Taking a break

Another week passes too busy to blog, but I'm determined to manage at least a post a week if I can, so here is a quick one. I'm now 23 weeks pregnant and loving all the kicking and squirming that little one is doing. In fact, I got a bit worried earlier today when I hadn't felt it kick in a while and had to have a little listen on the doppler (which was an absolute godsend in the early days of this pregnancy, but hasn't been used so much lately). But all was well, and since then I've been reminded of little one's presence several times!

Sleep is starting to be a problem - not actually getting to sleep, but waking up with lower backache and not being able to get comfortable again, not matter how I prop myself up with pillows. This morning I got up at seven as it was useless lying there trying to sleep - I'm convinced this is all training for the early mornings I will get to experience as a mum. My own mum exists on about 3 hours sleep a night even now, all thanks to yours truly who was a nightmare sleeper!

I actually got a Mother's Day card today (clever bump!). Nice to think that next year it will be for real...

So a layout to share, not photographed very well I'm afraid due to poor light this evening. It was made using last May's Cocoa Daisy kit, and shows some photos of our holiday to Paris in the Autumn of 2010 - this is me and mum taking a rest outside the Louvre. Everything on the page comes from the kit, except the chipboard thickers and the pink mist which I used to add a bit more depth to the background. I love that rose ribbon!

In other news, I managed to sell a few stacks of scrapbooking paper, but have lots more to go, including a stack of about 150 sheets of Basic Grey! I think I must have had a bit of an obsession at one point...

Anyway, off to bed now to get my couple of hours of sleep - back next week!

A difficult fortnight

Despite my intention to keep up to date with the blog, I was foiled at almost the first stage by managing to catch one of the most horrible viruses I've ever been lucky enough to suffer! It was a form of sinusitis I think, but was so painful I assumed it was an ear infection at first, and left me incapacitated and off work with head pain for a week! For someone who has barely any time off work normally (three days in a year would be the maximum) I'm now up to twelve days this year and absolutely hate it. However, being pregnant appears to have lowered my immune system and a school environment is probably the optimum place to pick up every disease going.

It meant of course that when I went back to work last Monday, I had a horrendous amount of work to catch up on and detentions to set for students who had decided to take advantage of the cover teachers! I finally feel like I'm getting back on top of things now and so can turn my attention to more pleasant things like blogging.

On a more positive note, baby has been kicking away happily for the last few weeks, and Ed has even been able to feel some of the stronger kicks, which is lovely. I ordered my first brand new maternity clothes yesterday (not that I needed to really, I have sacks of donations!) and have been living in a pair of hand me down maternity jeans at the weekend - so much comfier than the clothes I have been squeezing myself into at work. I'm at that awkward stage where my bump makes normal clothes difficult, but maternity wear is just that little bit too big. Still, it's lovely to have a bump - makes it all seem very real. We've been having some disagreements about names already - why is it that men never come up with names that they want, but feel happy to veto everything you come up with?

In scrapbooking news, I've been going through my stash and starting to sell some of my vast collection of papers on UKScrappers. There is no way I will ever scrap with them all, so it's best that they get moved on to a good home. I'm down to my last set of 'old layouts' to share on here too, before showing you some of the pages I have produced recently (though not that recently - the last two weeks have been a bit of a write-off when it comes to creativity of any kind).

The first is a page I really like, despite its simplicity, for the beautiful bright colours. It really reminds me of the day in question which was such a glorious autumn morning, it could almost have been summer.

 

 

Secondly is this page recording a cup of tea shared on the beach at the Isle of Wight with my in-laws. This was on holiday nearly two years ago now - we didn't go last year and probably won't this year, which is quite strange as it had been a regular trip for so long. I'm sure we'll be back again one day though. 

So hopefully I'll be back soon to update you with some of the six or seven 'new' layouts I've created.