I MADE IT TO 100!!!!! GO ME!!!!

POST 100!

So cool to see that this is my 100th post. So i decided to do one of these tag things that you see on blogs and email all over the place - I thought this was as particularly good one to put on the blog with reflections on the last year and the year to come:

1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
Went on a motor home holiday - FANTASTIC!
Went further north than I have ever been before - check out Inuvik on the map - it's WAY north!
Visited the US (not all good, not all bad)
Entered my 40s
Took photos every day

2. What are your New Years Resolutions?
To continue to work on the resolutions from last year - be a more positive person, become more organised, to take photos every day and improve photography, write more in the blog, scrap a lot more, be creative every day, save money (or rather stop spending!) Is that enough?

3. Did anyone close to you give birth in 2007?
Yes, we all welcomed Isabella Hope Chance into the world last January!

4. Did anyone close to you die.
Thank goodness not.

5. What countries did you visit?
Long list all things considered:
The UK
Canada
America
Italy
France
(and then add on top of that those places that Ralph visited on business: Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Austria - think that is all)

6 What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
Patience. Every BasicGrey paper and product that there is. Time to breathe.

7. What date(s) in 2007 will remain etched in your memory and why?
25th January - Isabella
22nd November - the big birthday
24th November - the big party
August 27th to September 14th - the big holiday to Yukon (5 years in the making)

what a fantastic year!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Turning 40 without breaking down!
Surviving the Yukon wilderness
Completing my Canada 2006 album, my Christmas album, my 2006 in review album and all the other scrap pages I did.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Bit of a strong word. Still working on being positive - not a complete success
Did not get all my photos organised

10. Did you suffer any illness or injury?
Nothing at all. A good year.

11. What was the best thing someone bought you?
My stunning watch from Ralph for my birthday.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Cameron - what a darling he is turning out to be
Ralph for putting up with me in party monster mode!

13. Whose behavior appalled and depressed you?
mmm - still thinking on that one - so many celebrities were just down and out disappointing over the year.

14. Where did most of your money go?
In Ralph's shopping sprees! And our glorious holiday of course
(oh and that constant supply of pizza boxes stuffed with scrapping goodness!)

15. What did you get really, really excited about?
Our holiday
My scrapbooking
My party

16. What song(s) reminds you of 2007?
Down in a cold dirty well - Justin Nozuka

17. Compared to last year are you...
a.) Happier or Sadder? Happier
b.) Thinner or Fatter? Fatter
c.) Richer or Poorer? Less said the better

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Been in touch with everyone
Stayed at home
Taken time to learn my new camera

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Moaning. Travelling.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
Totally at home - in our own flat!

21. Did you fall in love in 2007.
Every day anew.

22. deleted the question - not a nice question for anyone


23. What was your favorite TV program?
Navy CIS, Numbers, Criminal Minds

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't this time last year?
I don't think we should use that word about how we think about people (well I am working on it anyway).

25. What was the best book you read?
Did not really read much over the year but was very inspired rereading all my scrapbooking books - esp Cathy Z and Stacy Julian

26. What did you do on your birthday and how old were you?
Left my 30s with fun, flair and a great party!


27. What was your best musical discovery?
Justin Nozuka

28. What did you want and get?
My watch plus loads of other goodies for my birthday - just fantastic!
A charmed life with Ralph
A life-changing holiday in Yukon

29. What was your favorite film of the year?
I don't think I watched any movie made in 2007. Only watched DVDs from older movies - James Bond probably

30. What did you want and not get?
Enough time for us


31. What one thing would've made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Completing my "organise my photos" goal.
Losing the weight I had wanted to lose for my birthday.


32. How would you describe your fashion concept for 2007?
Me? Fashion concept? you gotta be joking! I reckon my fashion concept for 2007 was "how long can I wear these old clothes before I have to throw them out?" (ps. I am still wearing stuff I bought in the UK before I moved to Germany in 2001!)

33. What kept you sane?
Scrapbooking, photos, knowing we had our holiday booked, Ralph, laughing at myself

34. Which celebrity or public figure did you admire most?
Difficult one. Al Gore and team for winning an Oscar and the Nobel prize I think. (that was 2007 wasn't it?)

35. What political issue stirred you most?
The state of the environment, global warming, the ice caps melting

36. Who do you miss?
Grandad - still

37. Who was the best new person you met?
Not many new contacts over the year - probably those girls from the Heidi Swapp class I did online.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned.
Things could be so much worse.
Maybe 40 is not so bad after all.

39. Quote a song line that defines your year.
Our first dance song - still so good after all this time - still brings tears to my eyes, and I got to dance to it for the first time at my party, 4 years after we did not dance to it at our wedding - and I danced with Ralph for the first time in more than 9 years:

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free
I wish I could break all the chains holding me
I wish I could say all the things that I should say
Say 'em loud say 'em clear
For the whole wide world to hear


And I guess I should "tag" someone else to do this. With my "vast" social circle (!!) I tag Libby - go for it!

Post 99!!!!

A quick and easy layout for 16th Jan capturing those photos and a few thoughts about when I left the UK to move to Germany. It really was "for good" compared to all the times I had "left home" before. Don't you just LOVE BasicGrey? It just works every time!

2 Posts in One Day? Must be busy!

So here is my layout for 15th Jan.

