Cake Decorating round Two

I forget to mention, my daughter and I signed up for Cake Decorating classes again at Micheals. New store and new teacher this time. The Weymouth store where I am teaching. Their Wilton's teacher is great, her name is Kim and we signed up just because of her. The first class was just basics. We watched as Kim made frosting, and gave us tips about baking and frosting and then we did basic star on plain sugar cookies. This past weekend was class 2. This time we had to bring in our own homemade frosting and a cake to frost and decorate. We also had to level out cake, put in a filling, I used strawberry jam, while Kelly used a layer of frosting, we learned how to dam the filling so it would not leak out. And then how to make it look all nice and smooth like they do at the stores when you buy cakes. I would have never guessed what the secret for this is. Sorry, you will have to take Kim's class to learn her secret tip on this one. As far as the design for the top, Kim said we could copy a design in our books or bring in a coloring book photo to copy. Kelly decided to make Dori from "Finding Nemo". Here is her cake. Didn't it come out awesome?!!

And for Halloween, I decided to try a Spiderweb with a Spider sitting on top made from a rice crispie treat, some frosting and black licorice legs. I copied the idea from a cake decorating blog "My Cake School". I should have used a different gel pen (I used pink and the pink shows under the black webbing) Oh well, this is how we learn.

This weekend is class 3. We are to bring 6 cupcakes and whatever filling we want to put inside of them. Kelly wants to bring chocolate pudding. I am not sure how this will hold up, but she will give it a try. I was not planning on going due to my surgery recovery but I am feeling pretty good today and class is still 2 more days away, so I may try to go after all if Dad is willing to be our driver for the day.

Post-Surgery

It has been three days now since my surgery and I have to admit, I am feeling better then I thought I would be. I do have trouble getting up and down but once I am up and moving I feel like myself. Unfortunately, It doesn't last too long before I have to sit and rest but all signs are good that this will be a speedy recovery. It is killing me that I can't go sit in my scraproom and play. I just handle handle sitting in my desk chair, yet. I did go downstairs today to see how much of a mess my room was in. I was on a Halloween Frenzy before my surgery. I was making goodies for everyone, my co-workers, the office staff, my Michaels' students, the nurses at the hospital, etc.... when I get on a creative frenzy my workspace tends to pay the price. I seem to work best in disaster areas. The room wasn't as bad as expected. There is clutter everywhere but not too much that i can't start working on projects again as soon as I am up to it.

This is my room all sparkly clean.

This is what it looked like this morning.

This is the clean version, again

this is all the clutter i have to deal with on the floor and countertops.

This is the other side of my room with everything put away in its proper place.

Here is the disaster area with everything piled high on the counters and bags all over the floor. I can push the clutter to the side for a while, I guess. It will get cleaned up at some point.

More halloween treats

These are little tissue packages for the girls in the office at the school i work at. The front and back are decorated for halloween. The little travel size packs of tissues fit in perfectly.

Halloween Treats

I have that nervous enery going. My surgery is 9 days away. So I am getting into "Busy-mode" to try not to think about it.

Today I played with some more of the Halloween goodies I have been picking up at Michaels.

I made some Gum package treats for my co-workers.



These were made using K and Company Halloween embellishments and Halloween mat pad, DCWV Midnight Spell cardstock, and some of the $1 Michaels's halloween stamps and Martha Stewart tape ribbon.



This is a close up of one with a Michaels $1 stamp. I added some shadowing around the skeleton using Copics W1 and BV01




Showing how the package of gum slides out.




And all four with the different packages of gum you can use.

Hope you like these. I am going to start working on some Christmas treats soon.

Pre-op today.

Well, I had my pre-op appointment today. I got a lot of questions answered and feel much better about my upcoming surgery.

The big day is Monday, October 24. I have to be at Brigham & Womans by 6 am and surgery should last 3 1/2 hours. But, if all goes well I will be home the same day and back to my normal routine in 2 to 3 weeks.

I feel bad that this is interferring with so many other things going on right now. We will be in the middle of my son's football season so I will be missing 2 - 3 games. I have to reschedule classes I was planning on teaching at Michaels. Luckily no one had signed up for these classes so this was not a bad thing. I just moved some classes up to before my surgery.

