Alphabet Get-to-know-me tag game!

My dear friend Marloes posted a blog post with these alphabet-inspired questions and tagged me. It was a loooooong time ago but since I finally have time to post, I thought it was a fun inspiration!

A – Attached or Single? Attached, since a bit more than 12 years
B – Best Friend? Nanie, since we were 14.
C – Cake or Pie? Mmmmm... chips? I'm more a salt person!
D – Day of Choice? Wednesday: we're halfway through the workweek!
E – Essential item? A camera and a computer
F – Favourite Colour? Neutral colors: black, grey, white, with a touch of red, purple or turquoise to add some fun!
G – Gummy bears or worms? Both, I love those jelly-ish candies!
H – Hometown? Sion, Switzerland
I – Favorite Indulgence? Browsing the web mindlessly
J – January or July? Both, January for the snow and skiing, July for warmth and sea
K – Kids? Not yet
L – Life isn’t complete without... the internet!
M – Marriage date... Not married, not planning to get married, we're just happy the way we are.
N – Number of siblings? A younger brother, Jeff
O – Oranges or Apples? Since I have food allergies that forbid me to eat apples, I'll have to go with oranges!
P – Phobias? Being buried or crushed, for example by a truck.
Q – Quotes? The serenity prayer: "Give me the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." And the "mantra" we practice after each yoga lesson: "Every day, on every regard, I'm feeling better and better" (crappy translation, but you get the idea!)
R – Reasons to smile? Too many to choose from!
S – Season of Choice? I love all seasons, they all have good and bad aspects!
T – Tag 5 people... Mmmmm, nope, I won't play on this one! LOL
U – Unknown fact about me? I was badly burnt on my feet when I was less than 1 year old, that's why I only walked when I was about 18 months: I couldn't use my feet for a long time!
V – Vegetable? Salad, radishes... which are the only veggies I can eat raw (still those darn allergies!)
W – Worst habit? See letter I
X – X ray or ultrasound? X rays freak me out with their radioactive signs, so I guess ultrasound!
Y – Your favorite food? See letter R
Z – Zodiac sign? Scorpio

Can't wait...

Seems like I've been waiting a lot lately. Waiting for people to do their part of the job, waiting for the weather to get better so that I can do my job,  waiting for my computer to process through tons of pix in raw format... Right now I'm more specifically waiting for my vacation. One week... It can't come soon enough!!

Okay, not the most amazing news ever, I know, but that's all I have for now! ;)

So much time, so many changes

Well, once again my blog was silent for way too long. I've had good excuses for that, though, some were indeed great and some not that great.

The last time I posted, I was about to start a new IVF procedure. This one went pretty well, we found the perfect dose of meds for me and it went really smoothly.

Right after Bastille Day, my friend Nanie came for a one-week visit. It was fabulous to have her and her two kids around for such a long time, we really enjoyed each other's company and had time to talk and catch up. It was also my last week of treatement and I got the egg retrieval procedure in the middle of it, so she also helped me focus on something else.

The day she left, we had the implantation procedure. I then spent another week off work and went back to the office for a week before my pregnancy test on August 3rd. Which came out positive.

After 4 years of trying, 3 of them with various infertility treatements, I was finally pregnant. As you can imagine, I was incredibly happy.

Unfortunately, I only last for about a month. On August 27th, we had our first ultrasound, which didn't show any cardiac activity. The embryo wasn't evolving, it wasn't even here any more. I decided to stop the pregnancy with meds rather than wait for it to happen naturally.

This was probably the most terrible experience I had to go through. Not the miscarriage itself, which was uncomfortable but not that terrible, but the fact that I lost this baby. Which wasn't even a baby  yet, of course. But as I said to Guy once, I wasn't 6 weeks pregnant, I was 4 years pregnant. I had been expecting, hoping, waiting for this pregnancy for so long that I was devastated to lose it.

I've been having a hard time since then and I was really thankful to have the opportunity, through the fertility center, to see a psychologist. It helps to have someone neutral to talk to, and even if I know it will take time, I think I'm moving in the right direction.

Through all this experience, I've been blessed to have amazing people around me to support me, comfort me, pray for me and send me good thoughts. Guy, of course, has been amazing. My family, my friends and my online friends have been fabulous. I couldn't have gone through all that without them and I'm really thankful for those amazing people.

