Random Thoughts

Here's some really random thoughts and answers to a few comments people posted in the last few days....

• It would cost €5.7 million to get The Eagles to play at a private concert -


• I am now 35 weeks and 5 days pregnant.....i.e. I could go any day now. I don't have my 'bag' packed. That will happen this weekend.

• I tried to explain the difference between knitting and crochet to Tony last night. I'd say he is more confused than ever. I found a crochet hook and some wool so started a couple of circles (I'm self taught, so only ever learned how to make circles....although they are ever so chic on scrap layouts at the moment...and even saw some on a card in M&S at the weekend). It's very relaxing and much quicker than knitting I think....although I end up with very chunky woollens. Am making a little white hat for no. 2. They will probably not be able to wear it cos it will be too hot though!


• I just learned you can make bullets in your blog


• My grandparents live in Cornamona (Nessa was wondering) - it's north Connemara as opposed to way out west....although I have frequented some of the fineries in Carraroe...what's that hotel/niteclub with a woman's name? Bridies? Rosies? Nancys?...this will wreck my head all day!


• Prison Break started back on again last night - Series 3. Love it.


• I am currently in the 'nesting' part of the pregnancy and have been tidying and organising for the last week. Have new shelves and baskets in our living room (will post a pic cos it really made the place tidier looking). Have kinda tackled upstairs, but the craft/dining/play/office/general junk room is not in good shape. It's bearing the brunt of all the other stuff. I went through all my craft mags and am giving a sheaf of them away to my neighbour. I might photocopy the best bits of the other mags and give them away too...there are so many ads when you look through them


• Tonight we are going bowling with work. Not sure what I'll be able for but definitely intend to get them all to put a 9 or 10 pound bowling ball up their tops and then think about how you would walk, sleep, move, etc with one of them there permanently for a few months. I am expecting sympathy!


• And to finish, I will add some random photos me thinks.....I've randomly picked photos off my computer with numbers instead of names so I have no idea what will appear until I have uploaded....fun...maybe not! I've now looked at them. The first is a bog....this is what I spent 2 years studying in college. The second is my sister giving Eilis a piggy back. Not the most flattering pic - sorry! The third is my hen night....we had a cocktail party with some karaoke thrown in for good measure.

For she's a jolly good fellow....

So it's my birthday today...and I ate my weetabix this morning to the tune of Eilis and Tony singing Happy Birthday and For She's a Jolly Good Fellow, in total....quite a Disney Movie moment! Who's this cute little thing - ah that would be me - only official photo till my graduation from college....

I don't have a lot to say about birthdays...this year I don't have anything major planned - can't really go out mad, and am not really one to organise my own party anyway to be honest. Will prob go for dinner after work (can't wait till 8 - I'd starve and then have cramps or wind all night!) and later T and I will prob go to cinema.

We got the sky channels last week...funny, cos most people say that they don't bother watching all the channels and that the movie channels aren't that good anyway. Not that we are film buffs or anything, but to be honest, one of us is worse than the other for the kind of stuff we would watch. Since last week, excluding weekend, we have watched a film on the movie channel every night! and who says there's nothing on! Main thing is that we don't really go to the cinema that often. A friend of mine told me when I was pregnant with Eilis to get as many films in as possible, because after you have a baby, and people offer to babysit, you feel that you have to go mad out on the town and make a big night of it in order to get it's full 'worth' whereas the cinema is no big deal. This, and the fact that we dont' really rent DVDs means that most of the films on the movie channel at the moment we haven't seen before - The Da Vinci Code was on last week - I've read the book, but we had never seen the movie. Fantastic - it was such a treat for us.

Anyway, popcorn, fanta and maltesers beckon tonight as my birthday treat. Not sure what we'll go to see yet.I don't know if I have any particular birthday memories....is that strange? We didn't ever really do the big birthday party with all my school friends - usually about 3 or 4 came up to our house and the party was always on the birth day, as opposed to a saturday or sunday. There were no bouncing castles - a swiss roll with candles (mam took out a raspberry log as an early birthday cake on Sunday! for a little party after dinner), rice crispie buns, crisps and fizzy drinks. There were no party bags, etc.

Actually, I went for a browse of photos there and found my fifth birthday - the ring cake (above). We had those for most of us and have made a few for Eilis already.....fabby. This gives me an idea for the big one next year, our 30th - maybe a joint with my DH - and we will have ring cakes. In fact maybe a seventy's theme party would be uber fun or else a children's style party with all the things we loved as kids.

Anyhoo...that's my lot for today - two posts in a week - wow! Best get some work done and forget about birthday things for now....although I might go get a can of Club Orange as a little treat for myself. Woo hoo!

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.