I will have to have a sub fill in for me at my pre-school job. Hopefully, how ever is filling my role for this time will get along with my one-on-one student.

On a brighter note. My wieght loss is going better then expected. I am up to 20 lbs lost now. Yes!!! Still have a long way to go but this is a great start.

This past weekend I was hired to put together wedding favors and other items for an upcoming wedding. I was a little stressed over this. I had 5 days to make 105 favor tags, 70 hand-written place cards, 30 hand stamped and inked menu cards. But due to a cold I had yesterday and no ambition to leave the house, I got everything done in one day and the Bride-To-Be was thrilled with everything!!! She even asked if I could do a few more things, but considering her last day of work in the day after tomorrow and I have classes between now and then, I gracefully declined.

I have been playing with halloween and christmas stuff. If I could figure it out I would love to put a video on here of the little treat bags I have been making. I have no idea what I am going to do with them, but I think they are so darn cute.

More medical issues!!!

Yikes, It feels like I finally get one problem solved and something else starts acting up. On the plus side, I have lost almost 16 lbs, but I have pain every single day. So my plus side has its sacrifices, too.

Yesterday was my 20th wedding anniversary. I got the joy of spending at the doctor's office getting another ultrasound done. That was fun.

On to more cheerful things....

I am LOVING my job at Michaels Arts % Crafts!!! I taught a class last night to two wonderful ladies that make me feel so great. I hope they are enjoying this four week class as much as I am.

I hosted a Crop Night last weekend, but only had one cropper, I am hoping more people will become aware of our $5.00 Crop days and start coming on a monthly basis.

The school year has started and the kids are back to their daily routines. Timm with football practice every day. Kelly is loving her teachers this year which makes it a great year for her.

Pick up her uniform for Culinary classes and I wanted to cry. My little girls looks like she is about 25 dressed in her uniform.

She wants to sign up for Cake decorating classes again at Michaels. They start in mid October. I will have to wait to see if I am going to be getting scheduled for surgery or not. Once my doctor ever decided to return my phone call.

A*muse Studio Cards

These are all photos of cards I made at a class on Sunday. Yes, I still like to take classes, too. There is always room to learn something new.

Anyway, the class was held at a hotel in Nashua NH and the company hosting it was A-muse Studios. These are beautiful rubber stamps that were available in select card and scrapbook stores or at online stores.

The company has since changed that and now the only way you can get these are through home workshops very similiar to Stampin Up! or Close To My Heart. The owner, Linda Hartwich, was there and explained the change. With the economy as it is, there were so many small scrapbooking stores that carried her line of stamps but due to financial reasons have been forced to close their doors. Rather then making it more difficult for her customers to find stores still carrying her line of products she restructured her whole business so everyone can get them.

My first impression of the class was that it was a little pricy for the projects we made, but then, all of us attending the class received a free stamp set listing for $21.99 in the catalog so that made it well worth the drive. Plus we each recieved a full line catalog along with the winter catalog that is not even available, yet.

i just thought I would share with you this cute little cards.

This is going to be a Great Week!

I did my Demo at Michael's yesterday. I really enjoyed it. The store felt like 120 degrees and I was probably dripping wet from the heat but I met some wonderful ladies and got to share a little of what I LOVE!!

I was scheduled to do a 2 hour demo on the features of the Cricut Expression machine. Shortly after arriving, way before the store even opened, I found the brand new machine the store had for my demo was defective. It had power and all the featured seemed to work but the little screen did not work. This made it impossible to use for a demo. The screen is what shows all the features the machine can do. So after some scrambling and maybe a little begging, I was giving a brand new exclusive pink edition of the Cricut Expression. I was so excited. Not only is this machine my favorite color!!! PINK, but, it also comes with an extra cartridge (3 in all) that cannot be purchased any other way, other then with this machine.

