12 on 12th June

And another month completed! And look how fast it was this time. It's only the 17th and I have not only edited the photos down, but also completed the layout. Go me!

So pleased with myself and love this project. A really great snapshot of my life month by month.

This month, the theme that came out was time and transport which was interesting. I noted down the time of each photo and it showed me that I had a great morning complete with an always welcome Starbucks time and then in the afternoon, there wasn't really so much going on - or at least not that interesting. And the sky was still a bit light at nearly 11pm which really surprised me. I have also listed all the places I went and how I got there - I think I used every type of local public transport which will be interesting to look back at in the future. An ordinary Thursday for me - nice!

I've been a busy scrapper!

I took the opportunity of some alone time this weekend (Ralph needed to work the WHOLE weekend) to catch up with some serious scrapping - how fun is that? I had almost the whole day on Saturday and Sunday and I used it all for being creative which I enjoyed so much.

I was busy working on the July Bellaboo kit (another winner if I might say) but of course, you will have to wait to see it - let me give you just a single sneak peek as a teaser!

And you know summer is here in Germany when it seems like everyone is on holiday or about to go on holiday. The school summer hols here in North Rhine Westphalia start on 26th June so lots of my students with no children or much older or very young children take their holidays in June or later in August and then of course, the main 6 weeks of holidays is like a business desert with all the others taking three weeks off at a stretch.

Which of course means lots and lots of cancelled classes for me. On the one hand this is bad because no class means no money but on the other hand, it means that I get a bit more free time to myself.

So, this morning, I got up really early and I do not need to leave the house until 10 so I decided to catch up with some "me" scrapping. I have been taking Stacy Julians's Library of Memories class at Big Picture Scrapbooking which encourages a non-chronological way of looking at scrapbooking. Not focusing so much on the events, holidays etc but rather looking at making connections, scrapping about the everyday and benefitting from an organisation system that supports the way of looking at subjects differently. This last week, the focus was on "Things we do" or "Things we love" and I have realised over the class that while I do a lot of non-typical scrapping, I was sometimes missing out on the things that are important to me.

I have been trying to rectify this with some of my recent scrapping (for example, my "I *heart* my iPod" layout from the May Bellaboo kit) and this morning, I decided to sit down and just complete two layouts. So easy, not complicated and using coordinated products which made life easy. Each took less than 30 minutes from beginning to end - the system helping me to find my photos really easily - and while they are not perfect (in fact, I think that on the one, the photos are decidedly a bit wonky!), I got them done and uploaded and captured another thought on paper which is what it is all about.

So chuffed with myself and now I can go off to work having completed something just for me today - what an achievement!

Photo a day - an update

You might be surprised to know that I am still continuing my Photo a day project which I started in January 2007. I know that I have been rather slack in updating my albums (here on the right) but the photographs have been taken on a very regular basis if not always every day. It has just taken me some time to work through them all and sort out my favourites for each day. Can you see the cheat photo?

Anyway, all quiet on the scrapping front right now - must be the weather - but it is all set to ramp up again over the next day or so with the Bellaboo July kit which is (yet again) a stonker! Oodles and oodles of stuff to play with which is so exciting. I just need to clear my desk and my head and then off I go! Watch this space.

What you been up to?