Hee. I got a new tattoo on Tuesday.

I had been thinking about it and decided I wanted to get a tattoo for my little girl. And, after lots of umming and aaahing, I decided to get her name tattooed on my inner arm. It was a decision that took a lot of thought as all my other (six) tattoos are all in "discreet" locations which are easily covered up (e.g. back, thigh, upper arm etc) and getting one - quite a large one - on the lower arm was quite a drastic move for me.

But you know what? Life's too short to worry about what other people think... and I really like tattoos. I've always been "sensible" in the past but if I'm honest I'd probably quite happily have lots of obvious tattoos (and am planning to get a big back piece in memory of my sister). Being a stay at home mum for probably at least the next couple of years is also kinda liberating and I don't have to care what a prospective employer might think about tattoos. And hey, when I go back into the job market, I'd be wearing a suit for an interview anyway so it'd be covered. :)

I couldn't think of anywhere else I wanted the tattoo - the inner arm just seemed a good fit for a script tattoo and a girl in my birth group has a script tattoo in a similar place and it looks great. And this tattoo is about celebrating my gorgeous daughter, so why should I want to cover it? :)

So anyway. I made the decision and I ( got it done )

I've been feeling really inspired on the scrapbooking front recently and despite limited time to scrap have managed to complete 2 LOs in just a few days!

( These are the new additions to my pregancy/baby scrapbook: )

So I have, of course, still been snapping away like mad taking pictures of my gorgeous little girl and it's been a while since I've shared any... so I feel like it's time for another ( Picspam of Cuteness! )

Wow, I really haven't been keeping up to date with LJ, or fandom in general, lately. You can blame a certain small person for that! :D

So I thought I'd do a quick catch up post.

( So what's been happening chez Ali? )

Okay, so I know I am ridiculously late to this party, having gotten woefully behind with my TV-watching and hence having had a marathon catch-up session on SPN eps yesterday... which is why I have only just seen this episode.

Oh. My. God.

So ( hilariously awesome! )

So today is Father's Day.

And, to be honest, I've never been that excited about the occasion given that a) my own father is a bit useless and I'm barely in contact with him and b) it's an entirely manufactured occasion, created by the greeting cards industry to sell more cards (whereas Mother's Day has a historical background, dating from Victorian times).

However, this is our first Father's Day since becoming parents and I am quite ridiculously excited about it and sooo want to make it special for my hubby (the sad thing is, with the best will in the world, I know I can't really expect the same in return come next Mother's Day - men just don't think that way. Ah well).

I've ordered him a fab present which was delivered yesterday - I went to fruitart.co.uk, uploaded a photo of hubby with Aimee, turned it sepia, and had it printed as a large framed print. :)

I also got him Bolt on DVD (it's a movie we'd both like to see, so a bit of a fun present) and I've made him a ( card from Aimee )

I can't wait for him to wake up and open his card and presents! :D

Oh I am SO on a roll with the scrapbooking right now! :D

Have finished the third page in my pregnancy/baby scrapbook. This page is about the first scan I had and, naturally, features the scan photos (scanned in and reprinted for the purpose of this LO):

( Scrapbook page 3 )

So here I am, ridiculously wide awake at 5:39am, after going to bed at around 1:30am! Why??!!!

Actually, I kinda know why. Aimee started making a few "waking up/hungry" noises at around 4:15am (after having her bath, feed and bedtime at around 10:30pm last night) so I got up and went downstairs to warm up a bottle. By the time I got back upstairs... little tinker had pulled a fast one on me and gone back to sleep! (Moral of the story - wait until they're actually full on awake and crying for food before you go and get the bottle ready!). So I figured best to leave her to sleep as long as she's willing to (get the girl into good habits of sleeping a nice long time overnight!) and I left her to it for a bit and sat in bed and came online for a bit. Finally ended up feeding her at around 5am and then changed her nappy (and had to strip her down and redress her after she waited till I'd taken the nappy off and turned around for a split second to pick up the cotton wool before weeing everywhere!! :lol:) and put her back to bed... and found that, having been up and about for about an hour or so, I was now awake!

