How clutter cost me money. Or why I’m an idiot.

See this?

It’s the new countertop in my scrapbooking studio.  Can you SEE the counter top?  Yeah, that would be the point of the story.  As I showed before, I like to organize things in my work space.  Usually.  But sometimes life gets away from me and it doesn’t get done.  My husband and I have been working on installing some beautiful (FREE!) cabinets and countertops in my studio and now it’s just a big mess. 

So here’s what happened.  With some cash my hubby gave me for Christmas, I ordered some pre-paid digital prints from Clark Color.  I order photos from them a lot and as I’ve also said before we take lots of photos so I knew it would come in handy for later when I was broke but still wanted to get photos developed.  I uploaded all 62 Christmas photos.  I thought I had also had them printed, but couldn’t find them anywhere.  I looked high and low and drove myself nuts last weekend.  Then I came to the conclusion that I had not, in fact, actually ordered them.  So I ordered them again with my pre-paid prints.  That’s 62 prints at 11 cents each for a total of $6.82.  Yesterday, underneath the crap in this photo, I found (you guessed it) the envelope full of Christmas photos that I had already ordered.  Yes, I’m officially a dumbass. 

Now, $6.82 may not sound like a lot of money to you, but to me it is!  That’s 62 prints I could have used for DIFFERENT photos, ya know?  I’m just so disgusted I could kick my own ass.  Know what I mean?

Naked Snowpeople!

I have this online friend Abby whose blog I faithfully read.  She’s very crafty and she’s a scrapbooker like me plus she’s just plain funny.  I was a bit surprised today to find some interesting photos of snowmen her kids made in their front yard.  Hilarious!  Go check it out here.    http://abbykey.blogspot.com/2008/02/boys-have-penisgirls-haveboobs.html

I am blessed with great friends.

So, I’ve talked about my “yahoo” girls, my scrapbooking buddies, before.  They have become so special to me and are like my family.  Here’s just another reason why they’re special.  A few weeks ago I was in a bit of a rough patch, feeling kind of down, and I expressed that to the girls.  A few days later these beautiful handmade cards arrived in my mailbox.  Is that friendship or what?  I think we all have our days when we’re feeling crappy, and it’s nice to know that somebody else cares!  I love you girls!

Pretty photo organization

I’ve really been working on getting all my photos out of storage boxes and getting them into these little albums while they’re waiting to be made into scrapbook pages.  This way we can still flip through them and enjoy the memories until they go into my scrapbooks.  And, frankly, I’m not going to live long enough to get them all into scrapbooks.  It’s not humanly possible!  I had previously done 2005 and recently finished up with 2006, and 2007 photos.  I’ve come to the conclusion that my husband and I take too many photos.  Can you actually take too many photos?  I didn’t think so, but I’ve been buying these albums at Dollar Tree and Dollar General for the last year and the cost is breaking me! 

Once again, like I showed in my previous photos I’m all about the labeling of things!  I’ll have to show you my linen closet sometime! 

Are your scrapbooking supplies organized?

Mine are.  The rest of my house might not be, but my scrap studio is!  After showing my hanging rack my dad made me the other day, I decided to show the rest of my organization.  For me, it’s a visual thing.  Out of sight, out of mind.  So, I try to keep things out in the open where I can see them and remember to use them.  I’ve got a wall with shelves from the ceiling almost to the floor, so lots of shelf space to use. 

I’ve organized by color, cause I like seeing the rainbow in my studio/office and I spend most of my days in here.  My dear mother-in-law was a packrat and never threw anything away, so I took her Mason jars that are probably older than me.  There are even some beautiful blue ones, but I’m thinking about something else I can do with those to show them off instead of using them for organization.  I have organized my ribbons by color, one jar for each, and organized my flowers by color, one jar for each, and lined them up on my shelves.  These are two things that I use all the time.  The ribbons are also divided into floral/words/stripes/polka dots/prints.  (I also had to buy some Mason jars and I found them by the case at Big Lots.)

For my loose letters like Making Memories metal letters or tag letters, etc., I bought a nuts/bolts organizer in the hardware department at WalMart and I have them organized by letter. 

The next thing on my organizing to-do list is to organize my buttons in the same way.  It’s funny, I can’t stand cleaning but I love to organize!

Heimlich maneuver — NOT!

After I wrote the other day here about the “Heimlich remover,” it reminded me of another funny thing.  I gal I used to work with couldn’t pronounce “Heimlich” to save her life, she always had trouble and it would come out “Hiney-Lick maneuver.”  Oh Lord, there were about 7 of us in that department and it would totally crack everybody up every time she’d say it!  You can imagine……..  

I hate winter but I love her.

So I live in the Midwest where we freeze in the winter and roast in the summer.  Right now we’re sitting under a couple inches of snow and more is on the way.  I hate it!  The older I get, the more I have trouble staying warm in the winter.  Can’t stand snow.  And here’s another reason.  Two days ago I was walking across my patio out to the garage and slipped on the ice under the snow and busted my ass!  Well, actually I WISH I had cause there’s lots of padding back there and I wouldn’t have hurt myself.  As it was, I actually landed on my knee, which was fine because the part that REALLY hurt was when I slipped and slid and flailed around like I was having a seizure and totally wrenched my back.  No offense to those who actually do flail around while having seizures. 

The only good thing about winter is this.  In fact, she’s the good thing about every single day!

The Heimlich Remover.

So last night I had the hiccups.  REALLY bad hiccups.  My little girl tried to scare me several times without helping.  Then she said to me, “Turn around and I’ll do the Heimlich remover on you.”  Totally cracked me up.  That’s definitely going into my little book of Summerisms, funny things she has said.  I haven’t done that book yet, but when I do it’ll be full of stuff she has said that I find funny. 

And no, the Heimlich didn’t work on my hiccups! 

My dad rocks!

So a few weeks ago I saw on this blog some instructions for making your own “Clip-It-Up,” which is a new scrapbook supply organizing thingamabob that is way out of my budget.  The Clip-It-Up sits on your work space and you clip things to it and they hang on it.  It spins around so you can see what you have.  However, I was not wanting something to sit on top of my work table and take up space, and the cheapohomemade one sounded pretty good to me.  I printed off the instructions and photos from this blog and took them to my daddy, cause as I always say he can do anything! 

Being the crazy perfectionist that he is and part of the male species, he had to go one better and make me this thing out of a metal rod and made his own metal hooks (bent them himself!).  The end result is absolutely fantastic!  My husband installed it so that it hangs up under a shelf and I have hung all my letter stickers and other things that are unusual or don’t fit into an organizing category so that I can see them and remember that I have them.  In my brain, outta sight means outta mind.  It’s so exciting to look over there and see all my stuff hanging so pretty!

I love you, Pops!  You’re my favorite dude in the whole wide world! 

Handmade Valentine’s cards

Here are a couple of cards I made for my husband and my little girl.  I had read in a Family Fun magazine newsletter about a project you could do to make a heart out of a child’s thumbprint, so I thought I’d try it with my pinkie.  Didn’t quite work out the way I had hoped, so I then kind of smeared the paint with my pinkie until it took the shape of a heart.  I hope.  Please tell me that looks like a heart!  ha ha!