Have spent the last two days doing some scrapping and polishing off some projects from the pending file.

It's been immensely satisfying and the results are not too shabby.

Aunty_myra

A very special photo from our wedding.  Shelee sent me some beautiful stickers last year and as soon as I saw them I knew they were perfect for this.  Didn't have a clue how to go about journalling for the page, but got some inspiration...and a library pocket template...from the scrapbooking pages on about.com.  I wanted to semi-hide the journalling as it is personal, but I needed to do it in a space efficient way.

I'm somewhat ashamed to say that this layout has been in the projects pending file for over a year.  I had the background done and the photos and buttons but didn't have a clue on where to go from there.  Aquamum passed a whole pile of scrapping stuff to me that a friend of hers was giving away.  The diecuts from one of the kits were perfect for this.  The diecuts lead to the raffia, which lead to the titles and in about an hour the project was finished.  I am very happy with it. 

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Jim Gaffigan-Bacon

Saw this at dooce this morning.

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I actually started this LO before Christmas.  Regrettably, I had a rush of blood to the head and decided to hand stitch the embellishments with gold lurex thread.  May I never decide to do this again!  It took forever and was some of the most painstaking work I've ever attempted.  In the end it looked good, but it was a bit of nightmare to do.

Here it is finished...the first finished LO of 2008

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Actually it's not a moon shadow, but a puppy dog one.  For the next two weeks we are minding Gizzy, the beloved pet of my SIL Aquamum.  Aquamum and a few other assorted family members are having a well deserved break in a non-pet-friendly holiday house so we are looking after the dog.  She's a Maltese cross something-or-other and absolutely gorgeous.  Very well-mannered and truly a companion dog.  Gizzy has been one of the bright lights in Aquamum's hitherto dark and miserable existence and now I understand why she's been described as Aquamum's shadow.  Am loving her to bits.

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I have only one, hence the singular title.  It is to slow down.  I seem to do everything in this huge rush and it is so not healthy.  This year I will slow down.

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The end of a year always brings a re-evaluation of everything that's going on.  We've done the re-evaluation and come to a rather sobering conclusion.

My year off is not going to be a year off at all and long term, I have to return to the workforce.  It's not a choice, it's not an option, it's just something that has to happen.  I'm not coping with the idea very well at the moment so please excuse me if I sound a bit down in the dumps.  It's because I'm down in the dumps.

It will get better.

Eventually.

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and I couldn't have said it better myself.

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This is going to sound really weird, just occasionally I feel as though I have wandered into some strange fifth dimension or alternate reality.  Nothing works, simple questions elicit odd responses or the individual questioned looks at me as though I have suddennly started speaking in Greek, or I have grown an extra head or limb or something.  It never happens when Mister Bear is there - or anyone else for that matter - and as soon as I have someone else with me this "alternate reality" goes away.  I am starting to get quite paranoid about it. 

Today is a good example.  Yesterday I went to the plaza to buy Mister Bear a Christma present.  I wanted to buy him the next book in the Rome series by Colleen McCullough.  I heard Kerri-Anne interviewing her during the week about the book so I was fairly confident that I'd be able to buy it.

In short, no.

I went to three different bookshops.  In the first it was nowhere to be seen and I hunted high and low.  In the second, not only could I not find the book I was after, I couldn't find any hard back books at all.  In the third shop the sales assitant was free so I asked about it.  She looked at me as though I was aksing for a kilo of prawns in a bookshop and claimed she had never heard of it.  She looked it up on the computer, more to humour me than anything else and claimed it was not there.

I gave up and bought something else instead.  I was shattered because I knew Mister Bear really wanted that particular book.  I told him of my woes when we met up in the Plaza. (Actually I sobbed into his shirt front outside Big W...not having such a good time at the moment, as it happens.)

Today we went looking together.  The first shop he tried, yes, it is available but it's out of stock at the moment.  The second shop - the one with no visible hardbacks...the guy picked it up off the shelf and handed it to Mister Bear.  I swear it was not there yesterday.  I looked at every single book in the fiction section of the store and it was not there!

It's bought now and awaiting wrapping but I am left with this awkward feeling that my reality is not quite like everyone else's reality and that I am totally losing my grip.

Antony and Cleopatra: A Novel

Colleen McCullough

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*If* you get a handmade card from us this Christmas, you are in the "in" group.

If you get a commercially produced Christmas card, you would have received a handmade Christmas card if I had begun making them in about February of this year.  Keep your fingers crossed for a handmade one next year.

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Is it just me, or do floors have a secret magnetic quality that actively attracts things onto it?  I cannot keep up with all the stuff that just seems to gravitate to the floor.  The craft room is the worst offender in the house, but all the floors are, in some way, guilty of this crime.

What on earth am I supposed to do about it?  Reverse polarity??

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