Life has been busy ...

... and I didn't realise it had been so long since I last posted here.

I've taken on some extra hours at work helping to set up a new clinic to monitor people who have had fragility fractures, ensuring that anyone over 50 who has had a fracture is offered a bone density scan (DEXA Scan).  The aim is to catch folks who may have osteopenia or osteoporosis and get them onto a treatment pathway early.  That's added another 10 hours to my working week, which is tiring but has been so enjoyable.   We started collecting the data in June but had to go all the way back to January, so it has taken until now to get up to date.  Intense but worth it as we're now just working from the previous week, so hopefully from here on in things will be a little less mad.

As if that wasn't enough I decided to embark on a Humanities Degree in October as well!!!  Yes, I am a crazy woman!!!!!  As I'm studying part time, I decided the only way to cope would be to do it over 6 years.  So far it's been great and I have 2 assigments done and dusted.  I'm just awaiting the results of the second - fingers crossed I have done ok.  

This first module is 8 months long and covers a wide range of stuff that comes under the headings of Reputations (Cleopatra, Stalin, Dali Lama, Dr Faustus), Tradition and Dissent (Plato, poetry, Christianity, Ireland and music), Cultural Encounters (the art of Benin, changing relations between Africa and Europe, From Greece to the Middle East, and Seamus Heany) and finally Place and Leisure (leisure, purpose and the meaning of life, sacred space and landscape, leisure in the Roman villa and the seaside). So an absolutely huge variety of subjects to cover there.  Some will be very in-depth, some we just skim over the surface - but it's all hugely interesting.  So that is just the first module - then I have to decide what to follow it up with in October 2013. 

With trying to fit in a social life as well, the usual round of autumnal gigs, and pre-Christmas visits to family in Wales and Newcastle, I've almost met myself coming backwards.  There has been little time to catch up on housework, so yesterday I had a mad, whirlwind of a cleaning session through the house, and barely any time to even think about doing anything craft-wise.

When I haven't made anything for a while I start to crave a creative outlet.  So subconciously I have been building up to doing SOMETHING - although I wasn't quite sure what it was going to be.  After a mad long shopping session this morning looking for party clothes (urghh) - I decided to reward myself with visit to Hobbycraft.  I wasn't intending buying anything there, honest, just wanted to browse through the ailse and get a bit of a creative fix.  However, I've got some little gifts for the folks at work and wanted to save a bit of cash on gift bags, so was really pleased to find some blank white gift bags in, would you believe it, ailse one!  How fortuitous!!  I also found some plastic Christmas stamps for £1 each, so bought a couple of those and a red stamp pad and I was off and running.  

As you can see below I've decorated the front of the bags with a stamped scandanavia snowflake design and made some stamped tags to attach to the handles.  It was so nice to finally do some crafting and I feel all fulfilled now.  I was hoping to get down to making some Christmas cards as well, but I think realistically I am going to have to send some shop bought ones this year.  Maybe I will get an evening or two to sit down and tackle them, but I've decided not to put myself under any pressure.

So now you know why I've not posted in a while.  I'm pleased that as yet I haven't had any mad panics or been overwhelmed by the workload.  I made a decision when I knew I was going to be studying that the only way I could manage all of this was to compartmentalise my time.  So  when I have a study day, I focus completely on studying, then put it out of my head until my next study session.  When I'm working I concentrate on work etc ... so far the plan is going great!