So I've made myself a cup of tea and am sitting in bed with the laptop. Only problem is, I know this wakefulness won't last and in an hour or two, or maybe more, I'll suddenly get knackered and need to go back to sleep! Ah well! :lol:

Well, my creative streak is still going strong! :D

I've managed to complete yet another LO for my pregnancy/baby scrapbook. After getting my scrapping mojo back with a random page using a picture of Aimee, I've gone back to the start and begun working on my pregnancy/baby scrapbook chronologically. I started it with the first LO back in October, making a page about me and hubby. The next page was going to be about us getting pregnant, featuring a photo of my positive pregnancy test. :)

When it came down to it, I actually found this photo a bit hard to scrap as it's so dark - the surface I laid the test stick on to take the photo is a dark grey and I found it quite difficult to decide on papers to use with this photo. If I'd used papers to match the photo, they would have been dark, sombre colours, not at all the feeling that I wanted for this page. So I ended up going with a plain white cardstock and some brightly patterned papers, using a nice bright red colour card to tie things together. I think it worked out quite well. :)

( Page Two )

My mother-in-law died this morning.

She was in her late 70s and had been in nursing care for the past few years with Alzheimer's. She had declined a lot over the past year and more and would barely even be aware you were there when you visited, let alone remember/recognise you.

We've been expecting the end to come for a week or more now as her condition deteriorated even further about a week and a half ago - the doctor thinks she had a stroke which affected her ability to swallow and she was unable to eat and barely able to take fluids. Her quality of life was so poor that all four of her children felt that medical intervention (i.e. hospital admission and tube feeding) was not in her best interests. All her children went to visit her that weekend (including her eldest son who lives a good 3-4 hour drive away) and this last Saturday the other three kids (and me) visited again... then yesterday evening Dave got a call from his sister that their mum was not expected to last the night. So he drove down there and has been there with his mum and sister all night.

He texted me at around 8:45am today to say that she'd just passed away.

Even though it was expected and even though she was elderly and even though she had no quality of life, it's still hard to lose someone. And I feel so sorry for my husband - we lost his dad a few years ago so now both his parents are gone. He's staying down in Lincoln for a few hours to help his sister sort stuff... I just can't wait for him to come home so I can give him a big hug.

*sigh*

In the 8 years Dave and I have been together, every single year we have lost someone or had someone diagnosed with a serious/terminal illness. :(

As a languages student, I particularly enjoy (though also find frustrating at times, e.g. when trying to translate) phrases that have no English equivalent... or jokes/word play setc that don't translate, that only really work in one language... a good example of this is the title of a Salvador Dali painting, "Oeufs sur le plat sans le plat". The translation is "Fried eggs without the plate" but this translation completely misses the fabulous play on words of the original (the French for fried egg is "oeuf sur le plat", which translates literally as "egg on the plate", making the title of the painting effectively, "Eggs on the plate without the plate"). :)

D'you know, I am finally starting to feel like I'm getting my creative mojo back? Short though it was, I managed to write a fic (first one in longer than I care to think about!) for the sheppard_hc flashfic challenge. And, I've just completed my first scrapbooking layout since about.. ooooh... sometime last summer!!

The last LO I did was supposed to be the first page of a scrapbook about my pregnancy and baby - and here we are, Aimee is nearly 9 weeks old, and said scrapbook still consists of that one LO! :lol:

Well, no more! I have scrapped! I've had a couple of naughty shopping trips to Hobbycraft lately and have got some new stash to play with and I've been feeling inspired and had a couple of ideas the other day about LO designs using some of the new stash. So I picked a nice photo and went ahead and did a layout with it:

( Scraparama! )

Obviously this page will feature somewhat later in the pregnancy/baby scrapbook and I'm now about to go back and work through it properly, scrapping the various milestones along the way etc. But oh it feels gooooooood to have gotten started. :)

Oooh I'm all giddy! I have just taken delivery of one of these.

It's a Making Memories Slice - a cordless die-cutting machine. :)

I love using cut out shapes and, particularly, titles for scrapbooking but oh my, handcutting a title is hard, painstaking work! There are lots of die-cutting systems out there which will do the hard work for you but in general they work out quite expensive... I have a Sizzix Sidekick but I only have one set of alphabet dies for it cos at full price they retail for around £70-£90 for an alphabet!! And it's a bit fiddly using one die at a time to cut the letters you want (and actually wasting card by cutting 4 letters for every 1 that you want, as each die has 4 letters on it) so I hardly ever use it really.