Since the miscarriage, I've changed. It made me reconsider things that I thought were important, I lost interest for some things and found passion for other. For example, I've been more and more interested about photography. I also started yoga and, even if I only went to one lesson, I love it. This perfect mix of mindfulness and letting go is exactly what I need right now. Without even mentioning the serenity and peace you feel during the class and after! So, yeah, I'm evolving, growing, changing, hopefully for the better. I wish I wouldn't have to, though!

Photo-heavy catch up

7 weeks since my last post... That was quite a break, wasn't it? Let's see, what happened since I last wrote on this poor neglected blog of mine??

Well, first I had my mom visit  me for Easter. We had a blast, we visited some places but also spent some time just being together, doing nothing special but talking and enjoying being together. It was awesome!!

In April I also prepared an album in memory of our friend Hugues that passed away recently, and we gave it to his wife and son during a lunch we had all together. It was a bittersweet task for me, sad because every picture of him reminded me that he is gone and that his son (DBF's childhood friend) and wife (my collegue) are grieving and in pain, and joyful too because those pix were from happy moments and Hugues was definitely someone that enjoyed life. It was also a great reminder that there's no such thing as taking too many pix, that I should get in the photo too (there was no pic of me with Hugues) and that scrapbooking and preserving memories is not a regular hobby, that it has a deep meaning.

Since I'm at it, I've been scrapping a lot of pages since my last post. Let's see... I'll just post them with a link to my gallery so that you can check the credits and the description of the LOs if you're interested, there are too many pages for me to explain everything again! LOL

Credits

Credits

Credits

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Credits

Credits

Credits
BTW, this is probably my fave LO ever, technically, story-wise, I love it!!

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

Credits

In other scrappy news, I'm now CTing for three awesome teams: site CT at The Digichick (and I not only love love love the designers and talented CTs there but also the awesome comunity), Amanda Heimann (who moved back to Scrap Orchard on NSD) and Charm Box Studios (Charla and Michelle joined their talents to create fonts, story boards, actions and other tools for photographers and scrappers). It's so exciting, but I have to find a way to organize my time and keep track of my assignements, because I'm honored to scrap for those amazing designers and I want to do it "right". It's still a work in progress!

On that note, I'm off to enjoy our beautiful and sunny Sunday, have fun!

Falling off the wagon... or the horse... or whatever the heck it is!

Well, this weekend didn't go as well as planned. I had absolutely ZERO motivation to accomplish the things I wanted to do. The beginning of this week wasn't much better. I had some not-so-good news on monday morning about our infertility treatement, and feeling sad and helpless about that didn't help my motivation for other things.

Anyway, time to wipe the dust off my knees and get back on the saddle! (BTW, that reminds me that I'd LOVE to ride a horse sometime again! LOL) Tonight I took my friend Anne-Sophie's kids for a walk with my doggie. I was really happy because her 7 years old son was always afraid of Kira but he overcame his fear and was able to take the walk with us today. Still not very comfortable, especially when the dog wasn't on the leash, but still, he didn't run away crying as he used to. This victory and the fact that we spent part of the evening with those kids makes me want to do something again, it re-energizes me.

I won't have much time tomorrow (wednesday) evening because DBF's aunt celebrates her birthday, and I have another exam for our treatement on Thursday morning (not as early as the two previous ones, luckily!) so, instead of trying to do too much and not succeed in anything, I'll focus on getting the house back in shape before the cleaning lady comes on Thursday afternoon. I'll have 2 lunch breaks (tomorrow's and Thursday's) and one evening to do it, which is completely manageable if I start tomorrow already. I'll get back to a more intensive work afterwards, especially if I can finally have some answers about our treatement. Not knowing what to expect is always bad for my mood, my motivation and because I can't plan much I usually don't even try to!

Take care!

Working at it

So, on the beginning of this workweek, I listed right here all the things I planned on doing to get my life back on track. And it worked pretty well, for most domains at least. Yet, I'm not perfect (Pfew, luckily! that would be boring, right?) and I had some issue. Since posting here helps with holding myself accountable, I'll try to keep track more regularly. Soooo...

