Use your scrapbooking papers for other things.
It seems like most scrapbookers I know have a paper problem. And by “problem” I mean they need a 12-step program. I have friends who buy it just because it’s pretty and they can’t resist or something. I have lots of paper also, well at least I THOUGHT I did until I heard about some others’ stash of paper, now I realize I don’t have that much!
Anyway, here’s a small way to use some of your scrapbooking patterned papers in other ways besides in your scrapbook. I just realized not only did I use my paper, but I also used ribbon from my stash! I took a sheet of 12×12 paper printed with yellow roses from Paper Pizzazz and wrapped one of my daughter’s Christmas presents in it. Then I took some ribbon with yellow flowers (they don’t match but she didn’t care!) to tie around the gift.
I used yellow roses paper instead of “Christmas” print paper because I wasn’t really sure if I’d ever USE the roses paper (and I know I will Christmas print). Was it Christmas-y? No. Did my 7-year-old give a crap? No. I know y’all have a stack of paper in that huge stash of yours that you look at and think, “Why did I buy that?” You can’t think of a page to use it on. So use it for this instead.
This is also going to be something I do for Valentine’s Day (heart printed) or birthdays or Mother’s Day (floral printed). I can’t tell you how much EASIER it is to whip out a piece of 12×12 paper to wrap a small gift instead of lugging out a huge roll of wrapping paper so you can cut a small piece out for wrapping a gift. And if it makes life easier for me, I am SO doing it! 
My daughter got a Wii, and the Wii got me!
I can only write a tiny bit today to tell you that I am unable to say much. My daughter got a Wii for Christmas, as I mentioned before, and after playing tennis, baseball, and bowling with her for the entire Christmas day and then again last evening, I cannot move my right arm or shoulder, as I might burst into tears from the pain. Sadly, I am NOT kidding! (On the bright side, I’m hoping to get back into shape, maybe lose a few pounds.) You know it’s bad when your 7-year-old comes and ASKS you to take her to the doctor because her right arm also hurts so much. She literally said, “Mommy, PLEASE take me to see the doctor today. My arm is hurting worse and worse.” Mommy feels your pain, honey. No, really. I do……. :)
Filed under Life | Comment (0)Santa was here.
Yes, he was. The fat man was good to my little girl this year. He brought her what her heart desired most, a Nintendo Wii. It took some doing to get one. Where I live in the Midwest, they are nonexistent in stores. I know; I called every one of them within a 200 mile radius, even into the next state, trying to find one in stock somewhere, anywhere! And then a neat thing happened. My friend Jill in California mentioned that her friend had an extra one. I think it was the happiest day of my life! :) Remember when I wrote about the trip I took to Texas? Well, Jill also flew to Texas to attend the same wedding and she brought the Wii with her, then I brought it home on the plane with me, so no paying extra for shipping. How’s that for friendship? (Thanks again Jill!) And even though the plane ride (my first) was a bit harrowing and sickening (literally!), it was all worth it to see THIS LOOK on my beautiful daughter’s face when she opened up that gift.
She said, “Thank you Santa!!!” here.
Altered soap dispensers
I totally cannot remember where I found these on the internet, but I thought they were the neatest idea so wanted to share. It looks like she peeled the label off a soap dispenser and then used rubons on the bottle. Tie a ribbon around it, add a cute little tag, and you’re done. You could also use this as a small Valentine’s gift by spelling out I love you, or as a nice little everyday reminder to someone. I just love these.
Empowering women.
A few years ago I came across a catalog called Femail Creations (you can click on the button in the column on the right to go check it out). It’s owned by a woman named Lisa Hammond, and it became so successful that she wrote a book called Dream Big about how she did it. I’m interested in small business, and I read the book and found it very interesting. She’s very much about empowering women, and I like that about her and her catalog. She travels the country looking for women artists who she can buy products from for the catalog. Many of the things are handmade. A lot of the home decor and jewelry are things to empower woman, support women, tell women you know such as daughters, friends, etc., that you care about them. I bought my daughter-in-law a bracelet a few years ago when she was going through a rough time, and she wore it daily and loved it. Anyway, as I have been holiday shopping online (I love you internet!), I browsed Femail Creations’ website for the women’s gifts and found a few things I wanted to buy but couldn’t afford at the moment and thought I’d share a few things I found there. Click on the photos to see larger versions.
