Very Blessed

Well, I made some great headway with the scrap room this weekend. I am so blessed with friends and family. When I decided to paint my sisters, Sherri and Kim, showed up to help. I didn't even ask them. So there were four of us on the first day (mom is always a trooper) and then Kim stayed the next day and my friend Renee came over. It was a bit traumatic because the original color I picked out looked way too yellow in the daylight and we were almost done. So what could have been a day and a half job turned into a three day job. Such is life sometimes. Guess you could look at it as more fellowship time. ;-)

This weekend was the put together the cupboards from IKEA weekend and my friend Rebecca volunteered to come over to help. We made a really good team and got a lot done on Saturday. Sunday just about did me in though. Drilling the holes in the doors for the handles was pretty easy but when it came time to try to attach the doors it was not pleasant. I had two different sets of hardware to figure out. They must be in transition with their hardware vendor. They made it look so easy in the picture but it took forever and I thought it would never end. It did involve a little cussing here and there. Mom was a real trooper and tried to help but resorted to cleaning up the huge pile of cardboard left in the aftermath.

I'm used to being very self sufficient but it is so cool when people actually want to help you and volunteer. Thanks girls for all your wonderful help!!

Album for little girls

Well, I finished another gift album. This one was geared towards being viewed by little girls and I used the new DCWV Pocket Full Of Posies paper with all its glitter. The pictures didn't come out that well. That's what you get when you try to do it at night with lamp light and a flash. I really liked the paper but I still look at the pages and wish I had come up with something more to do. They look a little plain to me. The friend I gave it to thinks it's pretty and that's what really matters. I'm ready to start another one for a new mother of a baby girl.

Some day maybe I'll actually get back to scrapping my Paris pictures. And then there are the 2000 pictures from England that I'm trying to pare down.

My Sister's birthday card

Here is the card I made for my sister's birthday. I played with a glass effect on some of the flowers. The only drawback was that when it dried it curled a bit and I found out the hard way you don't want to straighten it out (cracks). I used a glass art bead to give it additional dimension.



Oh, and I did make it back to IKEA. I was a little overzealous thinking I could get the rest of the stuff in the back of the Jeep. I did manage to get the rest of the cupboards but it's going to take a truck to get the bookcases and table. I'll at least be able to tackle getting the cupboards put together this weekend and hopefully make some headway on organizing scrap stuff.

ttfn

Half a step closer

Well, I went to IKEA last night and bought as much stuff as would fit in the back of my Wrangler so I'm about half way done with the purchasing part. Going tonight to see if I can fit the rest of it in and get it home. Then comes the back breaking fun part of putting it all together. The dangling carrot is that then I will be able to move my scrap stuff in from the garage and get it all nice and organized. I can hardly wait! The idea of having a place to work and to put things away almost takes my breath away. And no I'm not exagerating. Once it's done I'll post some before and after photos.

Tomorrow is another day at Archiver's. Went last Saturday too. Two weekends in a row! That's just crazy talk. I'm working on another photo gift album and was able to get a good portion done last week. A couple more pages and then I'm on to embellishing the pages. This one is geared towards little girls and is all sparkly. Love all that glitter! The only draw back to working at Archiver's is they are quite popular of late and you have to get there almost a half hour before the store opens to get in line. Especially when one of the rooms is being used for other stuff for the day. If it wasn't for all the supplies available it might not be worth it. I'm pretty sure we are going to start rotating meeting at homes for a bit.

Today I received my February kit from Scraptivity and it has really great stuff. It has cotton linter and molds to make your own dimensional embellishments. Can't wait to try it out. The kits have really pretty paper but they are really a little pricey. If they didn't come with Gel-a-tin stamps each month I wouldn't do it. Once my subscription is done, though, I'm going to let it go. I have so many stamps now you'd think I'd have enough. But there is always some great new one coming out. Oh well, what's a girl to do. It's a good thing I'm not married cause I'd try any man's patience. Course he'd probably try mine too. ha!

ttfn

Planning the craft room

Well, a couple of weeks ago I trekked down to IKEA to see about purchasing the organization cabinets I had picked out and they were out of stock. That and after seeing them in real life I didn't like the color of the wood. So I looked at everything and picked out another line but that meant going back to the drawing board to figure out how much I need of what.

So now I've got that all figured out again and have to make another trek to IKEA and of course the really fun part of putting it all together. I can hardly wait to have an actual area to organize my stuff and to work. Right now everything is in plastic organizers stacked in the garage. It makes it really hard to get creative.

The other exciting thing is for Christmas I received gift cards to Showcase, a photography store. The also have classes so I'm now signed up for Photography 101. I am so looking forward to learning how to play with the settings on my camera. I think I take good pictures but I want to take great pictures. Every now and then I go to pbase.com and look at some of the really wonderful photos there and see just how much I have to learn. I love photos of nature and textures and architectural features.

Here are a few favorites from one of the trips to the Blue Ridge Parkway.