My demo was scheduled from 11:00 am - 1 pm. We had a ribbon Cutting Ceremony at 9:45, the doors opened at 10 and by 10:05 I had already sold the first Cricut machine. The store only had 3 personal cricut machines in stock but all 3 were sold out within 30 minutes of the store opening it's doors. WOW!!! But it was an amazing deal. The personal cricut that has a retail value of $199 was on sale for $49.00. Even on a Black Friday deals I have never seen this sold for less then $79.00

Anyway, I had people in front of my booth from the time the doors opened until about 1:00 when the prize wheel was started at the back of the store. Congrats to the ladies that won some incredible prizes. I had a few more customers for the next hour and then decided to clean up my booth.

Next on my schedule I will be doing a demo on the Martha Stewart Punch Around The Page punches. This will be Tuesday evening from 4 - 7 pm. I have been playing around with my punches to put some samples together for this.

Wednesday, August 10 from 4 - 7 pm I will be doing a demo using Bazzill cardstock. This is by far the best quality cardstock on the market and I am thrilled that Michaels carries it.

August 25th from 4 - 8 PM is Crop Night. Only $5 for 4 hours of uninterrupted scrapping. Oh, life is good! There are still a few spots left for this so get on over to the store and book your spot. If you want to call and confirm space is still there call. 781-335-0456

I will be siting with the Manager some time over the next few days to schedule classes and I will post them here as soon as I know.

Instructor for Michael's in Weymouth

Good day today. As I was writing in my daily planner I noticed the date. August 6, the new Michael's should be open today. i photo copied my scrapping certificates along with my Michaels' pay stub from last summer and went to check out the new store with hopes of getting a job. I walked in and looked around. The store is Beautiful!! The class room in to die for! So I asked a clerk if they were offering scrapbook classes. She wnt to check and said they will be but not yet. I then asked if they had a teacher, she said not yet. That was what I was hoping for. I asked to talk to the Manager. I told him i would love to teach for them. He asked if I was SDU certified, and I was glad to say "Yes. He stopped talking midstream and said "follow me" He pulled up my info on his computer and said "You are hired! Can you start tomorrow?"

I report to my new job at 9 am in the morning. I am so excited.

I have decided to change my blog to be class oriented. I will post class information here along with any demos I put together.

So for anyone reading this blog tonight...

Michael's in Weymouth is having their Grand Opening tomorrow, August 7. There will be a ribbon Cutting ceremony at 9:45 am. the first 200 cumstomers will each receive a free tote bag. (one per family)

There will be free demos all day long. The Crciut Expression demo is from 11:00 - 1:00 PM. This is what I will be demonstrating. And get this...The first five people that sign up for my Crop and pay for it while in the store will get a FREE Fiskar Paper Trimmer!!!

The crop is scheduled for Thursday, August 25 from 4 pm to 8 pm.

I will also be doing demos on Tuesday and Wednesday evening as well from 4 - 7 PM. Tuesday evening with the the Martha Steward Punches and Wednesday will be Bazzill Card Making.

Hope you can make it to the Grand Opening. If not contact the store for upcoming Scrapbooking classes and/or Crops.

Michaels is located at 729 Bridge St. This is the plaza where Lowes and Staples are located. the phone number is 781-335-0456

Smash Books coming soon

EK Success has come out with an awesome new kind of Art Journal/scrapbook. It is called a Smash Journal and they should be available for purchase starting May 20th. Only 2 days away.
Go to http:/APageinTime.memory-works.com and search for products under K & Company

Cake Decorating

I am back tracking. This post should have been typed up Monday April 11. I wrote it up but didn't get to post it until this morning.

My daughter and I decided to take a Cake Decorating Class at our local Micheal's Craft store. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong! Cooking has never been a talent of mine. I have been married nearly 20 years and this is still something that just does not come easy to me. I try and I try, but my family has just come to terms that I burn everything I cook.

My children will actually cheer when I choose not to cook and order a pizza instead. Obviously if I can't cook, I do not even attempt to try baking.

But... my daughter took a baking class at school and really enjoyed it. I offered to sign her up for an evening cake decorating class. Since she is only 14, I had to sign up, too.

