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Hand up who has been working out this week?  I would but I can’t because I joined the gym and now I’m so sore I can barely move, raising my hand isn’t an option right now.  Two days at the gym and I’m toast.  I thought I’d get up this morning and go for a run on the treadmill.  Just to loosen up after two days weights.  In the end just getting up was a problem.  Any fitness experts out there that have an opinion on whether I should push through it and keep exercising – actually I think it’d be impossible right now as I can’t bend over to put my shoes on – or leave it til I’m healed, feel free to let me know what to do.  And yep, all this fabulous muscle work done under the careful eye of a personal trainer setting me a program.  I guess she found my limits, huh?!

So anyway.  I sat a lot today.  I typed.  I wrote the outline for my new Big Picture Scrapbooking workshop, due to run in October this year.

I cruised the internet trying to catch up on the CHA news – if you have seen a really good write up on a blog, I’d love to see it, link me up!

I personally loved seeing Christine Middlecamp’s write up.  Prima had some great pics of their own booth.  Crate paper has some awesome layouts that were designed for their booth and they have some really cool products coming out too.  Sassafras Lass has some cool CHA pics and products too. 

My thrill from the last week – well, one of the thrills…. during my run last Saturday the volunteer fire siren went up.  I was running only a few hundred metres from the fire station and sure enough it didn’t take long for me to spot the volunteer firemen in their cars – trying-to-stick-to-the-speed-limit-but-getting-to-the-station-as-fast-as-I-can whizzing past.  I was about to turn down a sidestreet but being the fire-engine freak that I am (you know how it is, trains, fire engines, I’m fascinated with that kind of thing…) I decide to carry on toward the fire station.  Just as I got near, the first fire engine left the station… lights on, sounding it’s horn loudly as it leaves as a warning to anyone that is near.  I’m quietly disappointed I missed it, being so far away.  but just as I near the station, the second engine decides to leave.  Not only did I get to see it leave, but I had to jog on the spot and wait (musta looked a right twit actually, big grin on my face, jogging on the spot, waiting for the engine to leave).  That one took off in a hurry too, I was left jogging along the path after it was gone, still grinning with the people in the cars going past wondering why anyone that looked as exhausted as me, doing the unfit-person-shuffle along the side of the road would be grinning so big. 

Alrighty, more simple… enjoying telling stories again

laters

Ahhhh rain – how I am sick of thee….  I have woken up every morning this week, listened to the rain and thought “Guess I’m staying in bed then” and gone back to sleep.  Yea it’s nice to cuddle back down but I’m going to have to start getting out there regardless of the rain soon.  Like a really dedicated person would.  You may question my dedication about now 🙂

Isn’t it funny how the small things help improve an otherwise dreary week though. I made the … wait that is THE most AMAZING lasagne last night and I think the addition of the most-amazing-lasagne to the week notched it up on the scale a little. Better news yet – I have leftovers.  By the time I don’t have to cook dinner tonight AND have the most-amazing-lasagne-ever for dinner a second night in a row, the week will be positively glowing. 

The Tarisota gallery is up.   For you non-believers, here is one of my favourite layouts created with the collection.  Simple… See, simple…  (especially for you, Lindsey)…. pic is a bit blurry, apologies!  I’m into telling the story at the moment, I’m getting some thoughts on paper, sometimes playing with product, sometimes playing with the story.  Go the story at the moment, I say!

Pics taken with the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone .  Ain’t it bizarre that I’m taking pics with my iPhone rather than my DSLR these days?  Wait til you see the pics I got at the weekend of Ruth drinking a wine and creating amazing layouts for SBO… oh yea.. I have pics :)  Feel free to bribe me not to show them, Ruth…

laters

Monday, Monday … I’m not happy to see Monday today.  I was dreading Monday before I even went to sleep last night.  I considered secretly turning off hubby’s alarm and letting the whole family sleep ‘til 11am.  Then I remembered we’d have 4 employees sitting on the side of the road waiting for a ride to work at 6.30am and perhaps that might not be fair.  So the alarm went off at the usual time. And then two of the 4 employees called in with Monday-itis anyway…. but anyhow.  I got out of bed.  I put on the running gear.  I ran out of the door, to the end of the road, and went nah, hate this, and came home. 

I know. I know.  Some days it works like that though.  So today, I did not run.

The good news is though, that I reached my 5km goal on Saturday.  I went out with a 4km goal, reached that, and kept on running until my little Nike shoe-communicator thingie told me I’d gone 5k.  I came home feeling fantastic. 

