Oh how I just LURVE student free days......NOT!!!

Well after the excitement of yesterday, reality is right back to normal today! All three boys are home from school for a student free day, Caeligh is at home as she normally is on a Thursday and Doug is home with the flu so he's in a fantastic mood.

James is 6 and going through that phase where he wants what he wants...and now! He's bossy, rude to people, demanding and spends his days blowing up deluxe about the littlest things. It doesn't help that Caeligh finds his explosions entertaining so she does her best to tick him off as often as she can. So far he hates everyone, I am the worst mummy EVER, Dad is a meanie and he says his brothers are idiots and Caeligh is a rotten rascal ratbag (that bit's true however....!). He's done a number on his bedroom, pulled all his clothes out of his drawers and thrown toys, books and crap everywhere so he can't even see the floor, then when he was told to clean it up he just became the little human bulldozer and shoved the mess to one half of the room and called it done. Now Doug is pissed off and has gone in there with garbage bags and every parent knows what that means!!!! Yep stuff is getting tossed!!!! The boys have also decided to clean so they've pulled out everything from under their beds and now that's all over their bedroom floor as well!!! I never thought I would care about the mess but now the loungeroom looks nice and all my stuff from Ikea is out and I've moved the furniture so that's one room that looks acceptable and I've just tidied up the kitchen too and vacuumed. It seems like a conspiracy - every time I get a room straightened somebody messes up a different room in the house just to screw with my head!!!!

One of those days when no matter how much I want to sit and scrap, it just isn't going to happen. I'm guessing I'm going to have to do some laundry, do some more cleaning and probably yet more of the kind of housework that is never ending. I've been thinking I could use one of those robotic vacuum cleaners, you know the little circular ones that just wander around by themselves all day long? Yeah I need about four of those and just set them off to run all day long to keep up with the constant mess. I'm starting to get antsy about the fact that no flat surface in the house can seem to stay clean, crumb-free or dust-free for more than about half an hour at a time. I'm torn between wanting to keep on top of the mess (which could well be impossible and do my head in at the same time) or just let it go and do my once a day tidy and whatever gets messy, crumby, dirty or dusty after that will just have to wait until the next daily clean. I guess I'm trying to be tidy so that hopefully my kids will grow up tidier than I was, and it will be a habit for them, not a chore like I consider it to be.

Tomorrow is a whole day in the shop and our crop tomorrow night. We've got a full house which is fantastic and I'm looking forward to having some fun with the girls. It's still cold enough to even wear my uggies which is good. The new stock is in (and more coming in all the time so there's always something new these days) so I can't wait to see everything restocked and looking gorgeous. I hated the empty paper racks at the end of the sale but I haven't been in the store since Cath restocked so I'm a bit excited to see all the new stuff.

This weekend is Cyberscraps' first Cybercrop as well!!! It's taken us a while to organise but we're finally there so if you would like to join in then hop on over to Cyberscraps and register on our forum and on our gallery so you can chat and upload your layouts. There will be games, prizes and three challenges over the course of the weekend to participate in. We've got a funky fun bunch of chicks on Cyberscraps so the cybercrop is guaranteed to be a fun time for all. If you've never done a cybercrop, the basic idea is that you log in, keep track of the games and challenges via the forum threads and you can chat with the other forum members over the course of the weekend. There are prizes and voting on the challenge layouts and the hints are already up in the forum if you want to get an idea of what the challenge layouts will be based on. Cass and I will be in the shop until midnight tomorrow night so we'll be in and out over the course of the evening as well as running the crop at the store. We'd definitely love to see you get involved and we're looking forward to a fun weekend. Come play with us!!!

A big congrats to all of you who've gotten THE call from SM in the last few days. I can see from the people I know have been shortlisted that I'm in some amazingly talented company so I'm feeling pretty spesh just to be counted among you all!!! And if you didn't get a call, I'm not going to give you some condescending crap about how it doesn't matter because obviously if you cared enough to enter then it matters! All I can say though is that there is always next year. Not much comfort now but I know I can look back on what I did for Masters last year and see that my style has just changed so much in a year and yours will too. I also started doing challenge blogs, the Get Real challenge on Cyberscraps, and those kind of things to try different stuff to what I normally did and that's what I think for me has made the biggest difference. I'm just happy to be shortlisted and really I don't mind what happens from here on in. There's lots of deserving talent in this country and I'm as excited as everyone else to see who will make it this year and I'm especially excited to see all the work in print when the mag comes out.

Well I've got to get back to the cleaning but I think a coffee is in order first! Have a fab Friday tomorrow and come join the cybercrop if you can.

Lotta love, Lu