• weight loss: track food every day: THAT was the domain where I struggled more. I'm definitely not good at keeping track of what I eat, I don't do it right away and when I catch up I always forget the munchies... which is precisely what matters most! 
• wellness: go to bed 15 minutes earlier every night until I get to 10:30: still working at it, I'm going to bed around 11 PM but I can't sleep until 11:30, so I still gotta improve that part.
• routines: practice as much of each routine as I can, but at least do the dishes after each meal: except for Friday, where I was totally unmotivated to do anything because I was very tired (had to get up really early for an exam at the hospital), I did great on that part. Yay!
• freetime: be more picky/mindful about what I watch on TV so that I have time for "better" stuff, like reading and scrapbooking: I barely watched TV all week, so I'd consider this a great success!
• fertility treatement: collect all informations and papers for my exam on Friday: done! I'll have to write a post someday on how I organize my medical stuff for those treatements, 'cause it's working pretty well! ;)
• Goal of the week: preparing Christmas gifts for my family and inlaws: this is 95% done, I'm still waiting on one pic from someone but all the rest is done and even posted to the printing website.

Well, that's it, I'm proud to have been doing really great on some aspects and even though I struggle on some others, I prefer to focus on the successes to build momentum and be stronger to work on the less successful domains! Here's what I'll do this weekend:

• weight loss: track food every day (and, especially if it still doesn't work, try to find out if this is really a good goal for me or if being stubborn is a countereffective thing to do!)
• wellness: go to bed 15 minutes earlier every night until I get to 10:30, and try to relax/not play with my smartphone in bed so that I can sleep faster once I'm there.
• routines: practice as much of each routine as I can, but at least do the dishes after each meal.
• freetime: get updated on my 2 fave websites and get caught up on my project 365 (really behind on that one!)
• housekeeping: fix the little messes we have going on in the house after my no-motivation Friday and clean the cobwebs in our (very high ceiling) living room.
• Goal of the weekend: send pictures to my niece and stalk my other niece for pictures so that I can finish my Christmas gifts.

Once again, I'll let you know on Sunday evening how that went! Until then... take care!

October already... how did that happen?

Over the last days or even couple weeks, I've been SHOCKED everytime I see a date somewhere. And with today being the first day of october already, it's even worse. How could time pass so fast? Where have 9 months of this 2011 year gone?

I've been understanding Gretchen Rubin's motto "The days are long but the years are short" WAAAYYYY much better recently, and realizing how incredibly true and powerful this statement is. Now I have to try to enjoy the passing time and all the fun moments and happy events that come and go instead of trying to slow time! Being in the moment, instead of remembering the past (or worse, regretting it!) or anticipating the future (or worse, being afraid of it!) is probably one of the biggest secret of happiness!

Okay, that was me being all philosophical and stuff... What do you think about this topic??

Oils: a new way to clean my face?

You may (or may not) know that I'm a green-geek: I'm always trying to get rid of the chemicals around me, and infertility hasn't help with this desire for "clean environement" I already had. Anyway, I was running out of my traditional make-up remover and rather than buying a "green" product, I decided to try the oil cleaning method. I was inspired by this post and by one of my FB friends that said it worked great for her. It's always different when someone you know, a "real person", tells about something tested in her real life, right?

So, this afternoon I checked my local supermarket and found some castor oil (huile de ricin in French) and some jojoba oil, about 5€ each 5dl bottle. Castor oil is a good basis and then you add another oil. Jojoba is apparently great for oily/acne-prone skin, so hopefully it'll help my hormonally messed up skin get better. Maybe I'll add some tea tree essential oil later on to make the mix (half castor oil, half jojoba so far) even better against acne.

I was so excited to try it that I cleaned my face at 4 pm and I LOVED it. I was afraid my skin would be greasy and not feel "clean", but WOW. It's soft and moisturized, without excess... Just the perfect balance! I couldn't help but touch my cheek and say "Wow, my skin's so soft... like a baby's butt!" LOL

I will finish my traditional cleaning product and switch to this method, but from this first experience it looks like it's gonna be a good one for me. And since it's green and economical, it's all good. Can't wait to try it for a couple weeks and see how it works on the long term!

Have you tried this method? If you did, did you like it? If not, why??

Excuses...

We're all the same, we all make excuses. Well, normal people do, at least! And since I'm very very VERY normal, I make them very often. Housekeeping and weight loss are the two areas of my life where it's the worst. BUT, I wanted to share with you that tonight I decided to "just do it" and stop making excuses.

I'm in an association where I can practice Tae Bo twice a week. The problem is, the course on Tuesday is at 7:30 pm, which is too late (I get home too late for watching House MD... don't laugh, this stops me from going!!) and too early at the same time (I don't have time to eat before going, or I'm still digesting when I exercise and I'm feeling bad!). Plus I usually go to the town where the course is with people, which means I can't go at my own rythm (even if it's greener, this still bothers me).

Anyway, instead of spending another Tuesday without exercising because I find excuses for not going to this course, tonight I just grabbed my skates and sport pants and went for a 30 minutes ride. I'm so proud of myself!

