Dishwashers and Five Year Olds

I'm still here! Buried under endless piles - in my head. I just wrote this whole big thing about wondering if I'm going crazy because I'm approaching 30 and went on and on and couldn't stop thinking crappy thoughts about everyone and everything and honestly, I just didn't want to think about stress and busy-ness or anything negative. Amazing how a girl can bring herself down. And what's the point of that? So. While I near 30, I will instead work again (hard) on the gratitude thing.

Speaking of gratitude, a couple of months ago Dren and I bought a dishwasher from our friends above us who were moving into a new house. This is one of the best decisions we've made in a LONG time. Amazingly enough, the dishwasher=cleaner kitch=more time=happy people. Yep...definitely a thing to not take for granted.

I'm finding Jaxon's age right now funny, delightful, trying, tiring and exhilarating all at the same time. He is totally learning to read. He constantly gets his "b"s and "d"s mixed up and sometimes he has fun with it and we totally laugh together over the mistake that sometimes ends up being quite hilarious. But sometime he gets upset and frustrated. I think he's got his mother's personality, quite frankly. Especially these days...oy!

I've been working on lots of scrap-related stuff...The Dare site, of course. Trying to problem solve and research and figure out the gallery but we'll see how that goes. Then there is Canada's Scrapbooking Crop for Kids, which is such an amazing event this group of women across Canada
have put together. Getting kits ready to go for my first ever teaching experience. How nerve-wracking is that!? Scrapologie's September kit, which of course is as divine as ever. Yum!

And then there's the cleaning...which I'm extra behind on so off I go!

xog

some stuff that's popped up over the last little while...(i got a bunch of old pix printed because my printer's been on the fritz)...

piles

It's typical. I'm always surrounded by piles. Piles of paper, piles of books. Piles of clothes, piles of scrap supplies. But my favourite pile right now? My wood pile. While on Saturna last weekend having a visit with my dad, seeing the latest gorgeous house he's built down @ Saturna beach, I asked him about spare wood. I've been painting a lot lately on wood...collage stuff etc. It's a great medium - a wonderful surface that looks good even when it's bare. Not only did he send me home with a bunch of spare bits and pieces - 1/4 inch plywood, hardboard, thin veneers and bits of skinny plywood perfect for either art pieces OR covers of books, but two days later mum brought back to Vancouver a pile of 32 6"x8" wood book covers - pre-drilled with 4 holes perfectly to spec.

So grateful for my pile of wood. Fireplace not required.

PS! Sign-ups for LSS are extended to this Wednesday, midnight EST. If you haven't yet signed up, go do it now! First challenge will go up late Thursday/early Friday!

xog

drumroll please!

we're back!!!

What's the sitch?

Thank goodness for red lights and a quick shoving of the heads together for a snapshot of us on our 4 year anniversary. I simply cannot train the boy to look at the lens rather than the screen thingy. Here, the one and only existing photo us from last night.


We saw a play called Unity 1918 at the Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island. It was kind of funny, kind of interesting, and kind of good. Put on by the Senior Theatre Troupe of Arts Umbrella, the story was about "the panic of a Saskatchewan prairie town during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. This dark comedy explores the drastic meausres taked to keep the illness out." As mum said this morning "it's really more about the experience of going". Totally true. We will be getting out to see more local shows. We talked about that at dinner...what we would like to work on in the upcoming year. Changes, continutations and wants.

We had dinner at The Sandbar. The outdoor patio is situated under the Granville Street Bridge...a totally cool combo of city and serene. We got the last table for two right next to the glass, overlooking the water and the downtown side of False Creek. It was a gooorgeous night. You know things are looking up weather-wise when you can be wearing a strappy top at 10:30pm on a patio by the water.


Thank you for the well-wishes for us and for my mum. They kept her in again last night. J and I visited yesterday after work. She is doing well; her heart seems much calmer and under control. What a relief. She's a bit irritated at staying in the hospital ("I really need to get home") but she understands that it's for the best. Let me tell you though, if they don't discharge her this morning, they better look out! Seems to be just a need for adjusting her meds and due to a change they had to monitor her a bit.

