Wow...

how time flies! I feel like i just blogged yesterday and got back from my camping trip... but that was WEEKS ago! I'm a bad, bad, bad blogger! But the good news is that now at least once a week I'll have a great new challenge layout to share with you from Lotus Paperie, so that will give me an excuse to blog ;) Speaking of that challenge layout.... you can check out the current challenge (from last Friday) over at the Lotus Paperie Blog. It's a pretty good little sketch! Here's what I came up with from it:

There will be a new challenge up over there on Friday, so don't miss it! In other online scrapbooking news.... I was asked to step down from the Scrap n' Art design team.... apparently I wasn't keeping up with their insane amounts of work over there. And I was also told that my graphic design work wasn't right for what they were looking for in the eZine. I'm quite proud of my graphic design work and think it was much more professional and quality than what they were doing, but at any rate we weren't meshing. I'll leave my comments at that as I don't want to get rude :P

So that means that lately i've been able to scrap for just me, which is fun! I've noticed that my style has really become a bit plain lately... but i'm okay with that. I like it, even if each layout is pretty similar. I'll work on stepping out of the box later ;)

My life is still pretty boring! My sister and nephew are away visiting family, so I've been chilling with my man and trying to keep up my exercise program. I'm getting a bit burnt out with it though, so if you have any tips on keeping motivation high, let me know! lol I'll leave you with a few layouts I've done recently of my little man. I definitely have WAY too many pages with this guy on them! hehe





Happy Wednesday!
<3 Gillian

Fabulous Weekend!

I've been meaning to post all week about my fabulous weekend of camping, but life is busy when you're not on the beach just chilling :) So, it is Thursday, and a few days late, but it's here none the less for you few people who keep checking back!

So, last Thursday Brandon and I left to go to Quadra Island to camp with the family and friends for the long weekend. We go every year with Brandon's parents and a few of their family friends, and it's always a good time. This year was no exception!! The weather was just absolutely GORGEOUS the whole time, and everyone left with tans (and sunburns, unfortunately).


Also, Jen, Nate and Turner came up for the day on Friday, which was great. We went for a VERY long walk along the beach and through the woods and spent time on the beach. Nate had his first little dip in the ocean too, which was fun :)


Then that night Rae-Lynn, Paul, Logan and Tikka came to stay for the rest of the weekend. That made for some fabulous nights around the campfire, and some great days in the sun. And don't forget lots of napping.... there should always be napping when you're on vacation :)


There is not much other news going on right now, especially of the scrappy variety. I've done some great layouts, but have yet to take photos of them. That is my job for this weekend or next week on my days off. To post all my work from the past month and get caught up on all my EZine and work projects. So wish me luck ;)

Tonight i'm off to scrap at the military base with a few friends and hope to get some of my ABC's of Me pages done. Though I should probably work on my mini album for work... oh the great dilemmas of my life! lol

Happy Thursday everyone!
<3 href="http://www.scrapnart.com/">Scrap n' Art and subscribe before June 7th to be entered into the big contest!
P.P.S. There will be a great new challenge up tomorrow at Lotus Paperie, so check that out too!

He's Crawling!!

Yay!! I feel like a proud Momma, only I'm not the mom, but my little nephew, Nate, is crawling! His mom saw him do it a little bit on Monday night, and told me to get him to try yesterday at lunch. So I plopped him down on his belly and sat a few feet away from him. He crawled right on up into my arms! It was so exciting :D He kept on crawling to me every time I would put him on the floor away from me. He sure does love his Auntie Gill ;) At this point he has yet to crawl to anyone else, not even his mom, so I feel pretty special! hehe

Didn't get much scrapping time this past week, unfortunately. Spent time with my sister and Nate, worked, and prepped and taught a class at Scrapbook Central. I did have a chance as part of my class to make my sister a little Mother's Day mini album, since it was her first year as a Mom. She loved it, which was great :) I didn't get to spend Mother's Day with my mom, as she lives across the country, and it felt pretty sad this year. I would have loved to see her and spoil her for the day. She seemed quite down on Mother's Day too, so I sent her flowers Monday morning to cheer her up. Hope it worked :)

I feel like my life has become quite mundane and boring! Which is actually okay by me, but not very exciting to blog about! lol The most exciting thing that happened this week was a trip to the vets with all THREE of my animals. Now THAT was a challenge! Rounding up both cats and the dog and dragging them in to the vets took much longer than I thought. They all did well though, except for the shedding all over me in fear. I swear I could have made a new cat out of the hair that was deposited on my shirt! lol And then to top off the excursion, Shady pooped in his carrier on the way home. Now that was a fun smell to be trapped in my little car with. :P

Anyways, tomorrow I am off to Quadra Island for our yearly May camping trip. It marks the beginning of the summer camping season, and should be pretty nice this year. Hopefully I'll take lots of pictures to make up for this post!

Enjoy your weekend everyone!
<3 Gillian

Good news, bad news, and cat news!

Well, as the title suggests, there is good news, bad news and cat news. I will start with the good. I was lucky enough to be chosen as a design team member over at Lotus Paperie!!! I am SUPER SUPER thrilled about this :D I LOVE Vanessa's kits, and am also a huge fan of the challenges over there. Love that I get to do them on a weekly basis now with fabulous new kit material. WOOHOO!! If you've never checked out the site, you should definitely take a gander. My fabulous bloggy buddy Jessi made the team as well. YAY!!

