Scrapbooking Weekend

What a weekend!

6 or 7 friends, 2 motel rooms, 3 days, 2 nights, a conference room, lots of snacks, great food and a room full of scrapbooking supplies.

I loaded up the car (below) and drove to Toowoomba. 4 hours of listening to the audio unabridged reading of Eclipse and I arrived. Moira had booked two rooms at the Grammer View Motel. I was sharing with Moira and Michaela. We started scrapping on the Friday and kept going until Sunday.






Our tables...



Moira had organised a range of challenges for us to complete,



Then because we all finished those challenges, she set us some more!!



It was such a great weekend. The others finished amazing amounts of layouts, however I took the slow and steady approach and am thoroughly delighted with all of my layouts.

This one is not finished yet, I'll post the finished product...needs stitching and flowers!!

I am planning to journal in brown around the very edge of this layout, but won't do so until I'm am happy with what I've written!

Ahhh my other hobby. The art of smocking, this layout shows the process of pleating a full yoke.

My very late creation for one of the circle journals that are well overdue to be finished. Unfortunately some have been lost...not happy about that. I guess if we ever embark upon another of these we will keep it within a smaller group and meet to exchange the journals.

I'm really really pleased with this one. There is a pocket with a journalling tag behind the photo. It reads : "When your birthday party started you were dressed as a beautiful fairy. After three hours of fun with your friends, you had lost your wings, your fairy outfit, your shoes and your hair was no longer perfectly arranged. Sitting on the lounge, singing loudly with your dad, you were a perfectly contented fallen fairy."

I'm not happy with how I did the journalling on this one. I plan on typing it and printing it out and laying it over what I hand wrote. It is the chorus of the Brandan Walmsley song titled "Bottle Tree Lane" - Remember the good things the good Lord has given, Remember that love will remain, Here's to the wonderful life that we're living, We owe it to Bottle Tree Lane, Don't forget Bottle Tree Lane.

This song never fails to bring tears to my eyes, it is just beautiful and was written about Heroes Avenue here in Roma. Each of the bottle trees represents a soldier who died serving in WW1. The Roma district lost 136 sons which was a huge number for such a small community.

My beautiful Mum and her two grandchildren, my niece and nephew, Ele and Jonah. I took this picture on our beach holiday at Caloundra Christmas '09. I actually completed this layout when I got home, while I was still inspired!

Emily xoxo

Goals

Thank goodness for technology.



Tonight I had an amazing online chat with a friend I had lost touch with years ago. We recently got back in contact but it was more the kind of contact you have with an aquaintance. Then BOOM tonight we had the most real conversation either of us had had in ages, about the topic that dominates our lives, our weight.


Let me give you some background. In 2005 I decided that the time had come for me to do something about my ballooning weight. I started going to Weight Watchers and over the nex 6 months lost 30kgs. I plateaued out, met my husband, dealt with the emotional crisis' which seemed to plague us, got married and lost my focus.


The photo below was me at Easter 2006 with my lovely Uncle Noel.




This is me 4 years later with my gorgeous friend Moira. I have put the weight back on and then some.



Marko and I have been going to the gym between 2 and 4 times a week for 3 or 4 months. I am fitter, but no lighter and certainly no slimmer. I know it is food that is the problem, and until today I was not ready to change my nasty habits.


So my friend Sonia and I have decided to get back on the weight loss merry-go-round. I have come to realise several things:


1. I will struggle with my weight all my life.

2. I need to develop a change in my lifestyle and my thought patterns in order to make this change permanently.

3. I need some extrinsic motivation to get started and to give myself something to work towards.

4. I need to be able to share the journey with someone and have someone who understands what it like to look in the mirror and think 'oh my god, how did it come to this' then head for the fridge or cupboard to eat the feelings away.

5. Not doing something about my weight will make it harder for me to fall pregnant.

6. I want to fall pregnant next year!


I know this is a detour away from my craft and hobbies, but this needed to be written down. I need to keep track of why I'm doing this and keep a record of my progress.


So my goals are:

To lose 15 - 25 kgs (between .5 and 1 kg per week) by Christmas.
To keep going to the gym 4 nights per week.
At each 5 kg mark reward myself - not sure how yet - and take a photo.
To only weigh myself once per week then inform Sonia of my progress.
To think positively about myself and what I can achieve.


Here goes!!

Emily xoxo

Chloe's Dress

Here are the phots of the smocked dress I made for my darling friend's daughter Chloe. Now I just need to finish the dress I started for her older sister Cassie.

 

 

Emily xoxo

update..

How fast does a month go?

FAST!

I almost don't know where to start in updating my blog.. Initially I was caught up in the usual end of term craziness. I was completely over my students and completely over being at school. I was tired, stressed and cranky - with 3 weeks of term left to go. Each time I felt I should blog I had nothing nice to say. Lovely huh. So I avoided the computer, started testing and writing reports.

Then, unexpectely the floor fell out from underneath us. I received a phone call at school from a hospital in Brisbane. I wrongly assumed it was a call from a paediatritian I had been waiting to hear from about some missing student reports.

It wasn't the paediatrian.

It was a hospital administration staff person, with my brother-in-law Steve on hold for me. It was one of those situations when I knew I had to sit down or I would fall down. I knew it couldn't be something wrong with Marko, my husband, as he was here at work. It left very few alternatives. Marko's mother had fallen down a flight of external stairs of a high set (two story) house. He could barely get the words out, and within minutes I was almost hysterical. I established the facts: she was in a Brisbane hospital, he had not contacted Marko, she was in a coma and she was not going to survive long. I left my students with a teacher aide, unable to stop the tears, and raced to the office in search of someone to notify that I needed to leave the school grounds. My head of campus, a beautiful woman, drove me to Marko's work where I had to tell him what had happened. It was awful.

We left for Brisbane an hour later but only got as far as Toowoomba (4 out of the 5 1/2 hours we had to travel) before we received a phone call telling us Mama had passed. We both sat there stuck in traffic, crying. We finally made it to Brisbane and went to the hospital. There we met up with family and Marko had his chance to say goodbye. I think he thought she would miraculously wake up out of her coma had we made it in time.

For the next week I was here in Roma alone trying to finish my reports, while Marko stayed with his brother Steve making the arrangements, then the next weekend in Toowoomba with the family. When we finally got home we were so exhausted. I had another week of school to try to get through.

My first few days of holidays were spent selfishly. I lost myself in some books I'd saved for the holidays, and spent some time with my friend Lisa and her new baby boy.

This weekend just gone was just the medicine I needed. I spent two nights and three days in Toowoomba scrapbooking with some of my girlfriends. I didn't get anywhere near as many layouts done as they did, but I'm really pleased with each one!

I feel refreshed and almost myself again. Men are strange creatures. Mine doesn't talk much about what is going on in his head and it is a battle to get him to talk to me about how he is feeling. I worry that he is not handling his grief and that he is not sharing it with me. I know everyone deals with these things differently, but I do worry about him. I guess the best I can do is be here and love him.

Emily xoxo