So we got home at midnight and picked up J from Colleen's house (snatched him right out of his slumber, poor lil spongebob-clad dude). Stayed up til 2ish completing this week's dare (not that it took me 2 hours...). I think the fog may be lifting. Do you know I realized that all I've really been doing is playing with paint and glue and working on one 'ologie project for like the last 2 weeks?? I haven't actually done any scrapbooking with photos in a long time. So, I think I need to. I love photos and I'm re-realizing that. Here's this week's Dare brought to you by ever fine and fabulous scooter-lovin, New York-trippin Jamie:

Not entirely thrilled, but it's fine and colourful and I think helped open my brain back up again. Open brains are good.

*update! Mum just called me and it looks like she can be discharged! One more blood test and hopefully she'll be sent on her merry way.

I hope the sunshine lasts (although there is a chance of showers I hear) and I hope everyone has an awesome weekend (awesome LONG weekend to my 'merican buddies).

xoxog

orange bikes

This is definitely one of my favourite photos from the last several months. I get so discouraged from taking pictures in the winter. It's dark when I leave the house in the morning, it's dark when I get home, and on the weekends it's either raining or threatening to rain or too dark to take pictures. OK, I might be exagerating slightly. But I just get blah about it. The other day I was waiting for a friend outside a shop and this image immediately caught my eye. I mean, how often is it that you're going to see an orange bicycle and an orange motorcycle parked like this? Not often, that's for sure. The people sitting at the pub patio I think thought I was a little bit nuts, taking different angles and...so many shots. It was fun. Do you know I once pretended I was crazy because I had to wait for the bus at night in a shady area of town? I really didn't want the other crazy people and dealers and junkies approaching me. It totally worked. I'm sure that's the moment I realized being crazy is not necessarily a bad thing.

I got asked a total of two questions on yesterday's post. Fabulous. I think K asked if I wanted to eat Jaxon because he's so cute. The answer to that is most definitely YES. I want to pinch his lil cheeks and squeal at him and slurp him right up and maybe even nibble a lil bit too. But I don't, because now that he's 5 and cool and all, that would be totally an uncool mama type of thing to do. And the other questions came from someone anonymous. Right then...

how long did it take for you to come into your scrapbooking style? If you could have a day off from being a mom, what would you choose to do? Favorite comfort food?

Hmmm...style to me is for sure an ever-evolving thing. Sometimes I look at my stuff and think "this is so not me". As far as how long it took me to get to a point where I thought honestly that I don't want to do what I'm "supposed" to do or told to do from books and articles, it took me a few months. I wanted to experiment and mix up art and scrapbooking. There was a day at the very beginning of learning to scrapbook where I wouldn't make a page unless it involved the computer in some way. I couldn't even think about the possibility of hand-writing on a page. I love typography, I'm in graphics for a living...why would I possibly mess things up!? But then it got to a point where I would be all messy from paint and having fun and I couldn't be bothered to get up and go to the computer. Lately, I've started to go back to the computer once in a while for titles and journalling, and it's been fun. So I really think that my style will never be able to be defined as one thing...at least, I won't be able to define it :)

If I had a day off from being Jaxon's mama. I really hope I get a day of from being a wife too. And a daughter, sister, and friend. So if I had one day entirely to myself, I would spend the day prior to it cleaning my house. I would clean and clean and clean so that the next day my house would be all sparkling and organized. I would kick the boys out of the house. Early. I have not one clue what they're going to do all day (we're all such homebodies) but that's really not my problem, because it's my day off. I would use gesso and paint. I might play around on the computer a little bit and probably then I would get all inspired. I would look at photos and write down thoughts as I had them. I would draw and probably glue some stuff down. I'd probably think of someone and make a card for them. I might make a phone call and then I'd make some tea. Or maybe have a beer. I've discovered this super yummy beer from Quebec called St. Ambroise Pale Ale. They also have apricot ale. Mmmm. I might have a snack. I might flip on the TV and see if an rerun of American Justice or Cold Case Files or Project Runway was on. I might remember a movie I'd been wanting to watch and pop it in and then make my way back to my table. I'd listen to jazz and probably DMB. Loud. I'd definitely use stamps and rubons. I'd start to miss my family and wish we had a cat or a dog. And hopefully it would be almost time for the boys to come home. I'd make another phone call and try to finish up a page or a project but the boys would come home and interrupt me. And a sense of annoyance that I wasn't alone anymore would wash over me. But really that's just a habit because I'm really very happy that they're home to keep me company. And that. Would be my ideal day to myself.