Now onto the bad news... Found out today that my sister has been posted to Cold Lake, Alberta. I am quite depressed. I was REALLY hoping she would be posted to Washington so I could be near her and my nephew. For those who don't know me super well, my sister is my absolute best friend in the whole, wide world. There is no one like her, and there is nothing like our relationship. I can't even describe it. I just love her... a lot. And I was so enjoying being near her and hanging out every day. Now I will MAYBE see her 2-3 times a year, IF I'm lucky. It sucks. A lot... i think I will leave it at that, before I cry.

I did this layout quickly when I got home tonight to help get my emotions from the day onto paper. I don't only scrap happy things. I like to scrap when it hurts too... maybe 20 years from now I will look back and wonder why I was so upset, because it all turned out okay. Who knows?



As a side note... I am very very grateful that I have made some amazing friends around here who will, no doubt, help me through the tough times ahead when my sister leaves. Rae-Lynn is one of them. I miss her... Saturday was too long ago. So Rae-Lynn, we must plan our scrappy day for next week :)

And, onto the cat news. We have turned our one cat Shady into an outdoor cat. He seems quite unhappy being cooped up inside, so for better or worse, he is now allowed to roam free. Cross your fingers that he fares well! My other cat Hope is too silly and lazy to be an outdoor cat, but she has started to enjoy time in the yard on her leash. Here she is just chilling in the grass. This photo makes me smile :)


Well, off to bed! Happy Wednesday all!
<3 Gillian

Are you with us?

Super cool project going on over at Shimelle.com! I'm going to try it :)

I've lost my mojo!

Well, i think it's official, i've lost my scrap mojo :( I just can't seem to pull off any real great layouts lately, which sucks cause I have tons of work to do for the store and the ezine. I went to an all day scrap yesterday and I just wasn't feeling it. I only got 4 layouts done and I wasn't super pleased with any of them. Oh well, I'll give it another go tomorrow at Rae-Lynn's place and hope for the best!

Speaking of Rae-Lynn, we've talked and hung out a lot this week! Before the scrap weekend I wasn't even sure whether she really liked me, but I feel like we totally clicked, which is awesome! I'll be so happy to have another fabulous friend around for after my sister leaves. Not sure anything will completely replace my sister leaving, but Rae-Lynn and I are blood sisters, so you never know ;) hehe Anyways, she blogs too, and has an adorable son, so check her out here. Here is Jen being le jealous of Rae-Lynn and I at the Support Our Troops concert, which by the way, was a good time :)

In other news, I totally gimped up my toe this week! I knocked a picture frame off the wall at my sister's place and the corner landed right on my toe. I thought that it was going to be disconnected when I took my sock off to look, it hurt that bad! lol This was on Wednesday, it's now Sunday, and I still have to limp so that it doesn't completely hurt. Booooo!!

Also worked a few days this week at the Scrapbook store and taught a mini album to a 12 year old birthday party. It was a busy week, but the extra money helps, and how bad can it really be when you work at scrap store? Speaking of which, we got LOADS of new stuff in this week, so if you're local, you should stop by. Except for you, Laurel, you can't visit me there until July ;)

I will leave you with a few layouts from the past week or so, and then I'm off to update all my 365 photos at my Flickr (username is spunk33grl if you want to check them out). Happy Sunday all!


<3 Gillian

For my BFF ;)

Well, I am back!! Due to some not-so-gentle persuasion from my new buddy Rae-Lynn, I have decided to blog and update everyone on my (boringish) life. I've been pretty busy the past month! I've started working quite a bit at the Scrapbook store and also spending lots of time prepping for classes at the store. I taught my first class which went fairly well and have both a cards class and a mothers day acrylic album in the works for next month :) I took a significant break from scrapping anything for myself for awhile, due to working on store stuff too much, but went to a weekend long crop hosted by one of my friends and got a lot done. I will take pics of those on Friday, if it's sunny and get them posted :)

In other fabulous scrappy news, I found out that I'M BEING PUBLISHED!!!! WOOHOO!! I will have a layout featured in Becky's Sketch of the August issue of Creating Keepsakes. I'm SO excited about this! :) I don't plan on submitting for magazines a lot, since I want to just scrap for me, but I am very happy about being published once, just to say I did it. I also have a fabulous (if I do say so myself... which I don't normally about my own work, but I particularly loved this one) layout under consideration with Canadian Scrapbooker, so keep your fingers crossed for that one. If I don't hear back from them I will post it here for you guys, because I'm super proud of it.
One last scrappy tidbit before I move on... the premiere issue of Scrap n' Art came out today! It's pretty cool, so you should definitely all check it out if you haven't already :) Loads of great layouts and projects in there, as well as some fun tips, techniques and interviews.

So what else have I been spending my time doing? Mostly just chilling with my nephew :D He is way too adorable and my sister and I have too much fun playing with him and laughing, so I spend LOTS of time at their place. I'm sure my boyfriend gets jealous, that's how much time I spend there! lol That adorable picture of him is from yesterday, and was my 365 photo for the day. He was playing with my sunglasses and looks WAY too cute. I could probably share adorable photos of him with you all day long, but I don't want to seem repetitive (or make Rae-Lynn jealous of how cute he is), so i'll just leave it at that!
I've been keeping up on my 365 challenge, though i'll admit, many of my photos are pretty uninspired lately. I'm hoping to get some mojo back now that its spring! Here are a few of my favourites from the past month to finish things up:




Happy Tuesday!
<3 Gillian
P.S. For you local scrappers, i'm working at Scrapbook Central tomorrow, so come visit!!