Why I'm not a member of Pinterest

Pinterest is all the rage right now. It's a community where you can "pin" things that inspire you and follow people that have the same interests as you do (or complete opposite interests, if you want to!). Despite being pretty interested, I've never joined, for several reasons:

1. first (and probably least importantly) because I don't like the invite system, it has a snobbish taste that isn't my type.
2. because this site is dangerous: you can find so many fabulous stuff there that you could literally spend days surfing mindlessly. When you're as easily distracted as I am, finding a new timesucker isn't a good idea.
3. and last because I'm already a member of a site where I can collect pieces of inspiration, label them with keywords and even publish my finds if I feel like it: vi.sualize.us. I love it and if you're interested you can find my pictures here.

Let's make it clear, I don't judge people who love pinterest, I could easily love it too, which is probably why I'm being very cautious with it. The last thing I need in my life is another time sucking hobby that will distract me of truly important things! Gotta remind myself of my 2011 word: PERSPECTIVE. And put it into action! ;)

Things that inspire me

I've stumbled upon various inspirational stuff recently, and I'd love to share some of them:

• First of all, the SSD community got together to support one of her well known designer Lauren Grier, who's going through difficult medical stuff. If you want to do something for La, go ahead ans shop in her store, there are fantastic goodies there and you can get creative and helpful at the same time, what could be better than that? Oh, and if the amount of awsomeness in La's store overwhelms you, have a look here where the SSD members have shared their favorite products.
• I'm a huge fan of the TED talks. They publish one (for free) each weekday and those are often incredibly interesting and exciting and mind blowing, like this one, or this one. To make it simpler, I'm getting the daily videos in my RSS feed, the link is at the bottom of the main page.
• Talking about being creative, how fabulous is this hybrid project by MamaBee to help her kid count? I just LOVE it!!
• I've been trying to be more positive and this awesome blog (pun intended) helped me a lot: every day, it points out something awesome. It's often funny, sometimes very touching, and everyday I get a bright little moment in my RSS reader... How AWESOME is that??? LOL
• Last but not least, 2 fun blogs I discovered through one of the SSD challenges: Lovely Package and Lovely Stationery. Pure eyegasm!

Hope you enjoyed, let me know if you have found out something terrific that you want to share!

Last day of vacation

As I predicted yesterday, my motivation for organizing is slowly disappearing. I guess the spring cleaning fever couldn't last very long, it's just not in my nature to be that way! LOL I decided to not fight my urge to relax and be lazy a little bit. I was very productive last week and I thought that I deserved some down time too. After all, I'm on vacation!

I tried to do the minimum at least: not let the dirty dishes pile up in the sink, get rid of junk mail, do a quick pick up of the house and a quick clean up of the bathroom at night, empty and load the dishwasher ASAP, etc. To be honest, the last 2 days were very lazy and I didn't got this bare minimal maintenance accomplished, but tomorrow is my last day of vacation and I want to get my house back to normal before going back to work and having much less time to take care of it. Soooo, I'm going to bed quite early tonight (it's 10:15 PM) and hopefully I'll feel energized and ready to get all those little tasks accomplished tomorrow. Baby steps, 15 minutes at a time, I can do this! And I gotta remind myself that even if I don't like to do it, I love the end result!

Not so good news... but I'll survive!

Today I got the news that our IVF didn't work. It was our first attempt and we still have 3 eggs in the fridge, so we still have pretty good chance that it'll work eventually. And my body "warned" me over the last 3 days so the negative blood test didn't caught me by surprise. Anyway, I take this news pretty calmly and peacefully, which is good. I would probably have been more stressed with a positive result, actually! LOL

The positive side of this is that I will be able to end up my vacations (2 days left) being nicely busy in the home, without being afraid to do too much. Now if I only could find more motivation... LOL

Let's try to bring that poor neglected blog back to life!

Now that I'm on vacation is the perfect time, isn't it?

I've been organizing a lot of things so that I can feel back in control. I truly hate the overwhelmed feeling that I get when things are not properly managed. I started with digital-organizing (because I had to rest after our IVF) and now I'm starting to add some (light) physical work. I also keep a running list of things I want to do, because the more I organize/declutter/clean, the more spaces I find that would need some attention!