Comfort Food? Funny. I just had to answer this question for something else today. Putting a bio together for the Lazar Street Team ...this is gonna be a fun team...nothing like anything else I've done up to this point. So I'll wait til that comes out to share about food. And some other faves.

I'm glad I only had 4 questions to answer from two people. If I had had more, I might be here all damn night!

Now I wanna paint.

G'night.
xog

PS. Banner creds: Lazar Digiwerx Ledger Paper, and Eduardo Recife (I previously said Jason Gaylor - oops) brushes. Finally, the girl has a banner.

PPS. I put the link to pre-order the Dare Book over there to your right! Check out the hot price on that puppy! clearly, amazon is the place to shop. that's good to know.

warm & fuzzy &

Loving lurkers all over! SO cool to read about who you are and where you live and why you stop by my blog. Seriously...thanks so much for commenting! It's so cool to know that I've met some of you "in real life" and hopefully over the long haul I'll get to meet more. I'm going to for sure check out some of your blogs and whatnot...hopefully I'll have some free time this weekend to do that.

And by the way...NO problem if you are around and can't/don't want to comment. Really. But for people who think I will think they're weird for commenting? Or who feel weird? Don't. I won't. I promise. I'm weird enough for all of use put together. I love weird.

I feel like I have a lot to say, but I'm actually supposed to be working at my actually very busy job and so I'm somewhat scattered because there is so much going on! I want to be surfing the net, I want to be at home opening a package from K that came today (Dren opened it while we were on the phone...so cute...calls and says "hey babe, paperjax got a biiiig package today"..."whoah babe...there is a LOT of stuff in here." "ok...i'm just going to put it on your chair so nothing gets lost. there are butterflies and wings and stuff...what's that about!?" and "who's k-l-a?"(pronouncing every letter separately), and be on the scrapologie message boards where i am now a brand new proud design team member! oooh...make that "studio girl". Classy, huh? And I want to be making stuff, and sorting stuff out, and hangin with my sister who's dad is in the hospital (we have different dads), and reading my new Home & Garden magazine on colour, and playing boggle and yahtzee and and and....I know there's more. But I just can't remember now. And trying to work in between each blog post sentence isn't really working. So I'm gonna upload some layouts and be on my way.

I have SO many "persons". Seriously. I really do. But Colleen (who doesn't visit my blog, even to lurk) and I have been through ups and downs. We are very different people and she is probably my closest "IRL" friend. LOL. I can't believe I'm 29 years old and talking as if I have imaginary friends. But I definitely do have a lot of scrappy all over the worldish type friends. For real.sies. But Christina ranting about how Meredith is "her person" got me so goose-bumpy that I had to do a layout immediately. And I need more photos printed. Just FYI.


My baby. Feels like I haven't done a layout about him forEVER. It's probably been a week.


Dare 59...wow! That's a lotta dares. This is my friend's daughter Taila. To use a black and white and a colour photo on your page.


OK now really. Seriously. I HAVE to get some work done. Going to do that. Most likely I think for sure maybe. ;)

clearly, it's friday

I think it's so neat how when you hang out with a bunch of friends you gradually adopt mannerisms and phrase-isms and word-isms and accents from eachother. I was fully speaking American by the end of day 3. CLEARLY.

Today, it's Friday. My second day back at work and already it's the weekend. That rocks.

Friday means: Dare 56 Day. Hell to the yizzah.
Brought to you by Sarah B. Love this girl. She's radical.



I'm also already scrapping photos from our Cali trip. Started a mini book...just have to add journalling and 'bellis. So much cool product coming out of CHA!