Day In The Life

I had some issues with my web host and I backed up a lot of my sites, just in case. Some of them I have put up at Google Sites, one of them being my "Photolog" that has my Daily Grinds/Day In The Life posts. I participated in Ali Edward's one yesterday (though didn't follow the same guidelines as hers but rather stuck to my regular type) If you want to check it out go here: https://sites.google.com/view/mmmbisto-photolog/27112018



Flickr also have updated their service which means I have backed up my entire photo library from there and have put it into Google Photos, I had already started using it and was backing up a lot of my photos and videos there, so I ended up getting a push to back everything else up from Flickr there too. It does mean that I now have some broken photos here at my blog as there seems to be no easy way of deleting albums including the pictures and some have been deleted by mistake while I started trying to get my 8,000+ photos down to below their 1,000 photo limit. I will get around to sorting something out at some point.

I have excitedly almost finished my December Daily 2017, and I have set up on my Google Drive for potentially doing one this year - I'm still debating it, but I think as long as I collect stories like I did last year an album will come together nice and easy. We shall see :) But maybe I could get a YouTube video made on my set up!

First Day of School

It has been a long wait, but this monkey finally had his first day of school on Tuesday, but this week has seriously done me in! He has been in for just 2 and a half hours in the morning so I have been feeling that as soon as I dropped him off, I was getting home, frantically doing chores and racing back down to go and pick him back up. Next week will be a little easier as he will be staying for lunch and then coming home, and by the end of the month, he should be going full time. He wouldn't stand still one little bit for me to take a picture and then refused any more. It'll be the perfect photo to sum up life at the moment though!



I'm also probably going to get a reputation as the "quirky" mum - or "weird mum" or be known as "scooter mum", but really couldn't care less.  This awesome thing has made the school run oh-so-much better for me. Dylan gets on it, and as it is surprisingly downhill (slightly, but enough lol) to the school so I only need to do a little scooting, and as Dylan has been walking down there and running around in the playground and then going into the classroom to play and then having to walk all the back he has been exhausted (I didn't take the scooter the first day), so I have been pushing him back while he stands on it. Scooting back after drop off has also been giving me a flipping good workout!

I wish I could say all this has made Dylan sleep better at night. Nope, he's pretty much the same as before minus a couple of really bad nights where school the next day has been playing on his mind so those nights were worse. So many people have said that once he starts school his sleep will be better and there's still a little time before he's full time so I'm still keeping my fingers crossed but I'm not holding out much hope!

My Graduate

My baby graduated Preschool yesterday, and it was so emotional. He is VERY ready for school now, but I'm not sure if I'M ready for him to be ready. Life is just whizzing by so fast.

I took the obligatory final day of playgroup picture as well :) This will go nicely for a comparison between his very first day of playgroup in January 207 plus his first day of preschool in September 2017.



I look forward to getting some scrapbook pages done. It just seems I'm constantly busy and never get the time, but I will be sure to set some aside to do some memory keeping. Dylan still is not sleeping well at night and lately is forcing himself to stay awake until up to 10pm at night - and still wakes in the night. This makes for one exhausted mama. So many people have mentioned that once he starts school it will wear him out, so I am certainly hoping! Hopefully here's to blogging more than once every 4 months as well LOL.

The Beast from the East.

Luckily for us, the "Pest from the West" which hit afterwards didn't affect us, but we certainly had fun and games during what the media called "The Beast from the East". On the 1st March we started having the snow which most other places had already been hit with, and the snow was very fine (not at all the type of snow that we usually get!) and with the wind, a lot of the snow was creating snow banks. Gareth (hubby) was sent home from work as he has a long commute and he worked from home for 2 days. My place of work had such low temperatures in addition to no heating that the store closed for days. I was due in at 7am on the Saturday and was on standby to wait for news if we were going to open or not - but we ended up opening on the Sunday and wore multiple layers and gloves etc to keep warm with quite a few heaters that were hired to keep us warm. Dylan's playgroup closed at lunchtime the Thursday that the snow hit due to heating issues as well. He had an absolute blast playing in both our garden and my parent's garden :)







Luckily Gareth got home when he did, as when the snow really got going, his car was well and truly not going anywhere!



Even my parents had to dig their way out of the door.



 

Luckily by Saturday evening the snow had already melted quite a bit which was a relief for me getting to work on Sunday :)

The Creative Planner magazine

Back in the summer of last year, a few people within one of the communities I belong to on Facebook suggested that we should have a magazine for planners. I thought it was a fantastic idea and immediately volunteered to join the team! We worked on ideas, I made a Brand Identity for the magazine as voted from a few ideas I put forward, and we were on our way! There was a lot of research and collaboration that went on for months, and I was having a blast. The whole magazine is a passion project that we do, for free, and offer for free as well. It is a PDF download, so not an "online magazine" that some may be where all the content is on a website with each article being a sort of blog post. This is an actual PDF of layouts and spreads. In fact our Editorial Team got the first issue professionally printed as sort of a keepsake :) Tomorrow we launch issue two, which is even more exciting this time around as I have also written an article.

What is also really interesting to some people, is that the whole thing is done within Google Drive. It's no secret that I absolutely love Drive, but it has allowed us to collaborate on this with team members all over the UK. Each issue has its own folder where we keep images and articles (organised in their own folders so we know what goes with each) and a document with an issue overview including deadlines, article ideas, who is writing what and what the current status with it all is in addition to page order and whether it is to be started, in progress or completed.
Even the magazine itself is made using Google Slides and is kept in the issue folder as well, myself and Dominika have been working on the file simultaneously collaborating on layouts, before being exported as a PDF file when completed.
All for free :)

Head over to our Facebook page for more information and how to download the new issue.