So far, here are a couple of my accomplishements:

• I completed 4 monthly LOs for 2010 (yeah, it was about time) and wrote the journaling for the whole year, I just have to add pictures and create the pages which is pretty much the fun part of the process! ;)
• I got rid of 8.5 Go of digital supplies that I downloaded twice or that weren't my styl at all. And that doesn't include unzipping the files, yet! And I'm only at letter M in my list of downloads... Yeah, I'm a digi-addict!
• I cleared my desk and shelves, filed a good chunk of documents that were waiting since 3 months in my "to file" box. I should rename it into a "To file RIGHT NOW, DON'T WAIT!!!" box, that would motivate me!
• I started to go through our PPW, especially our medical stuff that I have to check carefully to make sure we get our money back from the insurance.
• I started (this morning, that's why it isn't complete yet) to clean our kitchen's drawers and reorganized everything so that I can find what I'm looking for. Which, actually, made me realize that I have about 8 big knives that we don't use on a daily basis, I should donate them.

I'm also in a process of getting back to my daily routines, because maintenance is tough for me, especially once I go back to normal schedule and back to work. Having simple yet effective routines help me stay on track with all those pesky little to do's that take 30 seconds to do right away, but 5 minutes to complete if you wait: washing the dishes, cleaning the kitchen after meal, cleaning the bathroom daily, etc. So far it's going ok since I'm at home all day, I can "cheat" and do things all day long, but I want to adjust and be back to a normal schedule by next week, when I'll go back to work.

On that note, I'm off to put the said knives in my "to donate" spot and clean the lunch's dishes! Have a nice day!

I am soooooo not into blogging right now!

It's been more than a month since I last posted. I think my blogging mojo ran away. My scrapping mojo is still here, though, so I've been scrapping regularly and enjoying it a lot! I've also spent quite some time organizing my digital supplies (and physical scrap space too!) and everytime I find something that I love (which is quite often, since I got rid of almost everything I don't really love) I'm tempted to stop organizing and start scrapping! LOL Who said procrastination?? ;) Anyway, in the meantime I'll "go with the flow" and keep doing what makes me happy, I'm sure I'll go back to blogging eventually!

Oh, I almost forgot: I've been faithfully keeping up with P365: both daily photos and weekly LOs are done regularly. Ain't it great?? I'm so proud! LOL

My boss...

Tonight I had a pretty intense discussion with my boss. He's a jerk sometimes - often, even! - but he's intelligent and he has a great ability to understand who people are. He often points out the real facts, even if they aren't always nice ones it's good to have an exterior point of view of how you work. Anyway, it was pretty intense because I was crying like mad (I often have very emotional reactions with him, don't know why) but it gave me the opportunity to reflect on what I want from and for my job, what I don't want, what I expect of it and what I expect of myself. I think, once the drama is over, that this discussion will make me grow and move forward. I especially had the chance to realize two important things, one when we were talking and one when I was home and talked with DBF about it. Despite being hard to go through, I think that kind of event can be positive on the long term.

Happy new year!!

Yep, it's 2011 already! I've had better starts into the new year, I have to admit it: I'm sick and my EHD (where I store ALL my scrap stuff) is acting crazy. Gasp!! Hopefully I can solve this problem before going back to work on Monday (and hopefully I'll get better enough to go back to work!).

Have you worked on your goals/resolutions for this year? Do you take those? Do you keep them? As usual, I'm planning to make some, starting with completing a P365... finally! I've taken my first pic today, so far so good! LOL

I've also started to work on my word of the year and resolutions, even though I'm not sure that I want to make "real" resolutions this year with all the changes that are (hopefully) coming! Maybe I'll just have weekly or monthly goals, we'll see. I'll make a decision before Monday anyway!

Merry Christmas!!

Thanks to computer magic, as this post is published I should be in a car, on my way to Switzerland to celebrate Christmas with my family and friends.

I wish you a very happy Christmas celebration, full of love and warmth.

I'm getting ready for Christmas and vacation!!

Yep, it's about time! I'm leaving very early on the 24th, I'll go to Switzerland for 3 days and then at my grandparents for another 3 days. It'll be an eating marathon with at least 5 different Christmas celebrations in less than a week, but I'm really excited to see my family and friends. My handmade gifts are almost done and I can't wait to give them, hopefully they'll like it! Still have a couple pix to print to finish a mini album and an ingredient to buy, but besides that I should be good.

Oh, and of course, I also have to pack... Woopeedoo! LOL

3 handmade Christmas gifts done!

Yesterday I finished my mom's gift. Pfew, it feels great! Now onto batch preparations... and nope, I won't tell more here, some receivers are reading! LOL