So our first class is tonight. We got our instruction booklets on Friday. I thought we could make a boxed cake mix and bring store bought frosting. No way! The boxed cake mix was fine, but we have to make our own frosting from scratch. The recipe is in the booklet. I was told it is a very simple recipe. I have never made frosting in my life! Then not only do we have to make this recipe from scratch, but we have to double it and since two of us are going, we have to double it twice. So now I am doing chemistry and math along with cooking. Yikes!

Of course, the non-baker that I am, I did not have any of the ingredients, so off to the store to buy everything. I got home, mixed the ingredients EXACTLY word for word, measurement by measurement as the book instructed. I ended up with the largest batter of sweet cement you could ever imagine! My mixer motor was burning up just trying to turn this stuff in the bowl. This was not turning into a good day.

First order of business, My darling husband fixed me a tall Margarita, then I texted the only baking friend I could think of that actually does make all her own frosting. She texted back "Relax, just add a little more milk." This seemed to work. The batter definately looks creamier now. I think I am OK. Tim, My loving 16 year old teen tasted it and in that loving caring way only a teen can say it, told me "This tastes like Crap!" Great! What do I do now. I added some more vanilla extract and that seemed to make it taste a litle better.

Whew! The cakes are all baked and came out fine. The frosting is in the fridge and ready for class. Now I can relax a little. I start reading my class book to see what else we need to bring...

You have got to be kidding me! The frosting I just stressed over is the wrong thickness! Half of our frosting should be thin for the cakes themselves, and the other half should be medium for the decorating.

Time for another Margarita!

So now I dump half the frosting back into my freshly washed sparkling clean mixer, again. Add a little milk until I think it is "Medium". Believe me, if you are not a baker you have no idea what Medium means, I know I have no clue. I added too much milk, so now I have my "thin" frosting. I have one shot left to get the rest correct. It is a little on the thin side but I am going with it.

This whole Cake Decorating was supposed to be fun. I am already thinking...my frosting will be the worst in class and I'll get kicked out of Cake Decorating for Beginners. Alright, maybe that is a little extreme but somewhere along the line I have lost a gene or two I should have been born with. Women are supposed to be born with Motherly instincts, this I do have, but I thought they should also know how to do simple things like cook food for their families and whip up a batch of frosting when the occasion called for it.

Tonight we shall see. The class starts in about an hour. Maybe if I take a shower, dress nice, put on some makeup, no one will notice my awful, tastes-like-crap, too thin to frost, frosting.


Tuesday - Arpil 12

All that stress for nothing. The class was actually fun, though I missed the part that we were supposed to already have our frosting colored and in their frosting bags, ready to go. After spending the first 30 minutes of class getting caught up, we actually enjoyed the class. Of course my daughter's cake actually looked like the design she was going for. She had to go over the top and add all these extra swirls and dots and swiggles just to rub it in a little that she did get that gene that passed me by.

Next week we need to bring cupcakes and MORE frosting.

April Vacation Yah!!

We are off for April vacation. Thank goodness. I so need a break. I am not expecting this week to be too relaxing, though. Both kids have practices and games for baseball and softball. Tim starts his new job this week, so I am sure I will be getting up early to drive him to the train station. The bus stop is 2 houses away but why take this bus when he can guilt his mom into driving him.

Kelly and I have our next Cake Decorating class this Monday. That is a whole blog post in itself.

Celtics are in the play-offs so we will probably get tickets for at least one of the home games.

I was hoping to take a trip out to Six Flags but our schedule is closing in on us.

I have been putting page kits together hoping to get in some scrapping time this week.

Last weekend I did an online scrapping retreat. TRUE SCRAP. It was excellent and I didn't have to pay for a hotel room or meals. I even got to take a could classes still in my pajamas. There were 12 classes in all and a few make and takes, I still have not tried the make and takes yet.

All the classes were very well done, but I think the one I got the most from was a class called Stash Diving by Shimelle (sorry, I forget her last name) Her main emphasis was to stop saving your favorite paper for that elusive lay-out idea that may NEVER come. Use your paper when you buy it. You loved it enough to spend your hard earned money on it, so use it! I have done that some thing so many times, not only with really cool paper but those expensive Jolee 3D stickers. I love them, buy them then don't want to waste them because of what I spent on them so they sit on my Clip-It-Up for years and just look pretty.

