Fire and Ice

I guess there are few things in life as disruptive as having a baby . There are of course events like getting married, moving house and others that create chaos but somehow, at least in my case, babies are definitely at the top of my "things that make me go argh!" list. Sure, they are cute and all that, but all hell appears to break loose around them and, because I do not do well with disorder, it drives me nuts. But anyway, the good thing is that what at first is disruptive after a while it becomes routine. Things start to settle down and while they may never be the same again, a sense of order re-appears and predictability ensues. I'm at that point now where I can actually plan my days, when I sort of know what will happen and when I can make decisions that go beyond the next three hours. This means I can carve out a little of time to myself a bit more easily. When it comes to filling that time, the possibilities are endless: I could spend it in a warm, relaxing bath or...

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...