So I mapped my run on mapometer to double check the distance. (my first mistake.. WHY do I need to double check?!) and it measured my distance as 4.7k.  So either my nike shoe thingie, or my computer or my iPod are lying.
(BTW those of you that look at the nike link  – you don’t need special nike shoes, you just buy a little pouch thing and put it on your normal shoes).

Gorgeous weekend though, huh?  We went to the beach yesterday.  I know.  Middle of July and I’m going to the beach.  We were all wrapped up in winter clothes and went to discover treasures washed up on the beach.  Braden discovered Kina shells, sticks, pinecones and his favourite was a clothes peg which he carved his name in the sandstone rock with.  I took lots of photos, obviously yet to download, I’m excited to have some new pics to scrap!

Something exciting though… check this out… bless my little baby girl… her school has really been emphasising healthy eating lately and when Abby entered a design-a-shirt competition for a NZ clothing manufacturer in the holidays she whipped this fun strawberry design up .. and she is a finalist!!  (note there are two categories – the older kids with the super-cool techo designs are seperate…)  PLEASE visit the link and vote if you like her t-shirt… it’s crazy-cute since she is 6 and her strawberries and colouring are a little wonky but if you like it – PLEASE vote!!!  Her brothers put so much into their entries and didn’t get into the finals, so Abby was just tagging along really… so happy she got through!

(Thank you!  Abby thanks you!)

Alrighty… another Prima layout… this one with the new Jack & Jill line collection… I’m hoping you can read the journaling 🙂

laters!

Today was rest day.  This would be for a few reasons.  Firstly, I went out running  on Sat, Sun, Mon, Tues AND (yes, non-believers), even Wednesday.  So today was going to be rest day anyway.   That was even before I woke up yesterday morning with a cold that had me curled up on the couch sleeping for most of yesterday.  And sobbing like a baby when my hubby came home.   I look like crap, I feel like crap but I’m a little disappointed I don’t have a croaky voice.  If I’m going to feel this bad it’d be nice to get the sympathy vote from others.  Or at least lose my appetite.  Or somethin, ya know?!

So I’m running late with assignments again, doesn’t take me long after catching up to get myself in a state again really.  I have a Tarisota kit here that I really love and I haven’t even opened it yet and it’s due in a day.  Have you noticed that Tarisota Talk is now back online, just a little side thought there.
I have a magazine assignment to do – long time since I had one of them, and I have my South Africa details to iron out.  The couch is calling though.  I keep telling myself that if I had a *real* job I’d have called in sick today. 

Blog links I enjoyed from this morning – while surfing the internet telling myself I feel too crappy to actually create anything… Tim Holtz – how clever is he, that he has created a ‘tag’ diecut?  We can cut our own shipping tags from manilla folders now.  Tim Holtz.  Clever man. 

Jen McGuire Ink – I’m not much of a card maker but find her blog incredibly inspiring. 

And for something randomly different, A thousand words … Jen always has such great decorating , baking and organisational ideas.  And one day.  One day, I will be confident enough to have a shoe collection like hers.

I’ll leave you with the first of my CHA booth layouts, this one going up in the Prima booth.  It’s created with the new Prima Fairy Flora collection.

calling in sick and crawling to my couch and blankie,

laters.

School is back and as usual, I’m sad to send the kiddos off.  All were keen to get back to school to friends and to see who they may be seated beside in class.  Jacob was keen on being able to work on a new computer.  Being in a ‘digital’ class at his school means the majority of his work is done on a computer, and apparently the one he had last term wasn’t doing the job.  He went into the details but they flew way above my head.  The kid is 11 years old and he can already talk me to the point where I just nod and agree without having a clue what he is talking about. 

We saw Toy Story 3 yesterday.  I related completely to the whole scenario.  Andy is 17 in this new version of Toy Story, at a point where he is giving his toys away.  Our children were the receivers in the same circumstances a few years back.  So I related to the movie.  And then I wondered what happened to my favourite little typewriter from when I was 9.  It was my favourite present ever.  Where did that go?  (Mum, where did that go?) I’m worried about it’s feelings now?  30 years on? lol… Mum, where did my Buddy Typewriter with twink on its little cover go?!!!

So kids at school means it is Monday and you’ll all be happy to know that not only did I run Saturday and Sunday, but I  got my lazy butt out of my warm bed this morning and went for a 4km run before Paul went to work.  NO stopping to draw smiley faces in the icy windscreens of cars, no stopping after about a km and telling myself what a stooopid idea it all is, I just did it.  It was a Nike moment right there.