I just realised today that I am REALLY driven by colour (bet you hadn't noticed!) and this has given me a push to really think about organising my product predominantly by colour. I know it is a difficult thing to do in the first place, but over the last two weeks, each layout has been dictated by colour first. Views? And a first on this layout - I tried out machine stitching! What fun! Definitely something I will be doing a LOT more of! Love the effect. I also did a bit of hand stitching on this one too to attach the ghost hearts. Almost half way through the month - keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to complete the month.

I also managed to get this assignment done for my Get Organised Be Inspired class - I am hoping this will help me get the most of all the wonderful product I have and make it easier for me to store and organise it all so that I can use it! Nice little project!

GORGEOUS!

And when I say gorgeous, I totally mean it. I think this one is the nicest yet (And you all know how much I have loved each one!). Full to bursting with wonderful papers (double sided), embellishments, cardstock, alphas - I don't know where to start! Romantic soft colours that are just screaming for love layouts full of heartfelt emotions and sweet whispering. I cannot wait to get going with it!

WHAT? I hear you shouting? The Bellaboo February kit of course! It is just wonderful - wish I could share the details with you but check out the website (Jan newsletter) for a sneak peek and sign up right away to receive yours. You are going to love it. I promise!

(actually, have realised that I have not shared my December kit projects on my blog yet so will get around to that in the next days - in the meantime, get your December kit to use up all those millions of photos you took at Christmas! Check it out)

And now for some red!

January 14th layout

Valentine flowers - using up my mega-kit! Pleased to be keeping up!

13th January layout

(Yet) Another pink layout! I am using the kit I talked about some days ago still and it is very much pink based! Good job I have plenty of subjects that need a LOT of pink!

Exclusive club of 2!

and both Libby and I know exactly who is meant with that title!

Yes, that little mutual adoration thing that is Maddie and Ralph!

12th January layout.

January 11th layout

Ok, 11 days and still going strong! Have not needed my back up layout yet and am getting photos done that have been on my mind since I started! So pleased!

Another Cameron one using the journalling card that I could not use yesterday.

10th January "Get a LOAD of This" layout

Ha ha! Still managing to keep up - amazing!!!!!

This time, I prepared by drawing a sketch (inspired by a layout in a magazine) while I was at work with an idea for the layout, a title, the journalling and having a think about the photos.

When it came to it, it was not quite as I had planned, but having the ideas to begin with saved me SO much time! I wanted to use the new born jornalling 7Gypsies card to match the other two but I did not have space so I guess I will just have to do another layout!

Having a "Fresh Start"...

I jumped the gun a little with that last post. I guess I should have started it off with:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I mean, the last time I posted was WAY before Christmas and what have I been up to since then? Pretty much the same as everyone else I suspect - tidying, cleaning, cooking, clearing away, washing up, drying, putting away, cleaning, tidying, cooking (you get the picture!). It was a good Christmas. Nothing spectacular, but good and enjoyable and relatively stress free once I resigned myself to the fact that I had messed up all my preparations and many of the plans I had had earlier in the year would just have to be skipped this time around! No problem! So, presents were late but most of them got there (still two outstanding to organise which I MUST do this weekend), but the cards arrived mostly on time, the decorations mostly got put up and I MOSTLY got into the Christmas spirit! New year is what new year always is for me - mixed. I cried which frustrated me as I have managed to avoid that the last two years but this year it just hit me and I could not help it! Sorry! But I will talk about my word of the year and resolutions in my next post.

What I really wanted to talk about again here was the GREAT Bellaboo January kit - "Fresh Start". Boy, it was fun to use and create with. At first, I drew a bit of a blank - it is challenging, but once the first idea hit, there was no stopping me and I am so tempted to get another one! I kept thinking of all the things I wanted to do with it but had to limit my options! The focus is journaling, new start, clean sheet etc and it just works so WELL. Have you got yours yet? I think you should get over there right NOW (yes, come back to the blog later if need be and follow the link here over to check it out). Bright clean fresh colours and loads of variety in the products. All our projects can be seen over there in the gallery so I will just give you a few glimpses. Go and look ...... (http://www.bellaboo.co.uk/)

Get a LOAD of this!

So, I decided to join in the "Get A LOAD of This!" challenge set up by Laine Ehmann over at Big Picture Scrapbooking. The challenge is to produce a page/layout a day throughout the whole of January! Scary stuff but I thought, why not! OK, so I missed the first of Jan but therefore made two on the second so I still have one for each day. And yesterday I managed two so the second has been put to one side for a day when I just cannot make it!

Feeling good - day 9 and actually 10 layouts already covering things that have been going round my head over the last months and ideas from photos that I just never seem to have had the energy to do!

And another bonus is that I did a class about kits in November and one of the activities was shopping your own stash to make a kit for yourself to work on. I made a super mega-kit bursting with loads of gorgeous stuff that I have been wanting to use for ages. All girlie and pretty with lots of pink but also including aqua, soft blue, green and red. So, the last few days have been focused on using that too which is just great - everything is there, already coordinated and ready to go. It has a real mix of different product lines and manufacturers and also different themes too which makes it so interesting as it goes with so many different topics. I have just added a few sheets of cardstock as I have gone along and a couple of tiny things here and there. It has made it so easy to just pick up a photo and a sheet of cardstock and go for it. I am really speeding up and almost always using my handwriting or stickers these days too which saves so much time!

This is the picture of the kit:

And here are the layouts I have done so far:

1st Jan

2nd Jan

3rd Jan

4th Jan

5th Jan

6th Jan

7th Jan

8th Jan

9th Jan

and this is the extra layout that I did yesterday to use on a day when I might not have enough time.