ScrapManic 6

Woohoo! I'm all booked in! I've paid my deposit and it's on the calendar (in our house if it's not on the calendar it's not going to happen!).

I love ScrapManic, not only because lots of my friends will be there and it's sometimes the only place I get to meet up with them, but it's also a great venue, the classes are always first class and the food is yummy oh and there's a great bar! And I always come back feeling as if I've had a break.

Roll on November... well, maybe not too quickly because I do have a couple of other things to do before then.

I have another, bigger and slightly more expensive, new baby

So, today I bit the bullet and, after picking Noah up from pre-school, drove down to PaperArts and bought myself a CraftRobo!

I am now sitting at my desk blogging about this fact whilst my Robo is still in it's packaging and box by the side of my desk. Why? Therefore I am going to leave this post here and go and play... wish me luck.

I have a new baby

Which is good news but also bad news.

The bad news is that I have this new baby because I lost the old baby. Making any sense? I thought not.

OK, I'll start again. I have a new baby. It's a Canon Ixus 800 IS and is too cute for words. And the reason I've bought it is because I have lost, yes lost, my Pentax Optio, which was one of the smallest camera's ever and would fit in to my jeans pocket.

I've searched high and low for it and know that it went missing whilst we were still living at the rental house. I was sure it would turn up after the move and we'd unpacked all the boxes but sadly no. I know I have my Canon Digital Rebel but it is just too big to lug around for everyday use and I needed a small camera, one I could keep in my handbag.

Richard finally gave in to my nagging and today she arrived. I'm loving some of the features, being a gadget girl. One of which is that when you are viewing the photos on the camera's LCD screen if you then turn the camera round the photo changes so that no matter which way up you hold the camera the photo is always the right way up for you to view. Cool.

Took these photos of the children earlier this evening with it, which were taken without the flash but it has a stabilising mode on it so that it helps to reduce the 'shake'. Oh, and with Noah we're supposed to be looking at his poorly toe!

Christmas in May

OK, so it's not actually Christmas but I've done a Christmas layout.

I was really inspired by the LO that Ali Edwards did here and so after Christmas decided to keep back some of my cards and do something similar. Well, 5 months later they are still being moved from room to room, from pile to pile and bizarrely every time I came across them I would think "Christmas cards. Why do I still have Christmas cards?" and then it would all come flooding back. Christmas cards, Ali Edwards, layout...

So, I find them, again, today and went through the ritual. Christmas cards. Why do I still have Christmas cards? However this time I thought, you know, I should just throw them away. But then I thought NO, don't throw them away, sit yourself down and do the darn LO! So that's what I did.

Feeling kind of low

I don't want to go in to it here but I'm feeling a little low today. Instead I'm going to just concentrate on some positive things:

• Loving the fact that whilst pottering around the supermarket on Sunday I bumped in to 4 different sets of friends. Two of which I haven't really managed to catch up with since we moved back. It's such a nice feeling to just see people you know whilst going about your everyday life. I missed that in Canada.



• Loving the fact that whilst some people moan about the state of the youth and yobs in this country that they can prove it's not always true. I was waiting at the checkout and the 2 tattooed rather scary looking men/boys ahead of me were so polite and considerate and they even helped me!



• Loving meeting up with scrapping friends and having some good old fun, laughing at the fact that Emma and Jane turned up both wearing almost identical outfits, making it to the crop in one piece even though Corinna was driving, and re-meeting Fi again.



• Loving completing, not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 layouts at Fiona's recent PaperArts crop:

   


   

I know they are nothing fancy but I'm pleased with them. It's another 3 layouts completed and in my album. And no, I did not buy Noah's t-shirt to go with the patterned paper, it just so happened they match perfectly!

And I know I've only posted 3 layouts but the 4th just needs a little tweaking before I'm completely happy with it.

I feel like cropping tonight

Even though I am unbelievably tired I'm still going to Fiona's PaperArts Friday evening NYOBC (Not Your Ordinary Book Club by Pinecone Press). The down side is trying to get myself all organised, something I am determined to be tonight. I'm also going to be spending tomorrow at Fiona's too so I'm in for a weekend of scrapbooking.

Hopefully I'll get my mojo back. I think it's coming, even if it's a slow process.

However my Banana Frog stamps and papers have come and they are inspiring indeed. I plan on using them at least once this weekend. They really are very, very lush. I even went out yesterday and bought a little A5 binder just to store my stamps in.

OK, I'm off to pack up my stuff now, hopefully when I 'speak' to you next I'll have lots of work to show you! Yeah, and pigs might fly

Scanning

I knew I should have bought the 3590. Epson Perfection 3590 Photo scanner that is. I bought the 3490 under the misunderstanding it was the 3590. What was I thinking?

On the face of it there aren't many differences. They both scan negatives and convert them in to digital jpg files. So that's good but the major difference is that with the 3590 you have this little thingamajig in the top that you just feed the negatives in to and it scans them and then pops them back out. With the 3490 I have to manually take the special adaptor out, manually feed the negative in to the correct slot, put it back in to the scanner and scan and keep repeating for every slide. Not good. It's turning out to be a slow and tedious procedure and I am going to go completely insane doing it. But me being me I will have to persevere until I have scanned all my negatives and have got them all burnt on to disk. I can't leave a job part finished. I just hate it when the perfectionist in me comes out and I just have to keep at something even when I'm starting to hate it.

What's the bet that Richard won't let me go and buy the 3590? LOL!

Oh, well, I'm going to cheer myself up by buying a can, or two, of compressed air to blow the dust of my negatives. That'll cheer me up!

On a good note I am loving the pictures I am rediscovering. Too cool and I now have all these retro 80s layout ideas going around in my head. And strangely I am finding myself singing 80s songs whilst I'm scanning them too.

Here's one of me and my dad, now no laughing, I'm looking very 80s glam!