(No, I'm not talking about person weight loss here.)
So, my first and primary resolution for the year is to reduce the amount of stuff (for lack of a better word) that I own and eliminate a literal ton of stuff from my existing clutter. Now, just after making my resolution, I did a little bit of last-minute purging and took two boxes to Goodwill on Monday, but as that was still 2007, I didn't weigh those items (nor do I think they counted towards my total).
However, yesterday, I gifted 2.2 pounds of scrapbooking paper to my friend Bekki. These were designs that I just couldn't see myself using, but she liked them and could use them for cards (she's an avid card maker, and makes far more intricate cards than I), so I happily gave them to her.
In the meantime, I carved out a corner of the closet in one of our guest bedrooms and started moving supplies. I got this fantastic drawer system from Target and promptly sorted all my solid color papers while Chris, Doug and Bekki looked after the little one. When I finished (what I had readily available of) that, I started in on patterned paper, classifying each design into different categories so that I can find them later. Then, into those drawers the papers went.
Can I begin to say how happy I am with my paper system? I think I'm only about a quarter of the way through my paper collection (because, yes, it is a collection), but it's a good start. Moreover, I'm slowly moving things out of the baby's closet and actually putting things away in a way that I'll be able to not only access things later but find whatever I need! What a concept!
I need to go back to Target and get a few more drawers (I filled up the 9 I purchased and the 6 more that Bekki gave me yesterday), especially since they're on sale this week. I'm not entirely sure where to put them just yet (it was a small corner), but I can certainly set them up to be moved later.
So, I'm starting the year off on the right foot (again)! I may actually get my supplies under control this year - and actually do stuff with them!
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I can't remember the last time I had such a productive weekend. Seriously. Everyone was productive this weekend, too!
Chris and our friend Doug painted the front room until the paint ran out. (I didn't know how much to buy and only bought a gallon and a quart. I need to get two more gallons to finish off the room and the entryway.) This was a project that's been on my To Do radar for quite some time, so seeing the "Christopher Robin's Swing" green on the walls was such a monumental achievement. I almost wept.
Baby C laughed. It wasn't just one of his "heh heh heh" laughs, but an actual laugh, complete with squeal and giggle. I wish I knew what it was that made him laugh. I picked him up from his swing and cuddled him, calling him a stinkpot because he just wanted Mommy's attention and was just like Mommy in that respect, and then he said something (what, I don't know) and found it so funny, he laughed. And he did it a few more times, then wouldn't laugh for the rest of the weekend. I only wish I knew what it was that cracked him up.
Baby C is trying to pull himself up to sitting position. Now, this is a funny thing to watch. And it usually happens right before he poops. He'll brace himself, then move his shoulders forward, one at a time, until he's upright. But, because he still has limited control over his body, he doesn't stop at upright but sort of crumples over, either face-first or to the side. But the first time he crumpled over face-first...
Baby C discovered his feet. I've yet to see Baby C play with his hands, but I've noticed his feet (even with socks) and toes offer loads of entertainment. He would grab for his foot, get a hold of it, then utter a protest because something was holding his foot, so he'd let go of his foot... and the cycle would start over again. I don't know who between us was more amused, honestly.
I (almost) finished Baby C's Second Month baby book. And when I say almost, I really mean it. I literally have one more page to do - and I just need photos from Bekki's camera to finish it. It took two weeks for me to finish the book chronicling his first month, and two days to finish the second month. How excited am I to have this done? (I have to confess these books are not scrapbooks. I know, it's a travesty, and no one could berate me more than I've already done. But these photo books let me arrange photos and journaling before too much time has elapsed and I have no recollection of what these pictures mean, other than the day they were taken. Besides, I can get copies made for his grandmothers. And I'm not entirely sure why, but I still feel it's necessary to apologize openly to my fellow scrapbookers.)
Chris and Doug are planning on finishing the front room this weekend, and I ought to be able to work on Month Three next weekend, too. As for Baby C, we'll have to wait and see what else he has in store for us!