Some of you are asking about training schedules.  I got mine here, on the Hamilton Half Marathon website.  I’m signed up to run the 10k at this event.  It assumes you can already run 20 minutes though.  Which is around 4km.  If you are starting from scratch I’d seriously consider cutting it right back to about 5 minutes and working up following the pattern that becomes pretty obvious when you look at the training schedule.
Good luck!  Let me know how you go for those of you that are keen!

Talking about keen, have you seen the latest ‘Build A Page” sketch at the Prima Blog?   There is about a dozen interpretations of the sketch from the new Prima Design Team, and the sketch is up there for you to have a go at.  Submit yours to the Prima Contest Gallery (see the blog post for details) by the end of July to be in to win!

Leaving you with my interpretation.  This is Skye, isn’t she cute!!
Laters 🙂

So I’m encouraged.  I’m encouraged by your comments, I’m encouraged now that I know people read blogs still, I’m encouraged to read the emails in my inbox telling me to get over my winter-self and get my lazy ass back out running.

So I did it.  I printed the 10k training schedule I’ve had on my desktop forever and I pencilled in dates to be at each goal.  I marvelled at the fact that Saturday is a day off, whereas Sunday is the longest run of the week – do they not take into account the likelihood that I might be unable to lift my head off the pillow on many Sunday mornings?  Do the writers of these training schedules have any social activity that might somewhat inhibit Sunday training?  From here on in several things will happen.

1.  I will buy new shoes.  I have holes in the top of my running shoes, at the big toe.  I know.  The top.  I can only imagine that my big toes overexert themselves every time I lift my foot. 

2. I will follow said schedule.  Except for the slight change outlined in point 3 below.

3. Saturday will become Sunday and Sunday will remain the day I lie in bed ‘til 9am hoping that I didn’t just bust my whole nutritional plan for the week by eating bad takeaway and consuming unmentionable social drinks.

4. I shall start this training plan on Monday morning by, wait, let’s see, completing a 20 minute run.  Holy cow, we are starting with a 20 minute run? 

So there we go.  I’m putting it out there.  I’ve been running for a year now so this decision shouldn’t be hard but it’s time to get serious.  See my serious face?  The one the kids run from. See, it’s really going to happen.

Anyone want to join me?  Monday is a 20 minute run, Wednesday is a 20 minute run, Friday is a 20 minute run, Saturday is a 30 minute run and Sunday is the day we lie in bed ‘til 9am holding our thumping heads cursing the chinese takeaways from the night before.

And a treat – yep – here’s a treat… as a thank you for all your encouragement in my last post.  Yep, it’s a 10 year old layout from me.  This time next week I’ll be able to post a pile of layouts using new CHA product.  For this week you get the old stuff.  Wasn’t I cute?  No? 

laters

Anyone still there?  I’ve joined the piles of bloggers that start their blog posts with that very sentence.  It seems blogging has dropped back, perhaps in favour of face book, or perhaps scrapbooking has become less of a social type hobby.  Who knows.  Point is, I’m not blogging as much.

I made a promise to myself about a month ago to keep my blog updated. I used to enjoy updating.  I love writing.  I was always going to be a writer, it was nice to have an audience.  Hits have dropped back, comments have stopped, I guess the audience stops checking when the posts start slowing down.  It’s a vicious circle really.
Obviously I didn’t keep my promise to myself.

but then, it seems a winter of broken promises.  Now there is a layout title if I ever heard one!  I also promised myself I would be running 10k by now.  I ran 1km this morning before stopping and saying “Stuff that” out loud to myself and walking home.  Tomorrow may be different.  For today I wasn’t enjoying being out in 2 degrees no matter how pretty the frost on the roofs and windshields of the cars are.  Apologies to the person whose car was parked on Queen St and got the smiley face in their ice on their car windscreen this morning.  It was funny to be doing it at the time.

Tomorrow is the 15th.  It’s the middle of winter.  I’m hoping it only improves from here.

For those of you that do still check in, thank you.  Maybe one day my spark for writing will return.  CHA is only about 10 days away, I’ll have both Prima and BasicGrey layouts to share, and lots of them.  Fingers crossed the blog bug bites me again.

laters

Running is kind of like being in the shower.  It’s thinking time.  I write so many blog posts in my mind whilst out on the footpaths, cursing that I’m not home in my bed snuggled up, so it’s ironic that my blog isn’t updated very much.  Trouble is that I can never remember any of the content I dream up while out running.  Some would say it’s because I’m getting old, some would say it’s the shock of being out in 6 degree weather in short sleeves that may knock the sense out of me.

