Unexciting me....

Only unexciting because I haven't really been up to much to share with anyone! lol  It's been a lot of work, work, work and more work, and if someone had told me six months ago (when I was still thinking about how to get my own business off the ground and wondering how on earth I was going to find any clients) that now I'd have people coming to me with offers of work and that I'd have to start turning work down because I have too much, I would never, ever have believed it.  On one hand I'm extremely grateful because being self-employed can be real feast or famine stuff - you either have heaps of work or sometimes not nearly enough to pay the bills - but on the other hand it has left me with so little time for scrapping that I feel like I've forgotten how to scrap properly!!!  I haven't sat and had a whole day to scrap in a long time.  I've been going to Cyberscraps for our fortnightly crop nights which is good but then it's such a fun social thing to catch up with the girls that sometimes I don't even feel like scrapping then.  It can be more fun just chatting and catching up instead.  I did "Unleaded or Regular" at our last crop night.  Glad to have it finished as I started it the fortnight before and it just sat in my bag until the next crop night.  Nothing brilliant but I had wanted to do this layout for a while.  I took the photo of the Coke cans at my birthday lunch this year when Cass and I went out for Singaporean for lunch.  She's always been the full strength "regular" Coke and I've always been the "unleaded" Diet Coke and that's how we both refer to it if we're getting each other a drink "Do you want regular or unleaded?" even though we both know the answer already.  The layout looks black on the right hand side because I cut a one inch strip off the paper so the photo mount corner would stick out and the scanner just sees black if there's nothing there.

The layout below is a "play" layout that I did over at Jill's place a couple of weeks ago.  Jamie went for a sleep over and it was his first "proper" sleep over at a friend's house.  He's used to having sleep overs at Gran's place but staying with friends was a first for him.  It was also Levi and Jonah's first time having a friend sleep over at their place.  Luckily they were all beautifully behaved.  Doesn't it make you wonder why they don't ever do that for their own parents but will be perfect angels for other people?!?!?  I'm referring to James there but I'm glad to hear he didn't have Jill and Tim pulling their hair out with his usual drama queen antics - he saves that for us! lol  So while the boys were settling in and Doug and Tim were off being geeks together Jill and I took the opportunity to have an hour or two to scrap.  Jill's working on gorgeous ATCs which I love to watch her create.  ATCs sort of scare me because they're so little and I worry that I won't have nearly enough room.  The idea of "inchies" makes me cringe even more - I can't wrap my head around working on a 1 inch square space but en masse I'm sure they would look fabulous.  So I had a rummage through Jill's stash and boy does she have some stuff! lol  It's always funny how I look at my own stash and think "Oh I've got nothing good" and go through other people's stashes and find the best, funkiest things but it turns out the owner of that stash thinks they've got nothing good either.  It's all in the perspective isn't it?  I didn't even have my own photos so I've used a pic of Levi.  It was totally just playing and I had fun doing this one.  Sometimes they're the best ones, the ones we do for the complete creativity of it, with no goal in mind, no purpose and no plan.

Anyway I was talking about work before I side-tracked myself.  I haven't counted the hours but I think it's at least a full time job right now and I'm also over the hurdle of having people who pay on different cycles.  Some clients pay weekly, some pay fortnightly, some pay end and middle of the month and another pays monthly so that's been something else to juggle until we've gotten into a pattern and I've gotten used to when money comes in.  It's finally starting to make an appreciable difference to how we get by too, and I've been able to buy a few things for the house that we've needed but haven't had the money for previously.  I think I can even see something that resembles a savings account at some point soon and I haven't had one of those in a very long time.  I know a lot of people are the same; savings?  what savings?  That's the stuff that gets gobbled up by the ever increasing cost of living and the government and the banks all have a tisk-tisk at us terrible people for choosing to eat and have a roof over our heads instead of save our money.  Sorry for the cynicism but I'm sure you get what I mean.

On a brighter note, it's only a couple of weeks now until Outback Scrap happens up in Hughenden, Queensland.  I've got my classes all set and organised and I'll post something in the next couple of days with more details.  If you feel the urge to get away from it all for a few days you should make the trip and come play with us!  You can email me for further info if needed.

Okay well I'm off to type now - nothing new there - but have a great week!  Love Lu xx