Five...

I'm On The Move

Again!

No, not a house move but a blog move... I'm moving back to my own website: www.joolsg.com

Typepad is good but I want more creative input in to how it looks and to be honest I find it a complete pain trying to do this within Typepad. It's so much easier using Dreamweaver :D

For now though I've just used an off the peg Wordpress blog theme (adjusting it to carry it through to the rest of the website) which, as you will see, gives me until christmas to sort something out/design something for myself.

See you over there...

Main website can be found here

Blog can be found here

Pain, Pain, Go Away

I am in agony! I've torn a muscle in my left thigh...

To cut a long story short I had a bit of a back injury last Monday night so I took one of the muscle relaxants my mother-in-law gave me (don't worry she is a doctor and knows what she's doing!!!) before I went to bed. I woke up, to the sound of the front door ringing, got out of bed and took one step at which point I promptly fell to the ground... weird, thinks I, pull myself up to standing (I can stand) and thought no more of it until I took my next step and whooommmmp! Straight down to the ground. By this time the doorbell is ringing persistently, the children, Hettie in particular as she knows it's her birthday present, are shouting to tell me "it's the POSTMAN!!!" and I end up having to crawl to the top of the stairs on my hands and knees, pull myself up using the bannisters and manage, somehow, to reach the front door. At this point I am managing to walk, if a little hesistantly.

That was on the Tuesday. Wednesday meant back to work for me and a round trip drive of an hour and a half which played havoc with my left thigh and that evening I found it painful to get up and sit down so I cancelled work for the rest of the week as the thought of driving again (all that clutch changing) filled me with dread.

So today rolls around and guess what? I feel good and healthy for the first time in what seems like weeks (probably about 3 weeks at the least), no cough, no cold, no viral anything and so go back to work. Got home around 2:30pm with a long list of phone calls to make and knelt down to pick up my phone from the charger and rrriiiiiiiippppppp, pain so bad went searing up my thigh - it was so bad I almost passed out and felt physically sick...

Turns out I have badly torn one of my thigh muscles. I suspect I did at least some damage when I collapsed last week (due to an adverse reaction to the muscle relaxant I feel) and it was starting to get better when I did something it didn't like...

So no work for about 7 to 10 days... don't know whether to feel pleased or not about that...

A Missed Marketing Opportunity?

So I wonder if there is/has been a missed marketing opportunity in the world of digital scrapbooking?

This gap in the market has come to my attention because I have been looking for one: a square digital photo frame. Not a portrait or a landscape digital frame but a square one, perfect for displaying all my digital photo layouts.

Why can't I find one? Does one exist? And if it doesn't, should it? I'm sure there must be lots of other digi-scrappers out there who would like one too... 

And if there is one, where can I buy one?

Christmas Has Come Early

In the form of the arrival of my new MacBook! How beautiful is she? And something so beautiful needs something equally beautiful to be carried around in so look what arrived with it! I can't wait to unpack it and start to play. Yes, I know it's a christmas present but I'm not a patient sort of person and Richard knows this so I was allowed to get it early :D Oh, he so spoils me...

And if that wasn't enough to spoil a girl then today also saw the arrival of the shoes I decided to treat myself too with all the hard work I've been doing. Aren't they lush?

Today...

would have been my brother's 36th birthday. It's hard not to think about you most days but today more so. I'm trying not to think about all the negatives but concentrate on the positives and with that in mind I'm going to post a photo of your beautiful baby girl. I was blessed with being able to spend a whole day with her a few weeks ago when we were in Plymouth for the weekend.

Isn't she beautiful?

It's Been A Long Time

Probably too long and no-one reads my blog at all anymore... I imagine I can hear an echo... echo... echo...

However this is not a problem as I blog for myself anyway so even if I'm the only person reading it that's OK. Life has been busy. Too busy to blog. So for a brief catch up on life todate:

• My brothers funeral: so hard and I'm still going through the grieving process (do we ever stop?) but my faith has been a huge help
• School holidays: 5 weeks which seemed to go by in a blur
• Have seen my eldest child choose to be baptised: amazing! 
• 2 additional new clients (I am now at full capacity and actually work more than I initially planned on working)
• Work, work, work: too much, 12 days straight (including Saturdays and Sundays) at one point about which I have decided enough is enough and I will set working hours/days and that will be that! No more, no less, if it can't get done in that time it will either have to wait or they will have to go elsewhere!
• Richard's 40th birthday: he is aging very, very well :-) 
• A trip to Germany: great (apart from the next bullet point), we got to meet Richard's sisters or the first time and they are absolutely so cute and lovely - although at one point Richard and I realised that we are old enough to be their parents
• Sick: I'm sick of being sick. It seems as soon as I stopped to go on holiday my body just gave up and has decided to give my immune system a break and go on holiday itself.
• My baby girl turned 10 yesterday: Harriet is a whole decade old!  

  I have some photos to post once I've uploaded them, hopefully in the next couple of days, until then :D

An Amazing Sunday

I know, I haven't posted in a long time but the summer holidays have a way of keeping you occupied like no other.

I have lots to say and photos to post but will keep it brief for now. The most important and exciting thing to share is that Katarina got baptised yesterday! How amazing! It is hard to express how overjoyed Richard and I were when Kat told us last week that she wanted to be baptised on Sunday. There is no greater joy than to not only see one of your children commit to being one of God's children but to also be involved in actually baptising them (apart from the fact that the water was a 'little' cold!!!).

I will have some photos to post at some point.

The service was an amazing one. Yes, it is always good but yesterday was better than good. Some of our church members put on a dance for us which just blew everyone away. I'm hoping it has been recorded so that I can post it here but in the mean time this is the same dance but performed by another church just so you can get a small idea of how truly inspiring and thought provoking it is: