Where on earth have I been?

Well I've been here - at my desk everyday - just not doing much personal blogging!!! lol I've been working a bit still this week even though I'm only part time now but there's still backlog to be caught up on and hey money is money right????? Yeah we've all heard my opinion on this one before.......anyway so I have been here and I'm far more up to date with my email and the Everyday Garbage blog than I have been with my own, naught me!

I did get to go back to the shop this week which was great. I really miss the place and very much miss Cass when I have to be at home working. Interestingly we've become kind of like the Siamese twins of scrapbooking!!!! Because we are so close I think we get automatically paired - when people think of one of us they usually think of the other as well. I am not complaining in the slightest - I can't think of a better way to enjoy my art than to have my best friend by my side the whole way! I spent Wednesday sitting with a very lovely elderly lady who had begun some scrapbooking but wanted to try a Bella tag album so I gave her a hand and showed her some ideas. That pretty much took up a lot of the day with customer traffic included and Cass spent the day reorganising the shop. She's so good at that in a way I can't even comprehend and now we have a Christmas section all set up and plenty of rack space for when the new Urban Lily ships soon and the new My Mind's Eye etc. Hard to believe with all the stuff we have in the shop that we still don't have all our new stuff yet!!!!! Thank God for Cass's phenomenal organisational skills or I just don't know where we'd put anything!

Thursday I spent over at Cass's place and the intention had been to try to scrap cos I had done so little over the last few weeks but the motivation just wasn't there y'know? It's hard when that happens, the time and the product but not the enthusiasm to create anything. So we basically had a bit of a bludge day and didn't do much at all but play with the little ones, take pictures, spent lots of time cuddling Cass's sister's baby Toby (who is so damned seriously cute!!!!!! - but not in a clucky "gee I want another baby" kind of way, just can appreciate the cuteness of him and hand him back) and watching TV. That was about it! The photos above are a couple from Thursday with the girls dressed up. Caeligh put on Lily's ballet tutu and mucked around for a bit so I snapped the bottom two pics of her. I haven't had a chance to review the rest yet. The top two pics of Caeligh are ones I took a few weeks ago - you know the ones I did in the car park with the pink tree? I showed some to Jilly and she very kindly had a play with them in Photoshop as a surprise for me. They are gorgeous and I can't wait for a bit of mojo to strike so I can actually DO SOMETHING with them!!!!!

Well it's a busy week as far as challenge blogs go. Everyday Garbage has one week to go on our first challenge In The Kitchen and entries for that one close midnight Sunday 30 September (AEST). I updated the site yesterday with the entries we've received so far and wow are they great!!!!! The response has also been amazing and we can't thank people enough for their support of our ideas right from the word go.

Aussie Dares has a new challenge this fortnight and it's really one to get your teeth into which I absolutely love. The challenge is to scrap your fears. This is the kind of thing I really love to scrap about, the gritty hard stuff so I'll definitely be trying to fit that one in this fortnight.

All About Eve's latest challenge is "a glimpse" so you can scrap a treasured past memory OR you can have a peek into the future and scrap what you think the future will hold for you. I'm really enjoying the AAE challenges so another one that I'll try to fit in.

One Little Word's latest word up is "perfect". Now I'll admit that I find some of the words a little cliche and kitsch for me. Sure I could do a thousand layouts on what I find perfect - gorgeous pics of my beautiful, smiling (and if I cleaned their faces, maybe even not dirty for once) children but there is a little bitch voice inside me that is telling me to take the whole "perfect" concept and cram it sideways because basically I don't like perfect - not in any way, shape or form so most likely I'll go with my idea of a layout about "anti-perfect" which is kind of how I think of myself. So I don't want to offend any of the seriously talented girls at OLW but I won't be able to go with what I assume will be the popular choice on this one. But that's the beauty of these challenge blogs, you can do in any direction you like with it and people are just happy that you've had a go. That's real freedom and what I love about participating in these kind of things.

So if you're in need of some inspiration there's some ideas for ya!!!!!

So what does the week hold so far? Well it's school holidays as of today (groan, moan, sign of resignation) so all three boys are home. Caeligh however is going to kindy because I still have to work and even though Doug has this week off work too life is just easier when she goes to kindy. Yep some people will probably think that's terrible but I'm a realist. She'll have a far more exciting day at kindy being constantly amused and given interesting things to do than she will at home, getting herself into trouble, fighting with her brothers and generally causing havoc (like she's done all weekend!!! lol). I think Doug has the cleaning bug now so I think the plan was for some serious gutting of the children's rooms and a serious amount of toys and clothes making their way to local charity as they have too damned much! I asked Lachlann yesterday to cull any clothes that don't fit him any more and do you know what he has left? Two pairs of shirts, one frigging T-shirt and an old Pumpkin Patch jumper!!!!! Thank goodness Kmart has 25% off kids clothes until Wednesday! And then I asked Blayd the same thing but he still has 90 of his wardrobe that fits but then told me he has only two pairs of shoes - and one pair are those nasty black rubber and wetsuit material slides which are so bogan (think he got them from his dad's house....!) so that won't do at all either and KMart to the rescue again with buy one pair of kids' shoes get the second half price. Funny how sometimes the sales are there when you need 'em!

I had better get moving. I still have lots of typing to do before the "normal" workday stuff starts and I can hear a fight in the loungeroom over the TV remote so I had better go sort it out before Caeligh hurts somebody!

Have a great creative week and comiserations if you've got kids at home! Here's hoping they give us all a break this week and behave like little angels - or you can find someone else to entertain them for you at least!!!! lol

Lotta love, Lu