Since taking this class, I have been doing just as she suggest. Putting kits together and cutting up my paper! Yes, before I even have a photo selected to go on the paper, I am cutting all my new paper up, matching it with cardstock and putting it aside until I pull out some photos and scrap them. Just today alone I had to have made about 30 kits ready for photos and journaling.

So in between my taxi service this coming week I may get more pages done towards my 2011 challenge of a page a day.

I hope everyone else that is off this week gets to enjoy their time with their kids and even by themselves, if they prefer.

Happy Scrapping!

11 Days and Counting

I still have the Respiratory infection, but I am finally breathing a little easier. I went and saw a different Doctor this week and he didn't say the other Doctor was wrong in her diagnosis, but this Doctor has Asthma, as well, and knew exactly how I was felling. He said I would not get better until I got on steriods. So I have been taken pills like every 2 hours but can honestly say I am starting to feel a difference.

The worst part about breathing problems is even though I am home I am useless. I can't do ANYTHING without aggravating my breathing, so I sit and read or watch movies.

That gets really boring by day 11!

Last night I was feeling up to a little project. My daughter's history class is discussing ancient architecture, specifically old Cathedrals. For a project she has to make a poster board with questions and answers. I cut out this Stain Glass Window for her board. It was tedious as I had to figure out how to cut out the transparencies for the colored glass but I am happy with the finished results. I cut it using Make The Cut software. She still has to do the whole rest of her poster board but this little extra should help.



I think my son was a little upset that I was helping her with her project. I tried to explain the difference. My daughter gets a project with a three week window to complete. She tells me about it right away, She is excited to have a project to do, she jumps right into doing the research on it, she like to get it finished early, maybe score some extra credit, and be done with it.

My son can have the same window of time, he will never mention the project to myself or his father, then wait three weeks and start it at 10 pm the night before it is due and wonders why I can't help him at that point?

This makes me think, I should find out if he does have any projects coming up. I'll have to ask him.

So Much For The Flu

I gave in to my hubby's request and went to the Doctor's. It's not the flu, I have a respitory infection along with a bladder infection. I am on temperature watch. If it hits 101 call the doctor but otherwise stay home, take antibiotics, excelerate my asthma medicine dosages and drink lots of fluids. So to read between the lines is, I feel too crappy to lay in bed, laying flat makes my breathing worse. But I don't have the energy to scrap either and my workshop feels too cold anyway.

So I am bumbling around the house feeling awful. I have been sick for 4 days now and it shows. The house looks like the seven dwarfs have been staying here. Hubby and the kids tend to leave things were they fall. I tried to straighten up a little, then I can't breath. So I watch movies. I just watched Namesake. This was very good. A grown man learned about his Indian background and culture. I know I watched others but its a blur now. I don't even remember what I watched. I did see an old Alfred Hitchcock movie this morning about a woman that kept moving around and robbing from big corporations but I fell asleep and missed the ending.

Well, that is about it for my boring day.

recent layouts

These are the layouts I done since Saturday. As you can see I jump around to different years, themes, whatever Ifeel like working on.


This was a monthly kit from Basic Gray. My daughter and I went to see Mary Poppins in Boston over February vacation. The play was incredible!!!


This layout was put together using older supplies from my scrap room. This and the next layout were of photos from a cruise back in 2009 my hubby and I took without the kids. It was great and we are so overdue for another one of these.


While on the cruise we were picked to be on a game show. Love and Marriage, think The Newlyweds, It was very embarrassing with the questions we asked but we won!


This layout was a kit by Out On A Limb Scrapbooking. I order from them all the time. The best quality page kits and the lowest prices.

This layout was of snorkling photos of my daughter on a Disney Cruise. At the time my daughter wasn't 4 or 5, she was nine years old and already almost as tall as I am. She did great all the way out until we saw a large submarine submerged at the bottom. She was so done with snorkeling. She was afraid a shark or something would swim out of it. She climbed up onto my back and had me swim her all the way back to shore.



Another Out On A Limb Scrapbooking kit. This was a scrapping retreat from January of this year. The most pages I ever completed in one weekend - 49 pages. I think that is a record for me.