I have an aunt who lost a child recently and is having a really hard time dealing with that right now, and I want to use this quote on a project I’m making for her. I want to buy this print for myself! It says, “Perhaps strength doesn’t reside in having never been broken, but in the courage required to grow strong in the broken places.”
I think this bracelet would be a wonderful gift for a daughter on Valentine’s Day.
I’d like to buy this bracelet for my best friend.
I’ve always loved this quote from the Wizard of Oz, and I know several women (including me) for whom this would be perfect.
This would just be a nice reminder to myself on my arm.
This framed print would be a great gift for a friend. I love it.
I love this bracelet.
There are also unique things that I’ve never seen anywhere else, and I am the Queen of Catalogs, people. I like these things just cause they’re cool and/or fun!
This tree is made out of wire and I think it’s awesome!
I’ve seen this quote before, and it’s never not funny for me!
This is a cute little sign. My husband probably wouldn’t be amused by it, though!
My laundry room is in my basement, where nobody would even SEE this sign, but I’m thinking of buying it anyway just cause it makes me chuckle every time I see it in the catalog, so I could have a chuckle while I’m doing laundry.
And I totally need one of these. The sign AND the maid! Ask anyone who’s ever been to my house.
Click here to shop Femail Creations for unique gifts for your friends, sisters, mothers, daughters, and yourself!
Do you have beginner scrapbooker overload?
I was reading a post in a scrapbooking forum recently, and I came across a question from a beginner scrapbooker who really sounded (to me) like she was putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on herself. She had sorted her photos into piles for different categories, but some photos didn’t “fit” in any pile/category. She asked if she needed to scrapbook them in order of date. I felt bad for her, because that used to be me, and while I enjoyed scrapbooking way back then, I enjoy it much more now. Here’s some advice if you’re a beginner and are feeling that same pressure.
Don’t overthink the process. You’ve divided your photos into piles. What categories do you have? People? Vacations? Holidays? If you have photos that you don’t have a pile for, it sounds like you need to make another pile/category. I used to scrapbook my photos by theme. I felt like ALL the birthday party photos needed to go in their own birthday album, and ALL the party photos needed to be together in the designated album. I don’t do that anymore. I might pull one of the birthday party photos that is my daughter and her best friend and make a page about their friendship, what my daughter’s friend means to her, how they’ve been friends since they were 3, etc. Nothing to do with the birthday, it’s just a great photo and I want to use it for a different purpose. I find myself doing that more and more these days. Chances are, between me and my husband both loving photography and taking photos, there is probably another photo that looks very similar to it anyway, and the one I pulled won’t even be missed!
Do you have to use all the photos? NO. They’re your pictures, and it’s your scrapbook. YOU make the rules. If you don’t like the picture, don’t put it in the scrapbook. If you REALLY don’t like the photo, throw it away. Yes, I really said that. Why keep a photo you don’t like? Ok, you could also GIVE it away. If you like it but not enough to scrapbook it, put it in an acid-free photo storage box. They’re $3 or $4 at Hobby Lobby or you can buy them at Michaels with a coupon. If you can’t find a pile to put the photo in when you’re sorting, maybe you should think about do you really want the photo anyway, and if not then store it in the box. Store doubles in the boxes too. I have all my stored photos separated and labeled by year so I at least have an idea of where to look for a photo if I feel the need at a future time.
When I started scrapbooking 11 years ago, I thought I needed to put every single photo, good or bad (and some are really bad), in my scrapbook and I wanted to scrapbook them all in order chronologically as they happened. I really put a lot of pressure on myself, and I regret that. Cause if you do that, frankly, you’re going to die someday and there will be a million photos stashed somewhere in your house that aren’t in the scrapbooks. You know the episode of Friends where Ross & Monica’s grandmother dies and while looking for some shoes in her closet Ross finds box after box of sugar packets and bumps one of them and a million sugar packets come raining down all over his head? That’ll be you, except with photos instead of sugar packets. Now I pick out my favorite photos, the ones I really love, the ones I want to tell a story about, the ones I want my daughter to know about, the ones that are meaningful to me, and I only scrapbook those. Just those photos. The rest go in photo boxes or in small photo albums tied with a ribbon on the spine and labeled by year. I put those in a shelving unit in my family room so that my family and guests can pull them off the shelves and look at them. And WOW do I feel better!
