My Article is Up!

Just wanted to let everyone know that my featured article (from being a Round 2 DT contestant) is up over at the Little Scrap Shop blog. It's about my art/photo/best me journal, which is my current little project of inspiration. CHeck it out :)

Happy Wednesday!
<3 Gillian

My Crazy 8's

Hey all! Hope you all had a fabulous weekend! Mine wasn't too bad. I did some scrapping, a whole lot of World of Warcraft playing (still on the lookout for other people who scrap and play WoW.. are you out there? lol) and whole lot of NOT CLEANING. Oops! I'm pretty sure I was supposed to take down my Christmas tree and clean up my scrap stuff. Speaking of my scrap stuff, I would like to report that it has now taken over both the kitchen table and the coffee table. Brandon now has nowhere to eat... and I'm not gonna lie, he's a bit cranky about it! lol But he still ooh's and aah's when I create new layouts and projects, and loves me regardless of my crazy scrap obsession :) In my final piece of scrapbooking news, there was a cyber crop yesterday and today over at Coordinates Collections and one of the challenges they had going on was to scrap a quote by someone. I, of course, chose my fabulous sister to scrap! I chose a goofy pic of her and scrapped one of her best blond moments (although she's not blond!)

Basically the quote is from the time when my sister thought she'd come up with a fabulous idea for 'individual sized servings of potato chips' ... until she noticed us all staring at her. I politely responded with "You mean like the little bags you can get in EVERY SINGLE STORE!!" lol Ah, it was a great moment, and I truly love to harass her about it (I love you Jen!), she will be so pleased that it is immortalized on a scrap page now! Haha! NOTE: sorry about the crap photo of the layout, I took it at night since I needed to submit the layout for the challenge by midnight, and it was already dark. I would have retaken it tomorrow for the blog, but we all know i'm lazy and i'd probably forget :P

As I was doing my daily blog surfing today I noticed this little doo-dad over at Kerry's blog. She tagged anyone who wanted to, so I figured I would do it, since it's late at night and I have nothing more to say :P

8 Passions in my life:
my boyfriend
my bond with my sister
scrapbooking and creating
loving and caring for animals
country music
being a Cleveland Browns fan
being a good friend
purses

8 Things to do before I die:
go back to Australia
take a cruise
open a shelter/foster home for homeless cats
work at/for some type of scrapbooking company
have children and raise them well
live with my sister again (well, not with, but very very near)
Become Mrs. Brandon Querin
own a bulldog

8 things I often say:
WOOT!
I'm not gonna lie..
I'll cut you!
You're such a nub
Pulling in 5 (you'd get it if you were a WoW nerd like me :P)
Seriously
You no tell me "insert adjective here" (always said with a foreign accent)
I just love you, love you, love you! (to animals and nephew)

8 books {and/or magazines} I’ve read recently:
The Devil Wears Prada
Understanding Exposure
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (wow,that was in July, i don't read enough! lol)
Creating Keepsakes
Scrapbooks Etc
Memory Makers
Simple Scrapbooks
do board books with my nephew count? lol I've read lots of those!

8 Songs that mean something to me:
Unwell - Matchbox Twenty (this is my theme song, or it was when i was sick and depressed)
All Jacked Up - Gretchen Wilson (my party anthem)
My Best Friend - Tim McGraw (mine and Brandon's song)
Your Kiss is on my List - Hall & Oates
Landslide - The Dixie Chicks
I Need You - Backstreet Boys (reminds me of my youth! :P)
Where The Green Grass Grows - Tim McGraw (My sister will know why I love this one.... "Point our rocket ships towards the west" :P lol)
Back 2 Good - Matchbox Twenty

8 Qualities I look for in a friend:
silliness
a big heart
understanding
good hugger
honest
loyal
intelligence
wild and crazy

I'm supposed to now tag 8 people, but I won't, I just want as many people who want to do it, to link me up, so I can read them :) Jen, this does mean you :P

I will leave you with my last 2 365 pics.

The simple pleasures in life... using the laptop in bed, with a warm, soft cat on your lap! :)

I'm not sure how I scrap in this mess... but I love, love, love it!!

Hope you all have a great Monday!
<3 Gillian

365 and healthy stuff!

Wow, I can't believe I haven't blogged since Tuesday... it feels like just yesterday! I suppose I haven't blogged, cause I really just feel like I have nothing to say this week. I think I'm having a case of the winter blah's. That combined with needing to start back to eating healthy and working out (which always makes me feel crappy, for some reason) has just got me in a very private, mopey type mood. Blah!

But on a happier note, I've kept up my 365 photos! I really need to start challenging myself at taking more artistic, quality photos, instead of just snapping something random. I've gotten lazy with that the past few days, but I'm still taking pics, and that's a good thing. I have *counts* 355 (i think that's right) days left to improve my skills :) So here are my last couple days worth:

the cards I made for the Valentine's ATC swap over at SISTV

My chihuahua's latest toy. This thing quacks SO loud, scares the poop out of me regularly! lol

The prompt from Anna today was about family (and how crazy they are), so I snapped this pic of me with some of my fur family. It is super, duper hard to get yourself and two dogs, of completely different sizes no less, into a self photo!

