Epic fail

When I showed you Dial 911, the fun new kit by Artgal Style,

I told you that I might scrap one more page with it of a recent event.

Here it is!

It was an epic fail on my part: I fell on ice while taking out the garbage before the gym.

I fell on my right hip, then caught myself on my right wrist and just the tip of my left middle finger (what?) then just for shits and giggles, I let my face hit the ground and bounce off it (again, what?). Eventually I joked about it, but on the spot, I was quite scared and hurt. I whimpered like a little b#*$tch and my first thoughts were really vain (face ruined?). I was mostly scared that I broke some teeth, but a quick tongue count reported 32 unbroken pearly whites. I could tell I was bleeding a lot, though. I texted this to my hubby: "I fell I really hurt" (no time for punctuation), then just so he knew: "on my side and face". He got home at the same time roughly as the ambulance and we proceeded to waste 4 hours at the hospital. I never made it to the gym, lol

I had a sore wrist, finger and face for a few days. The worst was probably the inside of my lip and cheek which I really cut with my teeth, but that also healed well and fast.

I am thankful that I didn't hurt myself more, that I am healthy enough to bounce back (pun intended), that Dave came home and stayed with me, that the nurse who took care of me was a friend (we talked about the kids), and that I was able to keep my sense of humour and laugh about the ridiculousness of how I fell.

That day, I must have asked Dave a hundred times: "WHO FALLS ON THEIR FACE?".

So here's the scrap I made to document my incident:

Oh, and just a word of warning: within a couple of week, many people have fallen (my Great-Aunt, Dave's Grand-Mother, my friend's son, my sister, ...). I don't know if it's the sun flares, the moon and eclipses, the change of season, or just a fluke,

but I'd be careful if I were you ;)

Happy Easter

It's Easter week-end, so 4 days off for everyone!

We had cute little floating snow this morning, now the sun is shining and everyone here is in a great mood. We don't have any plans for Easter, but I am looking forward to an amazing organic leg of lamb on Sunday and I might make the same yummy dessert as last year.

Wanna see said dessert? It's in the layout I made of last year's Easter:

See it in the middle? It's chocolate and hazelnuts, and it's sugar free and grain free :D
The rest of the menu included a turkey dinner with hubby's parents, chocolate pancakes for breakfast (also sugar and grain free) and a lot of hugs!
To scrap the whole thing, I used Mel Hains' new collection Feast of Easter.
It's cute, fresh and on sale until April 10th!!

I also used to make a quick Easter card for my Grand-Mother and my Great-Aunt:

I also got the chance to use a new kit by Laramie of Artgal Style this week, and funny enough, it had me scrap another photo from April 2014. The kit is called Dial 911 and is a huge bundle for any emergency photo (fire, ambulance, hospital, ...). So I used it for my little guy's allergic reaction to shrimps. It was pretty impressive! His lips were swollen, his cheeks super red and he had big red bumps under both eyes. Then he proceeded to throw up :(
Fortunately, we were able to take care of it at home and it went away pretty fast.

Look at Dial 911 Bundle, a fun kit for the not so fun moments:

That's it for now, but I think I'm going to use Dial 911 again to journal what happened to me last week (I fell on the ice...).

Have a great Easter week-end!

Origin story

Every super hero has an origin story, and so does every blog name!

Mine is no exception, though neither it nor I are super heroes.

I have written about the name, a long time ago, but here it is again :D

When I was about 25, I decided I wanted a tattoo.

"What does that have to do with this blog?" you ask. Bear with me, I"ll get there.

I wanted something feminine but meaningful, so I decided to get flowers, but not random ones. I chose to combine emblem flowers of the places that in a way define me.

As a military brat, I have moved a lot, and somehow, the question "where are you from?" is always hard for me to answer. I could tell you where I was born, where I lived longest, where I spend my most formative years, where I liked living the best, ...

But I can narrow it down to 3 general areas that define, if not who I am, at least the path I have taken in life. I was born in Saskatchewan, Canada. I spent all my childhood in France, where all my family is from and still lives. And I have lived all my adult life in Ontario, Canada. Growing up in France, my birthplace was rather unusual and I loved that. I felt it set me apart and made me unique and "exotic". I've always felt very common and unnoticeable, so I enjoyed telling people about being born in Moose Jaw. But of course, with my whole family being from and living in France, it is that culture, language, history, etc., that informed much of who I am. And in the end, I chose to move back to Canada and ended up in Ottawa, Ontario by accident, but felt at home right away. I don't know if any other city or province would have been the same. Maybe, maybe not. But that's where I met some of my best friends, where I excelled in school (which had never been the case in France), and of course where I met my husband.

So when I chose my flowers, I chose the prairy lily for Saskatchewan, the poppy for France and the trillium for Ontario! I gave my idea to a tattoo artist. And he never called back. And somehow the desire for a tattoo went away and I didn't get it. A couple years later, I still really liked the concept and to keep me busy during March break, I drew what would have been my tattoo with watercolour pencils. I have never been a good artist. I have no imagination and can only copy, and not that well at that. But I did an okay job and hubby liked it enough to hang it on the wall.

Fast-forward a couple of years, I decided to start writing a blog. It was mostly to showcase my digital scrapbooking pages and the little freebies I offered for a short while. But before I could write it, it needed a name. I still really liked this idea of the three flowers behind my identity and started playing around with the flower names. I tried many combinations and ended up liking Poppylium the best. I extracted the flowers from a photo of my painting and made them my logo and the blog was born.

