and another hectic week in my life lol!

Had my niece staying last week, as my brother treated his wife to a jaunt in Rome to celebrate her upcoming 40th birthday.

They had a fab time with beautiful weather, while the kids enjoyed going out with their grandad in the day, bowling and outdoor swimming galore! It really helped me too, as it meant I could get on with stuff in the house and bits of work that needed doing.

The studio is much tidier, it had gotten really bad in there, lots of bits that had no home and needed sorting, and were just piling up in my 'to sort' pile on the floor. I chucked a bin liner of stuff out, and did silly tedious things like popping chipboard shapes out of the sheet and throwing the negatives away as it was taking up far more space then necessary.

Paula has asked me to take some pics for her fabby new project Crafty Storage I promise I haven't forgotten you hun, and will get on with it as soon as I can.

Spotted my stamps being used for the first time here on Anna's layout. Thank you hun :D

Lots of scrapping in progress: ATF goes live with its next challenge tomorrow, with another brillo guest designer :)

Got a commission from scrapbook inspirations too, so need to get that finished.

Got mightily pissed off with a blog slagging off uk scrappers (as in people not the forum- although a fair bit of bitching about that too). Basically if you won best of british (which I did) or have anything published (which I do) and if you get paid for it (God forbid), or were a member of a private forum (which I am), or on a design team for anything (yup, me again shoot me now) than the mud was slinging in your direction. I had my say, and it was not deleted (and rightly so) as I work damn hard at what I do. And most of all I enjoy what I do. I do not make layouts just to get them in magazines, that is a totally seperate part of what I do. All the layouts I make that end up in a magazine are commissioned...they say 'will you do xyz for issue # whatever and we will pay you £whatever' why the hell would I say no? Paid to do what I love? Bloody right I am gonna say yes!

When I see the faces of the people who are in the published layouts when they see the mag, well, that is an added incentive to do it and a total bonus imo.

Anyway, enough moaning, gotta add some pics from my week right?

My niece decided to take a bath rather than a shower...I had bought some nice original source sorbet shower gel...well two thirds of the pouch later she decided to turn on the jaccuzi! The result...a buried yeti in somewhat human form...(popped a shape over her face as I don't want her bath pics to have her face in on a public blog- she doesn't belong to me! I know it looks odd but you get the idea)

A cutsey lil bug I found in my raspberry plant...

And a gorgeous sunset just begging to be snapped so I can remember the glorius weather we've had this week when it is all dark and miserable in the winter!