And that is my 365 so far! I'm still impressed that I'm keeping up, GO ME! Now if only I can show so much dedication to my health... I did workout yesterday, and get a walk in today though... so that's good! To help with my weight loss/healthy living goals, I'm going to add a sidebar here at the blog, so I can be held accountable for my actions and you guys feel free to get on me if I don't keep up with it!

Enjoy your weekend!
<3 Gillian

P.S. My sis has a great post up about consuming too much.... go check it out! I agree with and admire everything she says, and I couldn't sum it up any better, so I figured you could just read her thoughts on the matter :) Go here!

Home sweet home!

Well I'm back home, and BOY does it feel great :) Sleeping in my own bed with my little ones (aka the two cats and my chihuahua) around me felt AMAZING! You know what else was amazing? Talking to my mom on the phone today! She got her tracheotomy removed (the tube she had in her neck to help her breath) and she can talk now! She sounded just like her old self, and it was perfect to hear her talking :)

Not much to say today, but I do have my latest 365 photo to share with you. The prompt from Anna was about colours that look good on you. I wasn't feeling it, since I don't have a favourite colour that looks good on me... but one of my favourite colours is brown.. and I saw this moment of my chihuahua, Jack, and my sisters dog, Turner (who I'm taking care of while she's away) playing on their bed. They're both shades of brownish, so I snapped a photo. Love that Turner is being a good boy and sitting perfectly still for the camera... and Jack is a blur of motion and energy, harassing Turner (as usual!) Lol!

I wanted to point out that my sister is also doing the 365 challenge, and has posted her photos over at her blog, so you should all check it out! She also has some adorable photos of my nephew over there, and could use some cheering up ;)

See you tomorrow, hopefully after a long day of scrapping!!!
<3 Gillian

P.S. Thanks to all the fabulous people who have sent me RAK's to cheer me up about my mom :)

I'm going home!

Well, this is my last day in Ontario with my family! I'm both sad and happy. I am glad to get home to my kittens, my puppy and my SCRAP SUPPLIES!! I'm super sad to leave my mom. :( She's just starting to be able to talk, and I know she loves having me here to visit each day. But I need to get back to my job, and I need money! lol So my sister will have to stay behind and take care of my mom for me.... wish her luck! lol

I have a couple pieces of exciting news to share... I am going to be the featured Guest Design Team member for February over at Coordinates Collections! I'm so stoked to get to play with their cute Valentine's kit. This is my first spot on a design team of any type, and I'm pretty excited. :) Also, I made it through to Round 2 of the design team search over at the The Little Scrap Shop! It's some tough competition though, so I'm fairly certain I am not the best there. But it will be fun working on the projects that we have to do. I'll be sure to share them with you :)

Now, on to some photos!! First, here are my last 2 365 photos. The first is of my cellphone laying on the bed... it documents a daily routine of mine! The next is of my eyes... it was supposed to be capturing my beauty.

Lastly, I wanted to share this adorable photo of my nephew (and me in the corner!) that I took yesterday. I was trying to do a self portrait, but i had the wrong lens on and it zoomed too much! lol Still, I like the way they turned out :)

Enjoy the last of your weekend, I'll be back on Tuesday from Beautiful British Columbia!

<3 Gillian

One Little Word ... and 365

To start off, here are my last two days of the 365 photo challenge. Most people are doing this as a self portrait challenge... but I wanted to just document life and photograph whatever moved me, sometimes using the prompt from Anna, and sometimes just going on a tangent of my own. So far I've used the prompts for inspiration. My day 2 photo was based on the lyrics from the Michael Jackson song "Man in the Mirror." I'm so loving the look of 'photographer me' in the mirror! I'm just learning proper photography skills, and I can't wait to practice and improve over the year. Hope there's lots more of me and a camera this year. :)

Day 3's prompt was about imperfection. I find I'm constantly critiquing my scrapbook layouts and 'art'... and I just need to not worry about it so much! Especially lately, since I've been taking part in lots of challenges. I sometimes forget that the challenge is about inspiration and creating, not about winning... must learn to embrace the imperfections that I create. So i took a photo of a recent mini album I put together. It's chipping, which bugged me at first... but now I think it adds character :)

Finally, I decided to take a cue from Ali Edwards and come up with One Little Word to define my year by. I came up with harmonize. I was originally going to use 'organize' but that sounded too harsh. I do want to organize, but not overly... just to the point where my life is in harmony. You should all come up with a word for your years!!

<3 Gillian

P.S. If you are a crafty person, but are looking for some ideas and inspiration, then check out Courtney DeLaura's Project 52. A year long tutorial site, it's fabulous!! You won't regret it ;)

365 - January 1

Here's day 1 of my 365 challenge... I'm going to try to take a picture everyday this year. I'm probably going to follow the inspiration of Anna B and her challenge.

Today the inspiration was 'laughter' so I wanted to get a great photo of my nephew laughing and giggling, but he refused to giggle in front of the camera! So instead I got a suprised photo of him when he woke up on my lap. Any photo of him is still cute :)

In the next day or so I will be adding links to my sidebar for all the fun challenges and inspirational things I'm attempting/using this year, so keep your eyes peeled :)

<3 Gillian