So the short version is that it stands for Poppy-Lily-Trillium, lol. And it's not just the blog name, it's sort of my creative identity.

Hope you like the name and the story behind it!

And just for reference, here's the painting which still hangs in our dining room:

Lastly, let me mention that this post was inspired by a prompt from a Blog-It 52 project by La"Shawn of March to December. If you want to know where the name of her blog came from, go read here and if you have a blog and write about its name, go share it with here, I know she's love to read about it!

Baby It's Cold Outside

As I live in Northern Ontario, it's not surprising for it to be cold in February, but these past couple of weeks have been REALLY cold with temperature in the -40 celsius with the windchill!

On the upside, I'm getting some scrapping and blogging done :D

I made a layout of my guys having a moment using Mitchell (Bundle and Add-on) by Artgal Style:

Here's my February desktop of my adorable dude in his pyjamas, using 100% Boy by Jen Yurko:

Here's my funny valentine on Valentine's Day, which I very efficiently scrapped that same afternoon :D

I used Love Notes by Jen Yurko:

And finally, one more for the xmas 2013 album. It's a Small World is one of our favourite rides! It's hard to get photos because it's dark and it moves, but these weren't bad and the kit collection works well! I used a variety of items from Jen Yurko's Everyday 2015 collection:

That's it for today! Hope you're warmer than us, wherever you are, and if not, maybe my pages brightened your day :D

A little love

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

I took a photo of my little dude this morning, and scrapped it, but the kit only comes out tomorrow...

So I'll be back with that and in the meantime, here are other layouts I  made lately:

I have three with wonderful Jen Yurko products.

The first is with the gorgeous Oh Happy Days Collection (I linked to the kit, but I recommend getting all the add-ons, and the templates :D), and I scrapped a fun afternoon in the backyard being silly with said little dude:

The next one, is of my little ninja who, as the journaling says, can sneak up on us unheard like a ninja, as well as defend himself from tickles and unwanted kisses and hugs. I used Jen Yurko's adorable ninja themed valentine's day kit You Stole My Heart and one of the Everyday 2015 templates 01:

And the last one is my love of Starbucks coffee :D

I used the Expresso Yourself Collection (kit, newsies, alphabet, paint smears) and the Feeling Triangular Templates:

That's is for today, back tomorrow or another day for new layouts and stuff!

Healthy

I don't tend to make new year resolutions. Hubby always jokes if anyone asks for his that he will give up crack, lol.

Every year, though, the holidays bring an overindulgence in the food area, especially the past two years where we spent them in Florida, in the parks and restaurants, etc.

So despite not really making a resolution, January and the new year do bring a return to a healthier diet.

This year, I am sort of making a resolution to get back to a healthy lifestyle not only in the diet department, but also for exercise. I used to do yoga regularly, then I lost all my teachers one by one and didn't find a time and place that worked. I used to go to Jiu Jitsu regularly, then with work and getting a dog and class schedule, I sort of stopped going. I even tried a personal trainer for a while, but I felt really stressed for time and I quit.

All in all, I haven't done any kind of exercise or activity in about 6 months...

So like many people in January, I signed up for a gym membership with the goal of going at least 3 times a week. They have all I need for toning and hubby will serve as personal trainer, they have 3 yoga classes with decent schedules, and they even have a couple of group classes that make sense with my goals of toning and increasing muscle mass.

I went last week for the first time. I overdid it by taking two classes in a row and I hurt for days but at least I went.

When I saw Simple Girl Scraps' new kit, I knew it was perfect to scrap the Instagram pic I took after my first classes. It's called Love It, and it's really pretty and fresh:

And here's my layout:

I went back to the gym today and I feel very energized. Now I just have to stick with it, wish me luck!

As if nothing happened

See this post's title? That's how I plan to come back to this blog... As if I didn't neglect it stop writing for over 6  months as if I didn't plan writing once a week at least in 2015 and already skipped over 3 weeks, as if I didn't fail the designers I scrap for by not promoting their products, as if nothing happened!

So this week, I have a few kits to show you and none of the layouts are Disney related, which is crazy coming  back from over 2 weeks in Florida. But it's nice to scrap everyday life and other things. I had a stretch of scrapping mostly Disney photos. Then I feel like I had a stretch of lacking inspiration as to what to scrap, not by lack of good kits or even inspiration, but by not knowing which photos to scrap.
 First is one by Artgal Style. It's a gorgeous winter kit called The Big Freeze and its Add-On:

I scrapped the decor at the Toronto Airport with it. The journaling explains that after a xmas vacation in the sun, it was oddly pleasant to see the snow decors and even the snow itself at the airport:

Next up, I scrapped with Simple Girls Scraps latest kit, Frozen Wonderland:

I used it to scrap a moose we saw up close at the wildlife park we have in town:

And then I have three layouts with Jen Yurko products!
First, she released Elderberry Lane, a super fresh versatile kit with which I scrapped the first photo of our little family in 2015:

And she just released the first parts of her Everyday 2015 Collection. This is a huge collection using a large palette for which she keeps releasing parts over the year. There's a full kit every month and some varied other parts.
She released the January Bundle (with lots of categorized parts that can be purchased separately or as a bundle) with which I scrapped my brand new winter coat:

And some versatile alphas (huge collection) date strips (including blanks for other languages :D), graph papers, solid papers and striped papers:

I used them all to do my January 2015 desktop (better late than never...):

I'll be back with more news and info, hopefully in less than 6 months...