Christmas Cards 2011/Update

Wow... it's only been 6 months since my last blog entry. That's not too long is it? Oops!

A lot has happened in the last 6 months... I opened up a cute little business called Lash Envy on Richmond Row at the end of August. We specialize in eyelash enhancements to bat your eyes at, Makeup artistry to make you feel pretty and brows to rid the world of the dreaded unibrow!
It is a lot of fun, I absolutely love the job, the location and my work partner, Amber. I'm still working as a paramedic from time to time so this may explain my lack of blog posts!
Anyway, today, I have the entire day off!! This is pretty much unheard of. I decided to spend the day cleaning/sorting/purging toys to get ready for new ones from Santa. This got me thinking about getting our 2011 Christmas cards ready... because if I don't do it soon, they won't be going out. I've been trying to come up with an idea to top last years card... I don't know if it's possible!

Bees have got nothing on me!

I've been busy. I've got a number of blog entries started, but none of them are close to being ready to post.

I keep seeing my poor little blog tab on my home page and I've been avoiding it... and I feel guilty! I'll be more regular soon, promise!

Why have I been so busy?

-I'm in a temporary full time position at work. It's great for the extra money and set schedule, but hard because I don't get any holidays or sick days... so I'm expected to work every scheduled day until I'm either permanent full time (hopefully by July 2012!) for back to permanent part time. Plus our schedule is kind of out there... have a look!

12 hour shifts + 1.5 hours of commuting each day makes it really hard for me to accomplish anything, including blog entries!

-It's wedding season! My business, Blush Pro Makeup, has picked up the pace for the summer, so days I had off, are now getting filled with weddings and consultations.

-I have 2 kids. Enough said!

-I'm going back to school full time in September. It's been so long since I have taken chemistry, biology, physics and math that I've been studying ahead of time so I don't fall behind on day 1!

Anyway, that's my life in a nutshell! I'm looking forward to some nice summer weather to hopefully keep me motivated!

Photobooks to the Rescue!

I take a lot of pictures. We're talkin' 1000 + per month thanks to my DSLR camera... I can't stop! I used to print them. That's right, all of them, and put them into albums because I think it's nice to have hard copies of pictures. That's what I grew up with!

After months and months of literally thousands of pictures piled a mile high on my desk, waiting to get into albums, I decided that I needed to take a different route to preserve these pictures and memories.

I decided to create photobooks for my girls from Shutterfly. I make one each for every year (birthday to birthday) leaving 2 pages for every month and a few extra at the back for their birthday celebrations. It's perfect for recording what happened in their lives each month and I've even made a page at the back for milestones.


I go big. 12x12, hardcover... with a lot of pages. I usually wait until Shutterfly has a 30-50% off sale and buy them then (about $55 USD). It takes me a full year to make them, so what's a couple of more months of waiting to actually hold the book?!


Here are a few that I have created so far. I did one for each pregnancy with pictures of my belly and every ultrasound. I don't trust that thermal paper to keep their ultrasound pictures forever, so this way they've been scanned in and printed in a book.
I'm about 3 months behind in my book making right now, but I've made sure the record what we've been up to so hopefully playing catch up won't be too challenging.