*sigh*

It’s snowing.

Ok, so usually I love snow. But it’s almost April – keep it in the mountains so I can choose whether to play in it or not! Gosh.

So, to cheer me up, I’m planning our trip to the Southwest (specifically Nevada/Utah/Arizona) at the end of April. JK’s sister, Jules, is coming to stay with us for over a month (and ohmygod I just realized she is arriving next weekend so we really have to clear out the room she’s staying in), and to give her a taste of the least Norway-like part of the U.S. we can think of, we’re heading down to the desert.

I spent a couple of hours getting all the campground and backcountry permits we need (except for The Wave – apparently you need to book them four months in advance..), so now our schedule is pretty much set in stone. I understand and respect the need for a permit system, but it would be nice to have a little more flexibility on our trip.

Anyway, the real reason I’m annoyed at permits is that we didn’t get our eagerly anticipated Enchantments permits for this summer. Hopefully we’ll be able to get a walk-in permit, but still…I’m bummed. I’ve been using the trip as a goal to motivate me whenever I’m bored on one of those lame cardio machines at the gym, so now I have to find something new to work toward.

Ok, this post is going nowhere. I’ll stop talking now.

Random newish layout:

Ahem…ok, so I haven’t blogged. It’s basically because I haven’t scrapbooked. I don’t know what’s going on – it’s not really mojo loss or Reverse Midas Syndrome this time, because I’ve been able to produce stuff I’m happy with for the magazine and whatnot. Oh no – I just realized what might be wrong – I’ve combined my two biggest time-consumers: scrapbooking and procrastination! Gaah.

Hoping it will bring my motivation back, I’ve started (shock!) cleaning my scrapbook room (yes Tom, you can stop bitching about it now. How’s that upstairs bathroom coming along by the way? Mohahahaaa.) – a job I started in October…see, I really am a procrastinator! Anyway, hopefully I’ll be done in a day or two so we can reclaim our dining room table.

The other thing I’ve been doing to get scrapping again is going through my albums and thinking about why I scrapbook. My albums are full of lame, boring layouts that just feel like a waste of space. I actually removed a bunch of them from the albums, and surprise surprise, most of them are single-photo layouts with no journaling and no story. Lately I’ve been gravitating toward the exact opposite; multi-photo + journaling. Old school. Layouts that make me smile and evoke memories. That’s the stuff.

Oh, and I guess I should mention that I am off the crutches! My ankle is almost back to normal (it still gets stiff and swollen after workouts, but at least it doesn’t hurt). Speaking of crutches – I put the photo of me hobbling around the dog park on crutches on flickr, and suddenly noticed that it had 600 more views than my other photos. I checked the stats, and the hits were from, oh joy, a German BRACE AND CAST FETISH FORUM. What is wrong with people? I can sort of understand that some people have a foot fetish – at least that’s a body part – but braces and casts?? Seriously?? One thing’s for sure – when we have kids, I am definitely putting their photos in the friends and family filter.

*shudder*

It feels wrong to post without including a layout, so here’s one from CK. All the SoY girls were asked to scrap our passion, and this coincided nicely with the fact that Tom and Amy had just gotten us hooked on hiking. So I made an opening page for our hiking album: