesters can sit across the breakfast table and look at a total stranger cos they've been so busy being Mummies and Daddies that they've forgotten how to be friends and lovers and the kids were meant to be the glue that held the marriage together? Oh God what a morbid turn my cute baby paragraph took!!!!!! Anyway he's gorgeous and I can't wait to scrap a few pics of him. He doesn't even look like Yoda at all! Perfect layout material that kid!

I'm going to go now cos I think I've rabbitted on quite long enough. Isn't it funny that I thought I didn't have anything to really blog about today.......ha ha ha!!!! Thank you so much for those who've managed to survive the endurance read that was today's post!!!!

I know I've said it before but for goodness sake keep warm girls! Love, Lu