I've been desperately wanting to get back into my scrapping and to start scrapping some of my many pics of Aimee and putting together the pregnancy/baby scrapbook which I have been intending to make (and of which I had to date made one page!!) and I bought a couple of scrapbooking magazines the other week... and in one of them I read about this groovy new gizmo, the Slice.

So many cool things about this gadget:

• It's cordless so you can take it/use it anywhere
  
• It doesn't have to be connected to your computer to cut out the shapes you want
  
• All the alphabets/shapes are stored on standard memory cards, so no faffing about with dies
  
• Unlike die-cut systems like e.g. the Sidekick, each design/shape can be cut out in a selection of sizes, ranging from ½" to 4"!
  
• And, perhaps best of all, each design card (each of which contains at least 2 or 3 alphabets and a variety of shapes) retails at about £35

I can't wait to have a play with it! In fact, the only reason I haven't already had a go is because I need to decide what papers/cards to use for my next layout...

*goes off and starts rummaging through cardstock stash* :D

Okay, so obviously I am extremely biased but still... this is quite possibly the cutest darn thing ever.

So I ordered this little outfit for Aimee from a website a few weeks ago and got it in a slightly bigger size than she needed, figuring she'd grow into it. So yesterday I decided to try it on her and it's not a bad size for her now... and she just looked so darn adorable in it that I just had to take pictures!

And out of the 30 or so photos that I took (most of which have blurred appendages due to random waving of arms and legs), ( these two are my faves.... )

*goes all gooey from cuteness*

Chapters: 1/1
Words: 3285
Rating: PG
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Spoilers: None
Pairing: None

Summary: Ronon and Sheppard are trapped behind enemy lines...

Note:Written for Flashfic Challenge One over at sheppard_hc, with the prompt “traps/trapped”, this is my first fic in faaaaaaar too long! Am hoping I've gotten my writing groove back and will be able to continue posting fic, depending upon small person being amenable, of course!

P.S. Extra points to anyone who get the movie referenced in this fic. :D

( Shit. Dead end. Not good. )

Snurched from sangate :D

List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you -- list the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes. Don't take too long to think about it.

( My book list )

I missed it.

I'd been considering the idea of signing up for SGA Big Bang. Am wanting to get back into writing and this seemed like an interesting project... but I've missed it!

I just went looking for the website, thinking the sign up deadline was maybe end of May but it wasn't... it was May 29th. Friday. Yesterday. :(

Bummer.

Today is the first anniversary of Helen's death. One year ago today she lost her long fight with ovarian cancer.

The last couple of weeks have been kinda hard at times... it's been weighing on my mind a lot and I've found myself getting weepy at random and unexpected moments. I still miss her so much.

I'm in N Wales this weekend and this morning we all (me, hubby, mum, mum's partner, dad and my brother (and Aimee of course)) all went over to the crematorium and visited the garden of remembrance where her ashes were scattered. It's a beautiful place and the sun was shining and the sky was blue. I sat and had a bit of a cry. Can't believe she's been gone for a year.. I still find myself reading something (e.g. Scott Bakula appearing at LFCC) and thinking, "Oooh, I must tell Helen that..". :(

I just wish so much that she had been able to meet Aimee - she wanted so much to be an auntie.

Okay so... as a new mum with a digital camera (not to mention 2 weeks in hospital with a lot of time on my hands!!) I may - just may - have taken a few photos of my little girl. You know, just a couple of hundred... or.. um... six... :D

So I thought I would share a few with the rest of the world. Cos I love her to bits and, quite frankly, she's gorgeous! :D

( Beware! Cuteness within! )

Aimee is 4 weeks and 2 days old today*.

Aimee is due to be born 1 week today! :lol:

( Aimee update )

*Or would be if I had managed to get this entry posted on 5 May.. but seeing as Aimee is being a little tinker tonight and won't seem to settle, it's taken me hours (between repeated whingeing and feeding sessions) to get it posted!!