Although I have to say that given my eyesight problems lately, it’s probably that I’m getting old.  I’ve had reading glasses for around 3 years.  Eyesight problems have gone waaaay beyond that now.  I tried to paint my toenails this morning.  Sadly, I couldn’t SEE to do it properly.  Seriously.  I’m too young to be getting old.

So – the world of scrap – my Big Picture Scrapbooking workshop is over and I’m so SAD about it!!  I loved the experience so much.  I’ve put in two more proposals, so cross fingers one of them at least gets through. 

I’m working with new BasicGrey and new Prima for the CHA tradeshow.  I’m excited about both. 

The Big Picture Scrapbooking  summer Big Idea festival is coming up.  Free classes, prizes, giveaways etc, all FREE.  All you have to do is join up at Big Picture Scrapbooking if you haven’t already.  I have a class up for offer during the festival, there are lots of really well known scrapbookers offering freebie classes.  Sign up – great mid-winter inspiration!  Unless you are in the Northern Hemisphere and then perhaps it’s be great mid-summer 😉

Alrighty, time for a layout – this is another one created for Tarisota a while back…  this one using a few pics I took of Jacob a while back.  I used some KaiserCraft lettering stamps.  They were cool – they were a friends and I wished later I’d accidently slotted them into my bag, not back over her way.. you know, just accidently.  Have a good weekend everyone, especially those of you that celebrate the 4th!

Laters!

A visit to the library.  What’s the first mental images you have?  Books.  Peace and quiet.  A stereo-typical librarian gently holding one finger up to her mouth and saying shhhhhh to someone who has raised their voice a little loud.  Quiet time.

So the visit I had to the library yesterday.  Boy with straw, chewing spit-balls out of paper and shooting them through the library racks.  Stop it.  Boy running around the racks trying to hide other boys bag by throwing it on top of shelves.  Stop it.  Boy asking me to help him because he is being hurt by another boy who has him.by.the.nipple.  Stop it. 

I find a quiet chair.  Away from them all.  Away from where they congregate after school until their parents care to show up and take them home.  Boy in quiet chair next to me, snorting and stopping one step short of spitting it on the floor, Stop it. 

Please.  Some quiet time.  When did kids get so flippin disrespectful of things like library rules? 

Books in hand, I leave.  I can find quieter time at home.  And believe me, my time at home has been way less than quiet lately. 

(Thank you oh Creator of all – puberty is a fabulous spanner to throw in the works, just when one is enjoying one’s children, they turn all nasty.  In the big scheme of things, was puberty reeeeeally necessary?  Couldn’t you have just sent a certificate in the mail to say they were all grown up now?  Perhaps a certification course? A 3-day “everything you need to know about being grown up” course?  Growing up 101?   Anything would have been easier than the attitude we are prevailing with right now, and I believe that it’s just the start of the mighty plan you have for the next 4-5 years…)

Anyway.
I can distract myself.

With stuff for me.

Like GlimmerMist in very cool new colours…

And with making flowers out of paper and new GlimmerMist colours….

And creating layouts with new BasicGrey, for CHA-S which is in a month. 

What colour do you think a ‘Puberty’ GlimmerMist would be?  Kinda dark.  With tiny speckles of hope.  Beautiful rainbows of Glimmer that can only be seen when the GlimmerMist bottle agrees to get along with everyone around it.

What do you think?

Laters

I conclude,  that women nearing their 40s, or, well, you know… within 2 or 3 years of their 40s,  should not attempt to wear skinny jeans. 

After a 27year old visitor gave me crap a few weekends back for not staying with the times and owning a pair, I went and found some last week.  She left me with homework to get some, so I followed through like the girlie swot that I am.

Oh my GOD.  These feel like the compression stockings I had to wear when I was pregnant because of my varicose veins.  'Wear them for a day and they will give half a size' the shop assistant said… yea right! That one should be on a Tui's ad.

They make me look fat – (how to skinny jeans make one look fat?) and my ankles are cold… because one tends to have to wear a) jandels, b) flats with no socks or c) boots with them, and I'm not walking around the house with 2 inch boots on.

Not to mention how one gets one's jeans off in a HURRY.

Like if one's husband is getting all amorous.

Or if one sneezed a little hard and needs to run to the loo.  Cos one is nearing 40, remember?

Just sayin'.