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Showing posts from 2007

My organization skills were not learned in a classroom

Yesterday we went to a pantomime. For those outside the UK this may bring images of non-speaking actors with white faces but it's nothing like that. Pantomimes are a very British Christmas tradition - they are fairy tale plays with music, lots of silliness and audience participation. Nearly every town has one and the bigger pantos sometimes have famous people in the cast. The scripts are totally silly, the costumes incredibly over the top (especially for the men that are dressed like women: the panto dames) and the whole thing is harmless fun for everyone but kids especially seem to love it. We went to see Cinderella at our local theater and while it is put together by amateurs, the evening was very entertaining and I even got a little emotional when the Fairy Godmother turned a pumpkin into a sparkly coach and turned Cinderella's rags to a poofy ball gown. It was very, very sweet. I think Samuel even enjoyed some of it! Another British Christmas tradition is holiday TV. There

Dear Diary...

I haven't done much scrapbooking lately. I think that it's a combination of having too much on, not enough inspiration and, quite frankly, that I've been spending my time on other things (like running and messing around on Facebook). But I have been writing on my journal, which I hadn't really done in a good loooong time. I often wonder if it's worth still keeping a journal when almost everything I do these days is documented in blogs, in scrapbook layouts and even in emails. If scrapbooking is about leaving a legacy, then I definitely have that covered! I like to believe that in some distant future someone will sit down and read all my journals and albums and be able to put together a great portrait of what I was like, what my life was like and what I was all about. So yes, sometimes I think it's time to ditch the journal and move on to all the other media I have embraced. But then I take out the book, the pen and something happens... I open my soul to a blank

Do you remember last year's resolutions?

This year seems to be flying past and we’ve only got a few more days left before we change over to 2008 – and I inevitably mess up a few cheques because I’ll use the wrong year on them. As it’s traditional, this time of year people will make well-intentioned resolutions and I am no exception. I still don’t really know what I want to promise I’ll do but I have a few days yet to come up with something. Before I do, though, I want to look back on last year’s resolution – it was only one and I only came up with it sometime in mid-January but it still counts. Amazingly, I can still remember what it was and even more impressively, I have pretty much kept it. I’m talking of course about my running and the marathon coming up in Jan 08. I can still remember the moment when the light bulb went on in my head and I decided that this was something I wanted to do. I had little idea of how much work would go into it but I had tons of determination. If there is one thing that I am, that is stu

I think I like this place!

After thinking about it for a while, I've finally moved my blog to here. It wasn't that I disliked the old place but, like often happens, I've outgrown it and need some more room to move about, store my junk and be able to relax a bit more. So here I am now on Blogger - welcome to me. Christmas is now over and I'm still taking some days off until the new year. It feels so weird to not be at work: I've never had Christmas off so I'm not actually sure what to do with myself! Samuel is off with his grandparents, David's working so I have the house all to myself and it's a weird experience. So instead of doing what I always do (scrapbook and clean the house) I decided to spend the time migrating my old blog posts to my new site, get it all clean and ready for the thousands (yeah right) of visitors that will be interested to read what I have to say. So while I'm destined for unrivalled success in the blogosphere (yeah right AGAIN) I won't let it go to

Hectic!

Gosh – has it been nearly a month!? As my three readers know, things have been a bit hectic lately but at least now my OU course is finished so that’s one less thing to worry about! I have, however, less than a month until the WDW marathon… yikes. Training has been going well, at least until about two weeks ago. I had been managing to put in the 4 to 5 runs a week that I needed to do and my longer runs were getting longer and longer. Then a combination of poor weather-workload-life got in the way and I’m now lucky if I get in 3 runs a week. But, I’ve been training diligently for nearly a year now so a few missed runs, in the grand scheme of things, are not a huge deal. Sure, I feel terrible because I ought to be trying my hardest to get these runs in but in reality I’ve done the bulk of the training and other than one very long run, I’m nearly at the taper. There have been times when I question my sanity in running 42km, usually when I’m in the middle of a ridiculous 20k run in the

History doesn't have to be ancient

First of all – sorry for the “blog-neglect”. I am still alive and well, actually but it’s just that things have been a bit hectic lately! Lately I’ve also been thinking about history, more specifically my own history. I have never been a heritage scrapbooker and don’t actually own any old photos – I’ve said before that my mom has her own enormous albums where she has all her memories and my grandmother has few old photos but they are up on her walls. So as far as I’m concerned my family history is well looked after and I don’t feel the need to mess with that. The history I mean is my own past, the stories from when I was growing up and before I left Mexico. That part of my life sometimes feels like a distant dream to me, of living in a place where it was always hot or hotter, where I had lots of friends I could speak to any time, a time when I actually spoke more Spanish than English, a time when I seemed to have boyfriend after boyfriend. I am a prolific diary writer though an

No one can accuse me of doing nothing!

