Are you taking part in Project 365? If you’re a regular reader here, you will probably have a good old snigger at this but I’m doing P365 . You can stop laughing now. I know I failed horribly at Project 52 last year, and I think I did a month and a half of Scrap Your Day (which sounds much more impressive than it actually is because the idea is that you document the 25th of each month with a series of photos and a layout) but with week 5 of P365 under my belt, I am feeling pretty positive about the whole thing!

Every weekend I spend a good few hours cruising the galleries preparing for my turn to post on the GSO blog. I was totally fascinated with all the JYC / December Daily pages that hit the galleries towards the end of last year and then the year in review layouts and P365 books started popping up in the galleries at the start of January I just KNEW I had to try P365. The thought of having a book printed up at the end of the year is really spurring me on. I’m scrapping my pages incredibly simply (inspired by the wonderful Joey_M over at Designer Digitals) and I am not allowing myself to add any extra “stuff” to my pages in the hope that I will actually get them scrapped. Here are the first few weeks worth of double page spreads (I’m changing the background paper every week):

Simple hey?! It’s actually quite refreshing to scrap like this! Incredibly hard though, lol. I also discovered a totally unexpected bonus of doing this project – it really helps me focus on what layouts I want to make. Because I’m recording all sorts of events in my P365 book, I don’t feel the pressure to scrap them too. Which means I can make the layouts about personality traits or funny one liners without that nagging feeling that I should actually be scrapping the billion ‘events’ photos I have. It’s very liberating Fingers crossed I manage to keep it up all year! I would love it if you would please share your P365 layouts / blogs / tips with me!

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When I haven’t been stalking the kids trying to take candid photos of them (which admittedly has taken up quite a lot of my time lately) I’ve been drawing! It’s BYOC time again this week and I’ve made some romantic Valentine’s inspired doodles (20% off all weekend as usual):

Here’s some CT inspiration:

Such great pages, it’s so wonderful to see layout using my designs, it gives me warm fuzzies every time

I have more Chinese goodies out today – after I released  my Zodiac doodles last week I had a few requests for some more Chinese themed doodles, so I made some! I am really pleased with how these turned out. Also, the lovely and very talented Sara Lively created some wonderful little hybrid takeout boxes for me using the original Zodiac pack – both new releases are 20% off this weekend. Here they are:

Some wonderful CT inspiration, thank you girls!!

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While I was cruising round the galleries last week, I came across this amazing layout using my Shaping Up doodles. I had been thinking about showcasing some layouts here for a little while now, so when I saw Heather’s page I decided it was time I started! Here’s the page, I love how she used the wordstrips and layered all the doodles – I have been joking that I need to print this out and fix it to my fridge to help with my get-fit motivation! The healthy eating is going well, but the exercise regime… ah…. well… not so well. (Click HERE to leave her a comment!)

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Have a lovely weekend!

I just wanted to make a quick post with some links to some charity kits raising funds for the victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti (if anyone knows of any more, please let me know and I’ll keep this post updated):

Songbird Avenue: Port au Prince (release date 1st Feb)

Designer Digitals: Help Haiti

One Love at Scraporchard

Hope for Haiti by Lesley Grainger

This isn’t a digi kit, but I also wanted to to tell you about the Hearts for Haiti etsy shop which has been set up specifically to raise funds for Médeçins Sans Frontières. Various etsy sellers have donated items to this shop, when I last looked there was over 40 pages of handmade goodness to chose from.

ETA: Thanks for letting me know about the Sending Hope kit at Digital Scrapbook Place:

Right then. I think that I can honestly saw that this doodle pack has given me more trouble than ANY of the others. Put together! LOL To be specific – the dragon has given me more trouble than anything else. For quite some time it looked like a slug, a slug with legs, but a slug nevertheless. Hopefully I have cracked it now and its obviously a Chinese dragon rather than a legged slug, although DS is adamant that it is actually a caterpillar! I have a little game I play with him after I finish sketching out my doodles, I call it my Toddler Test. If he can identify everything I have drawn them I’m doing ok. If he can’t, then I need to rethink! This is the first time I have ever released something that has failed the Toddler Test, so I’m rather nervous.

Judge for yourself: dragon, slug, or caterpillar?!

Thankfully my CT and guest CT weren’t phased by the dragon/slug/caterpillar and came up with these beauties:

Happy New Year to those celebrating next month (and apologies for making the dragon look like a caterpillar!)

So, did you make any New Year resolutions?! As usual, my goals this year are to eat more healthily, exercise more, lose weight blah blah blah! I’m looking for fun ways to exercise (that way I stand more chance of actually doing it!) and at the moment I’m having a great time playing a dance game on the Wii with DD. I am more than slightly paranoid that someone might capture some photographic evidence though so I keep ducking out of sight whenever I see someone coming. Anyway, my new doodles were inspired by my “New Year, New Me” attitude! (20% off all weekend as usual.)

Here are some CT layouts for more inspiration!

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Look what arrived in the post the other day:

Yummy yummy felt swatches – like paint charts only ten times better Oh the possibilities! I also got a lovely little surprise in my parcel – those ribbon reels were a little gift from Sarah at Paper and String. If you are in the market for some felt sheets or some super cute felt creations (like the little trees in the photo) you can visit Sarah’s blog here.

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Finally, here’s the second part of my snow picture layout series. It ended up a two pager which was rather unusual, I can’t remember the last time I made a double page spread:

(credits are the same as Snow Day 1 with the addition of Mandagirl’s template 44)

I just thought I’d share my first layout of 2010 – whoo! Here’s DD enjoying her first ever Snow Day (click for credits):

We had a lovely couple of hours of precious Mummy and DD time (something that very rarely happens!) so I wanted to be sure to record it all while it was still fresh in my memory.  Handily, her coat matches the new BYOC products (ha ha!!) so it was a dream to pull this together. Almost as if I planned it