Recently I also started NOT going in chronological order. Scrapbooking is so much more fun now. Because frankly, by the time I get to THIS year in my scrapbooks, I’m not going to remember what happened in any of the photos from this year (my memory is shot), unless I journal very extensively about it, and if I’m going to do the journaling I might as well just go ahead and make the whole page. So I alternate. One day I do current photos and the next day I use older photos for my scrapbooks.
Just do whatever YOU want. You’re the boss! 
Because she couldn’t say it on the phone.
I don’t know if y’all know who Dooce is, but her real name is Heather Armstrong and she writes a blog called dooce. Anyway, I enjoy her blog very much. She writes about a variety of things, parenting, life, marriage, etc. What I find refreshing is her honesty and her dry humor. Brutal honesty, ok? Like–she doesn’t give a crap about what you think; she’s going to tell you the truth–kind of honesty. Which a lot of people find very offensive, but I find very cool. I wish that I could be more like that sometimes.
Some of you might know I suffer from anxiety disorder and depression. The key word there is suffer. Cause let me tell you, it sucks on both counts. Yes, my life has been worse (MUCH worse). Yes, it COULD be worse, no doubt. Yes, other people have it a lot worse in life than I do. I realize those things, and I try to keep them in perspective. But the bottom line is that these 2 things, for me, are very hard to control and it’s been a constant battle for a lot of years now. I have recently been off my antidepressant and trying to live my life normally like I did before the depression took over my life, and it’s been hard. I don’t want to live the rest of my life on a pill that I have to take to be able to get out of bed in the morning or not cry every. single. day. But lately I’m beginning to think that it’s what I need to do. And after reading what Dooce wrote, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. It shouldn’t matter to me if my dad thinks I should be able to handle this crap on my own, that I should be able to overcome it with my mind. It shouldn’t matter if my friends think there’s something wrong with me if I’m depressed; after all, what do I have to be depressed about, right? It shouldn’t matter to me that my husband thinks I’m just a lazy ass because I don’t have the energy or motivation to clean the house (which he constantly criticizes me about). I have a child, and I want to spend time with her feeling GOOD. I don’t want to be too tired to play a game or read a book or whatever she wants to do. She will only be a child ONCE. And I bet if I asked my daughter which Mama she prefers, the one taking the antidepressant or the one not taking the antidepressant, she’d scream “TAKE THE DRUG!” And what SHE thinks, because she is my LIFE, is the only thing that matters to me.
Anyway, I recently read a blog entry written by Dooce, and maybe because I am at this particular point in my life, it spoke to me. And if you’re suffering from depression or you know someone who is, maybe it will speak to YOU. Go here http://www.dooce.com/2007/12/13/because-i-couldnt-say-it-phone.
Heather, thank you for your honesty.
I am thankful for the internet.
Yes, it’s wonderful modern technology and I can’t remember how I ever learned anything without google! Yes, I use it every day for my job as a medical transcriptionist researching the name of a medication or a type of pacemaker or a type of surgery, and my job is better because of the internet. I’m glad I have it. As a scrapbooker, it allows me to seek out inspiration. I love to read other blogs to see what other people are creating, to look at art, to learn something new, to see what new scrapbooking supplies are on the market, to discover something new to make my scrapbooking more fun for me.
But I am most grateful for the internet for something else it has brought to my life. The gift of friendship. I have belonged to scrapbooking groups on the internet before and made friends with other scrapbookers, had laughs, learned things from some of them. And as it usually goes in life, you kind of stick with the people that you have the most in common with, maybe you have the same parenting values, the same scrapbooking styles or goals, whatever. At least that’s what happens in MY life. And that’s what happened on my scrapbooking groups. One group kind of morphed into a smaller group of women who had a lot in common, that group branched off into a different group, and finally now there is a small group of just a few women and myself. We’re technically a scrapbooking group. We’re all scrapbookers, yes, but over the course of the last 4 years they’ve become my close friends. They’ve become my family. It’s really not often that you meet truly special people in life, so it’s funny that I’ve managed to meet so many in our little group of scrapbookers. I talk to these woman every day, instead of on the phone like I do my friends “in the real world”, it’s by e-mail. I feel such a circle of support from them. I feel like I can tell them anything, and they would not judge me. That’s a special thing to find in a friend.
Okay, I’ve laid the groundwork for my story now. My friends live in California, Texas, Nebraska, and my own state. One of my friends, Thea, lives a few hours north of me so we get together a few times a year now. It’s great to have her within driving distance. Anyway, one of the “yahoo girls” (as one of them calls us since we are on the yahoo group), Dona, has been planning her wedding in Texas and invited the others to attend, knowing that since we are all scattered everywhere and it would require time off work, etc., that the chance of any of the girls showing up was slim to none. I mean, I personally said, hey I love you, but if I’m taking time off work and have to use my vacation days it’s gonna be spent at the BEACH, know what I mean? I only get one vacation! :)
Fast forward several months. We’ve all talked here and there about the wedding plans, how it would be fun to all get together, how wonderful it would be to see our friend get married (we’re so happy for her). Some of the girls would be meeting for the first time. Others have been lucky enough to be in the same state at the same time and were able to meet previously. A few months before the wedding, the girls started deciding okay, this was really gonna happen, arranging time off work, budgeting for the plane tickets, etc. Plans were made to arrive a few days before the wedding so everyone could meet, get to know each other better “in person,” shop at scrapbook stores, etc. It looked like everyone was going to be able to tentatively make it except for me. I have had a big struggle in the last year with my depression, just haven’t been able to control it as well as I had the last 6 years before, and it has affected my job and my production at work. Given this, my paychecks haven’t been what they used to be or what they need to be, and there was no way I could afford the gas money for the drive to the airport (3.5 hours away), a plane ticket, a rental car, eating out while in Texas, hotel stay, etc. It was just too much. All that and 3 weeks before Christmas too. I don’t what that Dona was thinking when she picked her wedding date, but back to the story. Here’s where the wonderful-ness begins.
I had to tell the girls that I just couldn’t make it. Talk about being depressed! But sometimes that’s just life and you gotta suck it up and deal. So I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to Texas. Disappointed, yes, but secretly also a bit relieved, as it would require flying on an airplane and I’m TERRIFIED of flying, never flown before, and I have anxiety disorder so that was a disaster waiting to happen! :)
One by one, these wonderful women stepped forward and held out a hand (like I said, they’re a circle of support). First, Thea said, I’ve got a bunch of airline miles saved up. I’ll just use them and get us both a plane ticket. We’ll talk about you freaking out and having a panic attack when the time comes. I was so overwhelmed by her offer. Against my better judgment (again, AFRAID of flying!) I said I’d let her give me the ticket. After thinking it through, a few weeks later I told her not to get my ticket. Even though it was such a generous thing for her to do, I still had no money to pay for a hotel, to rent a car, to eat. Just so many things that add up to a lot. We didn’t tell the other girls because I was sad about it and didn’t want to bring down their excitement about going, so Thea and I kept it to ourselves.
A month and a half before the wedding, I broke down and told the rest of my group of friends that I wouldn’t be coming to Texas with them and attending Dona’s wedding. Once again, life just doesn’t always go the way you want it and I just didn’t have the funds for all the things that would be required to take the trip. Again, more wonderful-ness. First Edie said, “I’ll pay for your part of the rental car bill.” Then Jill said, “I’ll pay for your part of the hotel bill.” “We’ll pay for you to eat while we’re in Texas.” I cannot tell you how overwhelmed with love and gratitude I was for these girls. I sat and cried in front of my computer for days over their generosity. My friend Jill had not even MET me yet! I mean, who DOES that? Right? That is friendship, people. These girls are special. They each have their own qualities and quirks that draw me to them and make me want them for my friends. I love them all. I am so grateful to have them in my life.
And yes, I went. My husband helped finance my trip so the girls didn’t have to actually go through with their offers to help, but I love them for it anyway. Speaking as a person who has anxiety attacks and a major fear of flying, it was quite an experience. But that’s a story for another day.
(click photos to see them larger)
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