Home sick with the Flu

Well, Kevin had it to start with and was nice enough to share. Now I am home sick with the flu. Can only lay in bed for so long when my asthma kicks up and have to sit up again for a while.

This makes for guilt free scrapping time, though. I finished 4 pages in between fits of coughing.

Now it's time to head to the Doctor's office to see if there is anything else I can take to help my breathing.

I am so tired of being sick this year. Enough Already!! I am healthy and happy, I am healthy and happy. I love my life. Now to repeat that about 100 times.

3 weeks to complete but I'm happy

Well, I finally finished the whole re-organizing of my scrap room. These are the photos I took just a few minutes ago. I am so happy to be able to scrap now and get at everything I need - when I need it. Before I was always getting up and walking around the room to find what I needed. The only thing I have to get up for now is the Cricut. I did have this right next to my scrapping corner, but it just took up too much space so I moved it to the opposite corner. Let me know how you like it.


This is the desk I sit at when doing non-scrapping stuff, paying bills, reading emails,etc. And as you can see, it is the only place in the room that is still messy but I will get to it.



My darling husband built me these recessed shelves on this wall here when he first built this room for me. They used to be strictly for wooden stamps sets but now I have so many acrylic sets that these have found new use for my paint, pens, punches and so on, along with some wooden stamp sets.



This is my main Scrapping space. Everything I go to is within arms reach. I am loving it and wish I had set this up this way years ago. If you are wondering why there is a window...
This room was built for me when my kids were 5 and 6. The other side of the window was a part of the basement that wasn't finished. It was a playroom for the kids and their friends so I could scrap and keep an eye on them at the same time. My son is now 16 and this has become the Man Cave/ Bedroom and if I am scrapping late at night or early in the morning I hang my black "Stampin Up!" banner over the window so my lights don't bother him.



This corner is for my current Stampin Up! cardstock on the racks. Underneath I store my Clip-It spinners for all my stickers. The drawers are from IKEA and I store tools in them (heat gun, acrylic blocks, etc)



This in my work bench. Sometimes I get tired of sitting and like to stand while I work. This is also where I tend to do any stamping, embossing, etc. The cabinets above and racks below all hold cardstock and background paper. One of the reasons I can't even think of getting into digital scrapping. I have way to much paper!!



This last photo is another piece from IKEA. It fit in this corner perfect and is now holding my cricut along with the many cartridges, booklets, mats, vinyl and what ever. I also store my acrylic stamps and photo printer here.

I didn't take any photos of the hallway. I didn't really do any re-organizing out there. My die cut center, Mini Store, and lots of storage shelves are out in the hallway.

Two more layout completed

Its after midnight and way past my bedtime, but I just wanted to post the pages I completed tonight.


This layout is about a Weekend Scrapping Retreat I attended with my sister in January.



These photos are older. This is a layout about my daughter snorkling while we were on a Disney Cruise a few years ago.

I would have been in bed hours ago, but darling hubby has what I am guessing is the flu. He is all aches and pains and is running a fever. At 10:30 he asked if I would be willing to run out and get him some orange juice. So he got his juice and some flu medicine and I decided to try to finish the pages I started earlier today.

We had plans for the day tomorrow, but I am thinking we will be housebound tomorrow. If that is the case I hope to get more scrapping done. I am up to 81 pages for my Page A Day Challenge for 2011.

I thought I was done

It is Monday afternoon. I was so excited yesterday morning. I actually thought I was done with my scraproom. I purged tons of stuff to good causes or the trash. I went through every sheets of paper, every sticker, every embellishment...

Everything in tucked away in its own proper place. I can actually sit back relax and maybe even scrapbook a little...

Until...

I must have set off the cleaning bug, because my darling husband decided to clean out the back corner of the basement. You know the one I am talking about. Everyone has one. That far off side of the basement that turns into a No Man's Land. Once things get stored there you never expect to see them again?

Well, that was the part my husband decided to attack yesterday. My nice clean scraproom turned into the dumping ground for all kinds of boxes and containers I had forgotten about that were full to the top with either scrapping supplies or craft supplies from my many years of being a Daisy / Brownie / Junior / Girl Scout troop Leader.