]]>Did you know that March is National Craft Month? I had no idea (or perhaps I did but it was one of those random things that I actually forgot), and here we are, almost a third of the way into the month, and I really haven't done anything crafty. Well, I did make my baby shower invitations last week... and I helped Bekki make cards last Saturday... and I sent a bunch of fabric to my mom to make stuff for the baby... and I'll be putting my niece's scrapbooking package together tonight... But other than that, I haven't done anything crafty to celebrate National Craft Month.
Maybe I ought to do that this weekend. Lord knows I have enough stuff to open a small store.
]]>And, yes, they really are put away this time. Or thrown away - I did leave that option open. Of course, when I say "away" in reference to those things belonging in my scrapbooking closet, I mean "put in the appropriate drawer where available or placed in an area where I will be able to readily access it when needed". My closet is a bit of a mess, too, but that's a project for another day. It certainly isn't a project for right now.
So, is the table cleared? Not yet, but it is much closer. And I'm feeling better about it now, too.
Well, some progress, anyway. I bit the bullet and finally decided to get rid of my gigantic box of recipes I've been collecting since, well, 1999. I did a very cursory glance through them and decided on keeping a few (my mother-in-law's waffle recipe, my mother's shomai recipe, the world's best oatmeal raisin cookies, etc.). The rest have been unceremoniously reboxed and placed in the recycling bin. Really, I don't look at them, anyway, so why bother keeping them?
I also got rid of the extra rehearsal dinner invitations (no small feat - I'm very sentimental about my paper), though I did keep five - just in case someone wants to look at them. (They will likely get tossed in another two or three years, I know, but I'm just not ready to part with them completely!) I also moved this wire shelving from the office into one of the guest bedrooms, and my plan is to have all the stuff that won't fit into my scrapbooking closet either trashed, donated, or sorted and stored in the guest bedroom by the end of the day. It's actually quite doable. In fact, I'll bet if I really focus (meaning I don't stop to look at every scrap of paper), I could be done by 3.
So, with that thought in mind, I'll come back and 3 and report on my progress. Who knows? I may even be done sooner!
After one week, my housework is still caught up. Hey - baby steps, right? I woke up yesterday morning, looked at my laundry bins (which I use as my gauge to determine how much housework I will have for the day) and saw they were still fairly empty. It was a wonderful feeling, knowing that I was actually caught up on laundry! (I'm running a load of laundry this morning as I write, though - after all, clothes, like dishes, get dirtied every day.)
At any rate, not only is my laundry caught up, so are my dishes - and my kitchen is a beautiful place. My refrigerator has nothing growing in it, the shelves are clean, and I have plenty of room to fill it up during today's shopping trip. My cooktop is clean and degreased, my kitchen sink is shiny, and my dishwasher awaits dirty dishes. I've been completely honest with myself in deciding whether to keep leftovers (leftover dinner for Chris's lunch = good; leftover cake just because it was my birthday = bad). Life in the kitchen is good.
So, I turned my attention to my master bathroom. See, this is the bathroom no one sees, only because, well, the whole purpose of insisting the builder add a half bath was so that we didn't have to allow people into our master bath!. Well, over the past year or so, stuff accumulated. From whence, I honestly have no idea. But this week, I took a Ziplok bag and collected all the travel-size amenities I've collected from hotels (something I get from my mother, no doubt) and brought them to work with me to donate to a local battered women's shelter. I also purged the medicine cabinet and began putting other things away. It's not completely clutter-free, but it's a lot closer now. On the plus side, I was able to put out one of our wedding presents and put it to good use!
I also did some scrapbooking yesterday, finally putting together my pregnancy scrapbook - well, the journaling part of it, anyway. After Christmas, I printed out my weekly journal (up to Week 20 - we're in Week 23 now) and trimmed it so that I had it ready to go for my scrapbook. And it remained in a stack - first on the coffee table, then on my craft table - for nearly 3 weeks. Since I didn't have any laundry to do yesterday morning, I treated myself to a few hours of scrapbooking, which essentially meant attaching said journal entries to the actual pages. It's not done, of course; I still need to print out pictures, but the stack is gone - and I used some scrapbooking supplies to boot!
