Darren has been busy studying for his MCAT next month and it's still too cold here (ummm, we had snow flurries this morning) for me to want to spend lots of time outside, so I've been splitting my time between work, the gym, and being a domestic diva at home (I cooked so much this weekend!). I've also had some time to do a bit more photo editing than usual, including going back and working on those weeks in my 2011 Project Life album that I haven't finished yet.
July 2011 was probably about the time I'd decided to give up on Project Life for this particular year, which meant that I also slacked way off on taking pictures. Luckily I still had some pretty ones this week, including a shot of a sunset reflected in the lake near my office that I blew up to fill most of one of the spread's pages. My local Sam's club does 12x16 prints for just under $3.00, so I cropped this photo (along with one other for a later week) to 12x8, then cut it apart to fit the pockets. I was already headed over there to pick up groceries, so having them do my printing was a win-win.
I kept this layout fairly simple, and since I already had an old Studio Calico kit (So Cal) out on my desk for another project, I went ahead and used it for this page, too. Yay for using up stash!
And now for a little real life...
There were some major upheavals at my job last week (for those who don't know, I work full-time as a software engineer), starting with my program manager leaving at the end of this week to start his own company and ending with me taking on a second project to support along with the one that I'm already on. With the shifting around of responsibilities and addition of new ones, it's going to be kind of crazy at the office for a while. Something in my schedule has to give, and on my list of priorities blogging falls somewhere well below taking care of my family and being the absolute best that I can at my job. I've thought long and hard about it over the last week, and with the changes (the work changes are only the beginning...D should be finishing his master's degree this semester and will then be applying to medical schools across the country- I have no idea where that will take us!) I'm going to have to cut back on the blogging.
This doesn't mean that I'm going to quit scrapping! I'll still be doing lots of that, and I'll still be sharing it here, but the format for sharing is going to have to change. I plan to keep the weekly Geek Girl, Project Life, and Friday Favorites posts (I love doing those!) along with posts to fulfill design team requirements (luckily I had already let my design team commitments dwindle down to a much smaller number that's completely manageable and enjoyable). I'll also be sprinkling in the occasional creative post "just because" (since, like I said, I have no intention of stopping the scrapping!), but big features like Back to the Future are going to be few and far between. I'll do them as I can, but at home if it comes down to choosing between writing a blog post or cooking dinner or walking through the botanical gardens with D...I'll choose dinner and the gardens over blogging every time. I have to maintain a balance, and I have to get it in place now before the craziness really sets in.
What you'll probably see here is the blog turning into more of a "gallery" for my layouts- lots of pictures, fewer words. Fewer posts, but the posts will likely have more than one layout in them. And definitely still working on using up my stash!
One thing I will not do is turn my blog into a series of ads and endless promotions. Even though I do scrap for design teams, every page and every photo that I scrap is something that I wanted to do anyway for my albums, and I'll always keep that genuine-ness about my scrapbooking. That being said, it was a huge coincidence that three different companies contacted me recently and inquired about doing giveaways. I actually get asked this fairly often and definitely do not offer every giveaway that comes along (very few, in fact), but I thought that these three had products that my readers would truly enjoy the chance to win. So there will be a giveaway post each day for the next three days here, which will help me in the taking-a-break department. This will not be the norm, I assure you! It's just to give you guys a little something fun and to give me a breather, and then things will get back to scrapping next week.
Hopefully by getting a handle on things now before things really start changing, I can keep everything balanced when life gets even nuttier than it is now. And in the meantime I still have some fun projects that are already in the works, including one that fans of my past Use Your Scraps Weeks might be very interested in. ;)
Hugs and smiles to you all! I truly appreciate all of my wonderful blog readers!