I thought I was done sorting. Now where am I going to put all this stuff?!! I started sorting, AGAIN, last night. And should be down there now doing more sorting. Luckily the pre-school I work at will benefit from all the craft stuff I am finding, paint brushes, fun foam, glue, crayons, construction paper, etc.

My sister always jokes that I should sign up for Scrap Shopping anonmys. Now after spending all this time sorting and trying to organize, I think she may be right.


I did get some really good news today. For months now I have been trying to find a location to run a monthly scrapbook group. Today I have comfirmed space. A local church is renting their hall to me the first Saturday of every month. Yes!!! I am so excited about this. The space is beautiful, spacious, has bathrooms close by, a kitchen we can use, plenty of parking. Now I just need to start getting the word out and start building up a group of scrappers.

Time to Re-Organize

This week we are off for school vacation week. I was planning on spending the whole week on re-organizing my workshop but due to stomach bugs and colds working their way through the whole family, the week is half over and today was the first day i really put any effort into it.

If you were to look at my room now you would say it looks terrible. That is because it does. I did manage to clear off two work counters, a whole storage shelf and a bunch of storage boxes I had not opened in years. But the contents of what I cleared out are spread all over the rest of my room right now.

I did fill a 30 gallon trash barrel, I also donated a rubbermaid storage container filled with supplies to a local high school scrapbooking group, and I put away some still useful things I could use for classes in the future.

Now I have to come up with storage ideas for the things I do want to keep. Plus I still have another quarter of my room to go through. It feels totally overwhelming, but I know I will love it when I am through.

The toughest part is when I find something I had forgotten I even had. Ideas start going though my head and I want to sit down and create. Which if I keep doing this, I will never get through this project. I am hoping to get one more full day of pulling stuff out, purging, donating, and boxing up. Then, over the weekend, I hope to re-organize my whole system of storage and being able to start playing.

The big goal I am aiming for is to have everything that I use most often within the reachable areas from where I sit. Then the things I use less frequently can get stored on the other side of my workshop. I am amazed at how much stuff I still have from when I first starting scrapping over 10 years ago. Boy, have styles and products changed.

I tried to add a video but it did not work. Sorry.

Over the past 3 weeks I have been buying Jetmax storage cubes from Michaels Craft store, I grabbed a narrow desk from the close out section at IKEA and a new counter top from IKEA, as well. The rest of the furniture in the room I already had. It is all from IKEA.

I will take some photos when it is complete.

Today I adopted a Soldier

Hi to anyone that may be reading this.

I am proud to say I adopted a soldier today. It may sound odd but I actually found out about this program from a Holiday Movie, "The Christmas Card". This was a wonderful story about a girl writing a letter to an unknown soldier serving our country overseas.
The soldier who recieved her letter carried it with him always. When the soldier got leave, he traveled to the town where the letter came from. Long story short...they fall in love and live happily ever after. That was the movie, but in the special features they talked about how much soldiers love to hear from home. Even if it is just a card or letter, once in a while, and the movie talked about Adopting a Soldier.

Recently I talked to my children about how hard it would be to be so far away from your family so we decided we would do this.

I am starting with one contact and hope to add more over time. I also hope my children learn something from this effort, as well.

Any one interested...
I did a google search and typed in "Adopt a Soldier' and was surprised how many organizations there are out there so I will not say one is better than another but the one I joined is called "Adopt a US Soldier".

I signed up on Saturday and was giving my soldier's name and contact information today, Monday. So there is a quick response time. I hope this does not mean that there are a lot more soldiers looking for supporter then there are supporter signing up for this program.

Any way I highly recommend everyone doing this!

Quick Update

My New Year's Resolutions are underway.
I joined weight Watchers to get their program books (then I quit, but I wanted the books to learn about the new point system) I plan on staying on the program on my own and I am journaling my food.

I have been searching for a location to offer monthly crops without any luck but I am not giving up. I will be hosting my first crop at my house.

I have been scrapping!! I have done 55 pages since Jan 1. So I am ahead of my goal of a page a day.

I am feeling better later, so plan to slowly start excersicing again.