But the best thing of all, I think, came courtesy of my friend Bekki. See, Bekki makes jewelry, and she does a very nice job of it. Unless she tells you she made something, you really wouldn't know it didn't come from a store. For Christmas, my husband and I gave her, among other things, some jewelry-making idea and technique books, one of which had a lot of ideas for working with wire. Well, I just so happened to have a whole bunch of colored wire in my scrapbooking closet which, I'm ashamed to say, I've never used, despite attending a seminar which inspired me to buy everything related to working with wire. I passed the lot on to her last night, and it benefited both of us equally: she was pleased to have the chance to try out new techniques and create colored wire accent pieces (really, for free), and I was pleased to have it out of my closet! Mind you, it didn't take up a lot of room and was actually one of the few things put away, but it was so nice to give it away nonetheless.
As I said, so far, so good. It's all in baby steps, of course, and I certainly won't beat myself up if I don't give anything away next week or if I need to run a load of laundry next Saturday morning. But I'm pleased to say even though I'm not following Flylady's recommendations to a T (I'm still in my pajamas, for example - but I do know where my laundry is!), I'm not doing a terrible job of getting caught up on housework. More importantly, I'm not undoing anything I've already done. And for that, even just one week into 2007, I think I've done well.
I may even deserve a cookie!
What is one of your addictions?
Submitted by Paperheart.
I love paper products. If I can use it for making cards or scrapbook pages, I want it. If I can use it to store said supplies, I want it. If I can even use a little scrap of something, it takes all the willpower in the world to say, "Let it go. You have 30 more tons of paper that you can use, so let it go." The worst thing about it is that I started scrapbooking when I was a poor student with very few funds, and scrapbooking wasn't the gigantic multi-billion dollar industry it is today. Back then, scrapbooking really meant getting creative with scraps (go figure), so you really didn't want to throw anything away.
So, between the new paper designs that come out every season, all the cutting templates that come out seemingly every month, embellishments, books, tools, and everything else in the scrapbooking aisles of my favorite Big Box craft stores, it's a wonder I've been able to decipher (in most cases) the difference between, "I have to have that" and "I need to have that."
Of course, with the baby coming, I have more important things to buy before I (finally) break down and buy the Cricut machine. But then there's the Cuttlebug, too...
]]>What were your New Year's resolutions for 2006? How did you do?
Oh, I am so proud of myself when it comes to my 2006 resolutions. Here they are (with results!):
1. Make - do not purchase - all my stationery. This included birthday cards, wedding invitations, thank you notes, Christmas cards, etc. I am pleased to say that I successfully made all of the above. My husband actually commented the other night that a part of him expects people to make their own Christmas cards because he sees me doing it. That made me smile (and reaffirms that he truly is the best husband in the whole world!).
2. Be more active and lose weight. Okay, so this one really didn't work so well, but I was on the right track until I got pregnant! I became more of a label reader (staying away from high fructose corn syrup whenever possible) and I take the stairs at work as often as I can, in addition to walking laps at least once a day when I need to get up from my desk and stretch my legs. I may not have lost weight (I weigh more now than I ever did), but I can say that I'm more active than I was last year.
3. Organize - and use - my scrapbooking supplies. I didn't sit down to scrap as much as I wanted to, but I did use my supplies a lot more this year making my stationery - and I thoroughly enjoyed it, too! My husband helped me put up a cabinet in the office (soon to be nursery) closet, and after quite a bit of purging (I made my older niece an impressive First Scrapbooking Kit with my existing supplies), I had it fairly well organized... until wedding projects took over and I developed an affinity for stamping, too. [sigh] At least the bulk of it still fits into the closet.
