Some of our fellow Iggy Ambassadors are out of town this week, so we have the pleasure of dogsitting their four-legged son, Maus. That’s right, we have two house elves now! :D

I’ll come back with more Maus-tales later; I threw my back out a couple of days ago and it is still killing me. Ugh. Anyhoo, I just wanted to say that the Mosh Posh May kit (plus all the extras; it is MP’s birthday so there is a members’ only kit plus a free spool of ribbon for all the current members!) is up, and it is one of my favourite kits so far! This month’s theme was “Here and now”, so I filled in a quiz of my current obsessions. I want to do this every year from now on, one for me and one for JK. Heh, JK claims his favourite drink is green tea, putting my strawberry daquiri to shame.. :)

I’ve been in a funk the last couple of days, and last night I finally had to admit to myself that the murders at VTech are playing a big part in my mood. I’ve never lived in Virginia, I don’t know anyone who was directly affected by it, but when things like this happen I just can’t distance myself from them. Something as big as this or as terrible as a war or something as “small” as a political discussion or someone’s ignorant comment can just suck the will to live right out of me. This started at about the same time as when getting up in the morning got harder and harder; apparently it is not unusual for someone who is depressed to feel this way. I can’t wait til I can actually convert these emotions into something positive and useful instead of letting them drag me down.

…let’s talk about meeeee! Heh. I’ve decided to finally make a real “Book of Me” (aka BOM :D), which is basically just an excuse for me to play with my layouts. This first one is an extract of The Gospel According to Shug from The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker, my all-time favourite book. I think this is the first layout I’ve made without a photo, but it will not be my last I tells ya! The paper I used is a digital one by Rhonna Farrer (printed on thick paper from a page protector). And yes, in real life it is easier to read the text…

I was planning on babbling on for a while here, but my head is killing me and I think I just have to step away from the computer. Speaking of (lack of) health, the vegan freaks did a really good podcast on health that I finally got to listen to yesterday. I love listening to podcasts when I scrap, if you want to try it out you should go here and download it! The show was very inspiring as I have steadily been gaining weight the last two years. Evil vegan cookies!! *shakes fist*

Oh, I forgot to tell you about the amazing concert we went to before my parents came - Thomas Dybdahl, Willy Mason, and Sondre Lerche, all in one night! The music was amazing, and since we were allowed to bring our SLR, I actually got some decent concert photos for once! If you’re not Norwegian and don’t know who Thomas Dybdahl is, you can go to Cherbonsy’s live music blog and have a listen (and my, what a cool photo he has :D).

Sorry for being AWOL, but with my parents and grandma visiting, there was not much time for surfing, blogging or even (gasp!) scrapping! They left yesterday, so now I can finally do something about my scrapbook withdrawal symptoms. This weekend I swear I saw a Quickutz crawling across my ceiling… :D

We had a great time with my family though, and it is really quiet without them here…but my parents are coming over for Christmas, so I have something to look forward to. You don’t realize how much you miss someone until they’re about to leave again.

Anyhoo, on to scrapping matters. I haven’t dared to start making our wedding album yet; I keep thinking I should wait until I’m a better scrapbooker - but if I keep thinking that, I’ll never get started! Meh. So when I saw this gorgeous album in the latest issue of Scrapbooks Etc (that magazine just keeps getting better and better!), I decided that I should get my ass in gear and get scrapping. Ok, so I haven’t actually started yet, but at least I’m planning stuff - that’s a big step for a procrastinator like me!

I want to use Melissa Chapman’s album as my inspiration (clean pages and the same-ish design throughout the book), but I will use this sweet 12×6 album by EK Success and matching papers (not sure what papers I’m going to use, but the ones under the album (from American Crafts and SEI) look pretty good.

Oki, off to scrap now - I have some assignments to get started on before the new Mosh Posh kit arrives - the sneak peak is up, this is going to be a gorgeous one!!