I have a lot going on at the moment. My OU course is going well and I’ve managed to not only keep up but stay a bit ahead which is good. This way, if I have any unexpected delays in the next few weeks it won’t be a tragedy and I should still be able to keep up. The course itself is really interesting as it’s dealing mainly with design principles for the web – although a lot of this learning can also be applied to scrapbook pages! In fact, my scrapbooking experience has helped a lot in this course as lots of the principles presented (like color wheels, golden ratio and rule of threes) I’d encountered them before in my pages. So I’m doing well on the course but I am still worried about the time it will take to put together a fully functioning website for my final exam. The running is still very much happening and I’m aware that the marathon is less than 3 months away. My long runs are getting longer and while that in itself is a challenge, I find that I worry more about fitti

Disneyland Paris - trains, taxis and 'tapis volants'

Yeah, I know it's been a while but I've been busily preparing for our mini-break to Disneyland Paris and since I've come back I've been swamped at work... but to make up for it here is a super long post with info all about our vacation! Photos to follow as soon as I sort them out - promise. Day 1 (Thursday) It had been a long time since my husband and I went to DLRP and our son had never been so we made the most of the offers at the moment and booked our trip a few months ago. Finally the day came when we could start our adventure and we were all excited! We couldn’t get tickets on the direct Eurostar to DLRP so we had booked a later train with a connection in Lille. We decided to take the train from Milton Keynes to London, cross the city in a taxi instead of the underground (easier with luggage) and then arrive in time for our check-in at Waterloo. It all worked quite well as we were away from the morning rush hour and after a great taxi ride through London,

Best laid plans and all that

Friday was just not a good day for me. It all started so well: the sun was shinning and it felt like a beautiful day. I had a morning meeting in London which meant I didn’t have to take a train until nearer 10am and that – along with the fact that my little boy was away for the week with grandparents – let to a lovely lie-in. When I got to the station I found out that my colleague wouldn’t be able to come to London for the meeting so it was me on my own, which wasn’t a tragedy. The morning and the meeting went well and since I’d blocked the rest of the day as a ‘working from home’ day, there was no rush to return. I decided to do a little shopping in London and then head home. The plan was to have some lunch on the train (or at the station), get home at about 2pm then drive to they gym. I would have a nice and relaxing run followed by a quick dip in the pool and a spot of sunbathing. I wasn’t expecting my husband to return home until about 6pm or so (he’d gone to get DS from gran

Who am I, anyway?

My name is Claudia, I’m 36 years old and live in the UK, in a lovely city called Milton Keynes. I’ve only been in the UK ten years though, because I was born and raised in Mexico and in fact most of my family and friends are still over there. I moved to the UK because I met a Brit while working in the USA about 12 years ago so as you can see it wasn’t the weather OR the food that brought me to these foggy shores! I’ve been married for 10 years now and have a little boy who will be 4 in October. I also work full time as an Online Marketing Manager for a distance learning university here in Milton Keynes and although I haven’t been doing that for long, I do love my job. Previously I worked in marketing for a large retail bank headquartered here in Milton Keynes and although I made many great friends there, I really wasn’t enjoying the work I was doing, especially the last few years. So I’m glad I’ve changed jobs as I am happy again. I am one of those very annoyingly organized peopl

If you see me walking funny today, this is why!

I haven’t been writing in my blog recently – as you’ve noticed. I also haven’t really been scrapping or beading or doing anything much other than focusing on the Milton Keynes half marathon. Well, the race was yesterday (Sunday) and while I was looking forward to it, it was more of a disaster. I did finish but just barely and felt very under-trained, even though I’ve been running 4 times a week since January. I did the lot in just over 3 hours and that last mile felt like the longest mile I have EVER walked. But I was determined and completed, although in a very sorry state. Anyway, the time has come to assess: can I really do a full marathon in January or am I deluding myself? I still don’t have the answer to the question, if I’m honest. But I’ll carry on training (once I can move my legs again) and will also do some scrapping. This week, at least, I have to rest and what better thing to do sat down than scrapping??

Warning: there is walking involved

Yesterday – 4 July – was not only a holiday for all Americans out there, but was also a milestone for me. It marked 6 months since the day I thought I should start running to prepare for the WDW marathon in 2008. Six months of running on average 4 times a week, for a total of 16km a week or nearly 400km since that day. Running when I don’t feel like it, running when I actually nearly enjoy it, running indoors, running outside, and running in Milton Keynes, in Florida, in Holland. How much weight have I lost? Not one gram. Seriously, my weight is exactly the same as it was back in January when I hadn’t run a single meter. It fluctuates up and down as normal but in the main it’s exactly the same. I’ve lost inches, you say? Well, not really – maybe a couple here and there but nothing that can be noticeable to the naked eye. So just HOW much running do I need to do, then, to lose a few kilos? I can’t say that I’m really looking forward to my sessions, either. I can do them perhaps

Natural light

I’ve finished my Florida album and I think it looks great – it has lots of wonderful memories in it, as well as mementoes and lovely photos. I am well pleased with it and look forward to showing it off – I will even endeavour to take some pictures of it to post here and show it off! I am waiting for the rain to stop, you see, so that I can use nice natural light to take the photos. What’s the big deal with all this rain, by the way? I thought this summer was supposedly going to be the warmest ever, blah, blah, blah but so far nothing. It’s not even been that warm – just soggy, cloudy and miserable. It’s nearly July and so far I have barely used my summer clothes. If it wasn’t for our trip to Florida, I wouldn’t have seen the sun at all this year! People always ask me if I’m getting used to the UK weather and the answer is never simple. I am used to the fact that it will nearly always be unpleasant but that doesn’t mean I don’t suffer. I don’t mind the cold in the winter (after al

What does "deserving" mean?

I’ve recently had a good old clearout of stash that I know I won’t use. A lot of it has come to me in kits and magazines (as freebies) and while it looked great when I first got it, on second look I admitted to myself that it isn’t my style and I won’t be using it. As I hate having useless things lying around, I gathered all these things together in one big bag and decided to give it to whoever most deserves it. So I posted a message on a UK scrapping forum and told people to write to me and tell me why they deserve this stash. The messages soon flooded in! I have now a very difficult task – choosing a winner. I decided that the kit isn’t worth splitting (it is large but not quite THAT large) so there can only be one winner, or else there would be several slightly disappointed people rather than one very delighted one. This of course makes my job harder as I have to decide which of these people deserve it the most. I have received the most heart warming stories from different

Chronological scrapping or stand-alone projects? Hmmmm... I don't know!

Last night my husband was out with some friends (he went to see Derren Brown, which those of you in the UK will recognize as the famous magician-mentalist-psychologist-illusionist. It was a fab show, apparently). I took the chance and sat down and scrapped and scrapped and scrapped: for 3 hours! I had fallen behind, not only in my Florida album, but in my ER episodes so last night I caught up with both: I scrapped while I watched all the goings-on in this TV show. I can’t believe how much has happened in ER! I’m sure the season finale will be an explosive one… But anyway, I got on with the scrapping really well too. I completed 9 layouts (NINE) and some were simple while others were very simple. I am absolutely adoring those PDQ Bisous papers – and I’m sure I’ve said that before. They have allowed me to progress with this album very quickly as I don’t have to make so many design decisions and giving me more time to journal and embellish (or not). As the papers are double-sided an

Fitting it all in

A couple of days ago I went to my Monday evening crop and made a start on my new Disney album. Once again I return from a lovely trip with over 400 photos and I have all these big plans… but this time it’s different! I will not be repeating the mistake I made the last time when I worked on an 8x8 album: this time I’ve gone for a gorgeous 12x12 and I’m using the PDQ Bisous papers so little embellishment is needed. I’ve also become a lot more selective on photos and didn’t pick up tons of souvenir papers while away so I don’t need to fit in hundreds of menus, tickets, maps, etc. I spent an evening about 2 weeks ago sorting through it all, getting all the papers, the embellishments (some leftover from last album!), the photos themselves and all the souvenir stuff I collected. It all looks massive once together but it means that I can just grab the one bag and know that it is all there and I’m ready to go. So during the Monday crop I made 10 layouts. Ten in 3 hours – it’s good isn

Having it all

Why is it that scrappers feel that they must “have it all”? Not only do I mean “all” as in career, kids, etc but more like everything that is out there and available for sale in stash-land. You know, the papers, the embellishments, the tools, the bags, the cardstock… I know I keep talking about this but I just can’t bring myself to shop, shop, shop like nearly everyone else seems to. For one, I sometimes feel that scrapping stuff is quite over-priced (especially in the UK) so I have to really, really justify the purchase to myself before I commit. And I’m talking about justifying the purchase of a set of brads – not even something more expensive! The other thing is that I know that I won’t use some things. I don’t buy stash specifically for pages (that would be TOO organized) but I do know my style well enough to know that I will never really have any use for any die cutting machines. Or those enormous chipboard embellishments that are everywhere at the moment – gorgeous as they