I found my Thrill....

on blackberry hill....

No, not the real kind that are in abundance in the hedges at the moment, but an electronic version. Got one on Friday with work....am still struggling to answer phonecalls but have managed to reply and send a couple of emails and texts, so I guess I just have to read the manual. There must be shortcuts....or else I'm going back to the old way of doing things - tin cans and string. In fairness, the little device is ever so handy and will be even more so when I'm on maternity leave - just to keep an eye on things in the office. Brian got one before going travelling from work and has given us a few updates. It's mad to think that you can send and recieve emails on the go, from Peru, deepest, darkest Peru. Mental stuff.

Anyway, this morning I got a super cool message on my blackberry that I had won (again) a competition on Kirsty's blog - YAY. I had signed up for some classes on digi scrapping and she drew me as a winner of a free class. Am uber excited as it's something I really want to get into (and have a million digi freebie files on my comp already), but have only really dabbled badly in it up to now. Again, I see wonderful maternity leave projects...or even digi scrapping from my hospital bed! If you haven't signed up.....looky here.... I've definitely been a little bit daunted by my lack of photoshop skills but the idea of tutorials is perfect....

Am feeling pretty much like a beached whale at the moment. Am 35 weeks gone since yesterday, but am getting more and more awkward. I can see why grosely obese people just stay in bed - I'm actually ok at work cos my chair is good and I can lean on the desk, but I can't seem to get comfortable at home on the couch/armchair/beanbag - or one on top of the other! I roll into bed and turning from side to side is major effort - this 'toopid symphis pubis lark doesn't help. I don't have it too bad, but it's basically like a pulled muscle in your groin and it hurts when you do various things - like move in bed, put on clothes, get in and out of car, etc.... Luckily I'm sleeping relatively ok - I usually only wake once for a pee stop, but if I wake after 3.30, there is a possibility that it takes over an hour to get back to sleep - not fun...and I am not a fun person the next day when that happens. Ironic is reading about insomnia in pregnancy in my pregnancy know it all book at 4 am while trying to get back to sleep - d'ya hear that Alanis!

Am holding the fort here at work, but it's busy. It'll be bang or bust while I'm gone methinks. They will either get on just fine without me and things will go swimmingly and I'll come back to a business that is flying high, or the whole place will fall apart and all our clients will leave and there'll be no job to come back to. No-one is indispensable they say, so let's just see. And at this point I'm beginning not to care. This is my attitude to everything - in college I would study and cram up to a point and then go 'I don't care' and walk away and have a cigarette or 10.

I haven't scrapped or crafted in a million years...just don't have the time. No time to blog (I used to all this kind of thing, including ordering photos, etc in my 'spare time' at work....now I don't have any spare time). It's all a countdown to the big day...still don't know if it's going to be a natural or c-section. Had emergency section last time after 8 hours of labour - told them I want one or other this time please, but seemingly, they'll 'let you have a go' naturally first! I went 2 weeks over with Eilis, so have no idea when to expect things and so have to be ready all the time from now but it could be 2 weeks or it could be 7 - that is FOREVER!!! Also, last appointment doc thought no. 2 might be breech - if it's still breech this time next week it will be a planned section, so it's a bit of a lottery to be honest.

So I'll show some random bits of previous scrapping instead. I had great plans to upload some ideas for the ScrapWest Blog Fest a couple of weeks ago - some tips on storage....have pics now so they might be of interest I suppose. First up are some storage jars I picked up in our local post-office for 2 yoyos each. I use them for bits and bobs - flowers, vintage bits and ribbon.

I also have collected lots of plastic ziplock type bags which I use to keep components of projects. If, like me, you like to start things but don't always get them finished, at least you can store all the bits in one place for a quick fix later. This would be good if you went to crops - you could have a 'project to go' in a pack - photos and all, and not need to sift through all your stash. Alternatively, if you live in an isolated spot (well, with regard to scrapping crops anyway!) these little bags are perfect to bring your projects into the living room to work at while you watch your fav show - like Prison Break....back on next Thursday!!!!

Another thing I have - is a lever arch file (yet to be decorated) where I save all my handouts, printouts, classes, etc. These are resources I suppose, or just somewhere kinda organised to store bits and pieces to refer back to. I use the following headings General, Xmas, Miscellaneous, Altered, Techniques, Minibooks, Scraplift, ScrapMaps and Classes. I have pages I've printed from the net, classes on line or from crops, photocopied or cut out bits from magazines, etc. It's a fun folder to browse through too...especially if in need of some inspiration. Anyway, something I just thought might be interesting.

Two last things - a way to organise your digi downloads....well this is my attempt. As I said above, I haven't really done much by way of digiscrapping but I've downloaded lots of freebie stash for when I start! I've saved it using the following system on my hard drive.

Main folders -

Alphas

Embells

Frames & Borders

Overlays

Templates

Quotes and Journalling

Doodles and Symbols

Papers.

Within these there are some sub-folders. EG within embells I have - bling, brads, buttons, flowers, ribbon, swirls. Within papers I have - Autumn, Summer, Winter, Vintage, Kits and General. I keep a subfolder in each folder called 'Credits' where I save the credits for reference again. Hopefully once I get cracking on this digi scrapping lark, I will get to see how well my 'system' works in practice.

Thanks to all the people who did classes on their blogs as part of the ScrapWest challenge, especially Ruth - cos lucky ol' me also won a prize their. Yay for cyber prizes.