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As usual, I haven't been very good about blogging. Life just gets in the way!! Between working full time and attempting to get my act together on completing orders AND not always having Internet access....well the excuses abound! So all excuses aside, let me tell you what I've been doing lately.

You see the picture to the right. That's the cover to a table top calendar I did for my GA parents for Christmas this past year. Very very simple and inexpensive. I really do hope to get to a point that I'm posting tutorials and possibly videos...but for now, I guess you get what you get. LOL Now on to what I'm doing right now(ish).

I'm finishing up a calendar order that is way overdue. Sometimes I am a littler over ambitious and forget that I have to sleep and that sometimes my fibromyalgia has different plans for the way I spend my time. I am sooooo close to have this order done though and am excited about the way they are turning out (they are not the same design as the one pictured at the right.) I have three more orders to get done after that. A monthly planner, scrapbook layouts of a friend's vacation, and some name tags. I'm also taking some AMAZING classes.

About these classes. If I haven't mentioned it here before, if you are a crafter, especially a paper crafter that wants to stretch their wings and get out of there comfort zone now and then or just learn more about a technique you are already using, check out www.mycreativeclassroom.com . All the classes are very reasonably priced and have down loadable PDF files so you can print out the handouts (if you're old school like me or have to go to the library to use the computer or whatever.) I have learned SOOOO much from the classes I've taken from them and they have a ton of different classes and a ton of different instructors. Right now I'm knee deep in an altered book class. Talk about being out of my comfort zone...tearing pages out of a book? writing in a book? using glue on the pages of a book? You get the point. But it's a blast and really gives me permission to just try techniques without it being so intimidating. I am LOVING this class!! I'm also doing "Designing with scraps" because heaven knows I have a few scraps of paper laying around!! AND "the Organized crafter" because God knows I have enough craft stuff to organize in my little bitty apartment/studio!!

Because I hate to be bored or at the very least idle for more than 5 minutes I'm also doing Brave Mothers and Daughters (check out www.bravegirls.com ) with my daughter Hailey. First off, anything Melody Ross does is golden. It just is. She is an amazingly positive person who can show you how to be strong and see the positive in things and REMEMBER to see the positive in things...so important in today's world!! The class is so much fun and even though Hailey and I are now having to do it long distance (she recently moved, like this past Wednesday recently, to TX) it's so much fun and really reminds us each why we love each other. And I even have my WI parents talked in to giving the class a go with me. I think nothing is more important than telling those special family members how important they are to you and why!!

So, as you can see...I'm up to my nose in Yes paste, mod podge, calendars and photos. Not a lot of sleep happening here, but I'm happy. What cracks me up, with all that I have on my plate right now, I can't help but say "ooohhhh I want to do that too!!" Someday I'll slow down a bit, but not yet. I've learned that while I suffer from depression (which is not to be taken lightly) and sometimes that "beast" (that's what I call it) does its best to paralyze me, I'm happiest when I'm creating. It's a learning process for me...to reach for my brush and mod podge instead of doing self destructive things, but I'm working on it.

And lastly on a very personal note (feel free to stop reading now if you wish LOL) my husband and I have started couples counseling and while it makes me face some very difficult things I see it as a very positive thing. I'm learning things about myself that I'm doing that are self destructive and working to replace them with positive things (see above paragraph) and we're learning how to communicate more. Our therapist is fantastic and really sees things as they are. It's very helpful to have a non biased person tell us "hey, this is something you need to think about/do." For the first time in our relationship we are without kids living at home (another story) and one point she made in our last session was "go DO something FUN together!!" Don't get me wrong, we do things together, but we've been focused on kids for our entire 12+ yr relationship and now is the first time we only have to think about what to do with ourselves on a Friday night LOL. Of course me being the scrapbooker that I am, I'm sure there will be pages created in the future of the fun stuff we do. But that's for another post.

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