Quick update

Well the week has been fairly uneventful (apart from the rat!!!! lol) and not too much is going on. I'm still working hard at the gym but I'm starting to find the diet hard but not anywhere near giving up yet as there's just over four weeks until the wedding so it's only a sprint now, nota marathon and I'm sure I can keep going until then.

I'm going to Cass's place Tuesday to try "the dress" on again. The scales haven't shifted in over a week but I have lost 5cms off my waist so I'll take that measurement instead of the scales any day!!!! Apparently because I'm doing the weights yadda yadda yadda anyhow muscle weighs twice as much as fat so I'm doing something constructive but it's still nice to see the scales move. I'll have to hop on their body composition scales next time I'm in to get a more accurate picture of where I'm at. I can see the differences still happening though and it's good motivation for continuing when normally I would have give up by now due to lack of willpower!

Above are a couple of pics of the invitations. They aren't all the same because basically I used pretty much whatever was in my stash and I didn't have enough of any one thing to do all of them the same but I figure hey, I'm a big believer in not striving for perfection and everyone knows I'm pretty relaxed anyway! lol Besides I figure nobody is so lacking in entertainment that they're going to go round catching up with other friends and rellies to compare invitation colours!!!! I just bought cheap KaiserCraft blank card packs from Crazy Clarks (at $2 for 6 plain white cards and envelopes they're a bargain!) and used one of the new Fancy Pants "From The Garden" stamps - thanks to Cass for her serious stamping effort!!! - and then used Kaiser stick on bling in silver, hot pink and light pink in the centres of the stamped on flowers. I bought a couple of rolls of cheap grossgrain ribbon from Spotlight for a dollar each and used bling flowers and prima flowers from my stash so all up I think the invites cost me maybe $30 for 40 of them so I'm a happy camper! The inserts I just printed myself on the computer using lovely washboard print lightweight paper that I had at home in a cupboard from the last time Doug and I were planning a wedding (about 7 years ago!). I also stamped the envelopes (or should I say Cass did!!! lol) to match the front design and they were done! Doug was a help in sticking all the inserts in and my eldest son Blayd (12) sat for hours with me putting on all the stick on bling in the flower centres. I'm seriously impressed that a 12 yo boy would be so willing to help so I made sure I heaped on the praise and thanks for pitching in to help. So they need to get sent today and while I realise it's not the huge months in advance sending that most wedding invites have, I figure it's not a big deal and we're a bit more casual than that.

Cass and I went into the Quilt and Craft show yesterday here in Brisbane and had a quick look around (difficult with Caeligh the tornado and Lily the princess with us for company but what can you do? They don't allow you to leave them in the car anymore......I promise I'm kidding.....if I left Caeligh in the car she'd probably work out how to hot wire it and steal it!!! lol). I bought the usual things, more VersaColour inks from that place that always has them $10 for four of them cos you can never have enough ink! I bought five Aqualip/Glaze pens - they're like the white and coloured souffle pens Cass and I absolutely love, they leave a very slightly raised solid line but the souffle ones are a matt finish whereas the ones I bought are a glossy shiny finish. I've been looking everywhere for them and they're really hard to find in shops. It's more the stamping shops so far that I've found them at. If you're a big freehand drawing/doodling fan on your layouts then seriously try to find some of these awesome pens!!!! They are Sakura brand and I'm totally in love with them and go through the ones I do find really quickly. I also bought some v.cute dice brads even though I'm not a huge brad fan, bought Caeligh some sticker packs to keep her somewhat happy and found a great MDF briefcase (Cass bought one, showed me and I went straight over and bought one too) as it's a great size to hopefully fit all of my inks in one place. Right now they take up lots of space in my big tool box and I'm running out of room for tools. I tend to keep my Fiskars, adhesives, pens, etc in the box but the inks are steadily taking up more room and after buying yet more yesterday there just isn't anywhere else to put them so I'm glad Cass found the briefcases. Honestly I must have almost a hundred inks (got that great 50 pack of VersaCube inks with my SM subscription a couple of years ago and have used virtually all of them even though when I got them I took one look at all the weird and wonderful colours and said "no way am I gonna use all these!" but I have and then gone looking for more!!!). So that's pretty much all I bought but we did catch up with the lovely Sandra and Rachelle for coffee and a chat and said a quick hello to Andrea whom we've only met once before. We didn't get quite the detailed look at the place that we would have liked but sometimes that's how it goes.

Tonight we've got crop night at the shop which will be fun as always. I've got to finish up the class layouts/OTP for November as well as do my Everyday Garbage layout for our next challenge (no hints here but look on the blog later today) as well as a stack of challenge blog layouts that I want to do for myself. I've got my idea for All About Eve worked out and just need to take the photo to go with it and I'm still working out in my head what to do for One Little Word and Aussie Dares. Still loving all the great challenge blogs out there even though I feel like I have bugger all time to do any of them lately.

I've got today and tomorrow left of my full time typing gig and then it's back to Mondays and Saturdays. The money has come at a really handy time but how far it will go I'm not sure. I will however be very happy to get back into the shop next week and be able to have that set aside time to get scrapping done that I just can't seem to find at home no matter how hard I try! My desk here usually ends up as a paperwork repository for junk mail, school notes, magazines and everything but scrapping stuff.

Here's a scary thought - time to start thinking about Christmas!!!! We've at least gotten as far as putting everything on lay-by for the kids that we wanted to get them so that's one big part already taken care of. The other pain in the butt is Christmas lunch which we always have here at home. This year we've noticed that Caeligh really seems to go crackers if she has preservatives in her diet and Blayd can't have them at all because of the intolerances he has so while last year we fudged things a bit and let Blayd have a bit of normal leg ham, this year I don't think we can do it with Caeligh being as sensitive to it as she seems to be. It's probably worse because she doesn't have preservatives at all and so on the rare occasions she gets them in her diet by accident the reaction is huge and very noticeable. So the plan is to find a butcher who does hams the traditional way, salted and smoked naturally without any artificial smoke flavour, the colour that is sometimes added to make it look better, and the truckload of nitrate preservatives that are added as part of the normal curing process for most butchers. I know it will be expensive to do it that way but it's hard to put a price on the look on Blayd's face when I tell him that he can have everything on the table instead of just pointing out the stuff that's safe for him to eat. Caeligh loves ham so it would be very hard to not let her have any. I can hear some people thinking that it's Christmas for goodness sake and what harm will one day do but for Blayd especially the behavioural side effects last for two to three days and as it's already a stressful busy time of year I can do without it all. And let's face it, Caeligh is just off the charts most of the time and I honestly in good conscience can't feed her anything I know will make her behaviour worse as she's a danger to herself now with the risky, dangerous things she likes to do. Her latest trick is to climb up our entertanment unit (seven foot high mind you!) and then jump about a metre forward and onto an armchair nearby. She's totally without fear and we still haven't found a deterrant yet for her to stop doing it. We don't have the room to move the furniture around because there will always be a couch or armchair near enough to jump to. I'm going to have to think about that one and work something out quickly before she breaks a limb. She always waits until people have left the room and then does it and I'm finding it hard to watch her every waking moment. Oh loving the challenging behaviour........

I'm going now that I've kept you all from whatever you should be doing by typing out this massive post!!! Thank you for taking time out to read if you've made it this far. Have a fab weekend no matter what you're doing and I'll try to post a bit more regularly so it isn't all in one big chunk!!!

Lotta love, Lu