4. Start a new job. I didn't create this resolution until the spring when my old company got acquired by an evil empire. But, having learned from other past lives, I wasn't about to jump into a new company/career without being 100% certain that this was the place I wanted to hang my hat (so to speak - no one really wears hats anymore, do they?) for the next 20 years or so. Well, I found my place in the universe this summer, and I couldn't be happier!
5. Purge my closet. This was surprisingly difficult for me, only because I realized I have attachments to certain articles of clothing. Getting pregnant at the end of the summer actually helped me with this resolution because I was able to look at items and ask myself realistically, "This hasn't fit you since last year - do you honestly think you'll be able to squeeze into it once the baby comes?" Harsh, yes, but effective. Three trips to Goodwill later, my closet is much lighter. My shoes, on the other hand...
So, there are still things to work on (hence resolutions for 2007), but I got started on the right track this year for most of them. On my list for 2007: (1) Find friends who scrapbook (to help me use my supplies - and take away those things I probably won't ever use), (2) Eat healthier (and lose the baby fat once he is born), (3) Keep up with friends' birthdays, anniversaries, special occasions, etc., (4) Purge my library (I have MBA books that I really ought to part with and a number of self-help books I've almost memorized - not to mention all my scrapbooking magazines that I still haven't sorted), and (5) Keep up with housework. I may need to rejoin Flylady for that last one - at least on a more scaled-down level, anyway.
]]>I had to run a quick errand at lunch (to pick up the last piece of my husband's Christmas present), and I stopped off at Michael's on the way back to the office. For one thing, I needed to use the restroom (it seems my bladder doesn't hold as much as it used to); for another, it's been a while since I went to Michaels to really look at the new scrapbooking products they have.
As far as new scrapbooking products, there are a few things that are really cool, but nothing that I desperately have to have. In fact, I really didn't see anything that I even wanted to put on my birthday wish list (which, for those playing at home, is only 13 days away). There were some cute papers (a lot of which were on sale), and the Christmas card-making stuff was already 50% off.
So, I browsed... and browsed... and browsed some more. Really, I needed to stretch my legs (and abdomen) because I was getting a bit sore sitting down at my desk all morning. But the point is, even though I picked up a few things as "I'll think about it" items, I didn't buy anything!
Those who know me (and especially those who have been to Michael's with me) can understand the magnitude of this. I was extremely proud of myself.
]]>I will need to give an update report once I’ve actually completed building and publishing my book, but I really have to give My Publisher some credit as being, so far, my favorite program to use for creating photo books. I played with it for a few hours last night and was able to successfully complete 8 pages very easily. Those 8 pages house more than 30 photos, and I’ve only go 92 more pages to go. (I’m working on our wedding album. We’re going to be in California next month, and I’d like to bring it with me to give to my parents so they can take it with them to the Philippines. I’d also like to have a copy of it for our own house, and since My Publisher is running a 2nd Book Free promotion, this is as good a time as any to finish it.)
The thing is, I love to scrapbook. It’s one of my most favorite things to do (besides snuggle with my husband, sleep, eat, and talk). I’ve devoted a closet to my supplies and take great enjoyment in affixing pieces of paper together with acid-free adhesives. It can’t be helped. But a few years ago, I heard about photo books, and I’ll have to admit, I was skeptical.
Now, don’t get me wrong – having a photo book of the wedding activities will not replace the actual scrapbook. There are background papers that I want to use, not to mention using the actual collateral stationery as ephemera within my scrapbook. But I also reasoned that I could have both the scrapbook (that probably wouldn’t get finished until our 10th anniversary, anyway) and the super-glossy photo book (which I could have immediately) and have the best of both worlds. One would enable me to share little anecdotes and use up all 1200+ pictures (850 of which came from our photographer; the rest came from friends and family), or most of them, anyway. The other would be a beautiful, glossy coffee table book easy enough to transport and share. Perfect!
So, as I said, I’ll need to give an update once I complete, order, and receive my photo book, but the process so far has been amazingly simple. Kudos, My Publisher! I’m looking forward to finishing my book soon!
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