Katie the Scrapbook Lady

Three weeks until a wedding

Wedding

1. crafting 365 - day 87, 2. Cake topper, 3. Wedding Cake Macro, 4. wedding ring

 

My youngest brother is getting married in just about 3 weeks. Wow! I’m excited for him and his sweet bride-to-be. I’m looking forward to a lot of celebrating with family. I also need to figure out what on earth I’m going to wear. Guess I better get busy on that!

 

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a not so ordinary spring day

 

I’ve given up on the idea of trying to record an “ordinary day” because I can’t remember the last time I had one. Each day seems to bring completely unique experiences and I really can’t even begin to pin down a certain routine or pattern to document. Instead, I’m going to embrace the fact that today is like no other day I have ever lived or probably ever will live. I guess when you think about it, that’s true every single day.

Here’s what I’m up to today:

• woke up at 6:30 a.m.
• cleaned most of the house and started a load of laundry
• left at 7:30 to drive my daughter to school and let her drive through some neighborhood streets so she could practice her driving
• finished cleaning the house and getting it “picture perfect” since it is going on the market today – selling a house is a lot of work!
• took a shower and got myself ready for the day
• had a piece of toast with organic apricot jam on it for breakfast and took my vitamins
• sat down to write this blog post (running late on that today)
• working next to my son while he is checking out some of his favorite websites; Neopets, Jim Hill Media, and Game FAQs
• going to get caught up on answering emails – I have a lot of unanswered ones sitting in my inbox
• transferring a load of laundry to the dryer and starting the new one
• will be mailing the physical copies of my tax information to our tax preparer, we’ve already submitted everything electronically
• will be sorting through a file cabinet drawer that has been the home to all the papers I’ve been stuffing it with until I “had the time to deal with them”
• watching online lectures with my son for his criminal justice class. The lectures are long and boring and he has a hard time staying engaged with them unless I’m also watching. It doesn’t make it easier that the teacher has a heavy foreign accent (hard to understand) and that he speaks in a completely monotone voice. I’ll be glad when this class is over in a few weeks.
• having lunch with my son (probably something from the freezer like a burrito and he will have vegetarian mini corn dogs or vegetarian chickn nuggets)
• help my son set up his itunes on his new laptop computer
• working on some templates I have in progress right now
• taking a tour of a nearby facility that I will be blogging about (it’s really cool!)
• calling my mom on the phone for our usual weekday chat
• helping my daughter with any homework she might have – and by helping, I really mean just encouraging her. She is the one who has to do the work.
• purchasing some gift certificates for a teacher appreciation week event, and for a friend who has gone out of his way to help us
• contacting and paying the friend who fixed our back deck recently
• figuring out what to make for dinner that won’t make a mess or take too much time (sounds like a takeout night to me!)
• working on some blog posts for this blog and for The Daily Digi
• scrapping a layout or two for the June Digi Files – yes, we work that far in advance! We have to because there’s a lot that has to happen to make it all come to life on June 1st.
• probably cave in and go get takeout for dinner
• drive my daughter to a social activity this evening and pick her up when it’s over
• do some online research and browsing for some furniture and organization ideas for our new house
• fold and put away those 2 loads of laundry done during the day – have kids and hubby help me
• sweep and mop my office floor
• maybe play a game with my kids after her activity? We love to have game time!
• look over my list and realize I still have quite a bit to do before bedtime, and work until I can’t keep my eyes open
• go to bed

It will be interesting to look at this list at the end of the day to see if anything changed in my plans. What’s on your agenda today?

 

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A paper relapse

I’ve got something to confess…I’ve had a paper relapse! I’ve felt it coming on for months. I could see the warning signs, but I chose to ignore them.

• First, I went to CHA back in January. It was so hard to pass up all those booths. They were like old friends beckoning to me. Stickers, paper, buttons, and more. I told myself to stay strong. Stay digital! I made it.
• I started smashbooking. The allure of finding paper goods to add to our Smash Book has been tempting. I’ll admit that I’ve bought some supplies at Target here and there.
• I ventured into one of my old haunts (Paper Creations) in February to search for some 12x12 papers to frame. I confessed my “sins” on The Digi Show and we all had a good giggle. Peppermint also confessed as she has been using quite a bit of traditional paper supplies for her mini pocket scrapbook. Who knew she had such a flair for all that crafty stuff?

All of those things were just minor dalliances. Nothing that would worry the digital scrapbooking world. Then it happened…

 

I walked into an Archiver’s for the very first time. It was an accident, really. My mom was in town and we were waiting to meet my brother who was running late. We found ourselves in Orem with nothing to do but kill time. We decided to go to the mall and we were surprised to find an Archiver’s store staring us in the face. I knew we were in trouble because after only a few steps inside, we were gushing phrases like “oh how cute!” and “did you see this?” and “when did this come out?” – it was like we had stepped back in time to 2002 when we would go on wild paper shopping binges.

What was I doing? I LOVE digital scrapbooking! I don’t want to go back to paper, but I can’t seem to resist all the beautiful supplies once I get around them. I have a weakness for all types of scrapbooking goodies I guess. Any my daughter was no help at all. She suddenly saw a new world open up to her. She convinced me that she would love to keep a quote journal using all of these fantastic BoBunny Misc. Me products. I totally caved.

 

Then I started seeing Simple Stories pieces that would be “perfect” for our travel Smash Book. Again, I lost my willpower.

 

It’s ok though, we will use these. We “need” these things. I also thought I needed a roll of washi tape for our Smash Book. I think 8 rolls of tape is reasonable for 1 book, don’t you?

 

Oops! Do I need stickers? I haven’t bought stickers in years and it felt soooooooo good to have them in my hands again.

 

Badges? Oh yes. Oh my oh my, yes!

 

It’s a good thing my phone rang at that point. My brother was out in the parking lot and ready for us to come and meet him for lunch. Who knows how many badges I would have bought myself if I had more time? Instead, I went and paid for my loot and spent enough that I could have probably bought 11 or 12 nice sized digital kits for the same price. I tried not to think about that. After all, if I’m going to be “Katie the Scrapbook Lady” I need to do “market research” like this, right?

 

All I can say is that it’s a good thing I don’t live in Orem. Archiver’s is a super fun store!

 

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Springy

 

I’ve been enjoying the spring season lately and my neighbor must be feeling the same way because she made these gorgeous cake pops and shared some with me. They were so pretty that it was hard to eat them… until I took a bite. Once I realized how delicious they were, I got over the fear of destroying them. After all, I have a picture of them.

We are also in the middle of spring break around here so my daughter is home from school. My parents are in town this week and we’ve been having a lot of fun together. I’m going to keep this short and sweet today since I have so much going on. Hope all of you have a happy day!

 

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Scrapbook Expo and some fun meetups

This has definitely been the year for me to finally get to meet some fabulous people from the digital scrapbooking community in real life. It was a thrill for me to go to CHA back in January, and this time around my peeps came to my hometown for the Scrapbook Expo. A lot of ladies from Scrap Orchard were in town for the show and got together for dinner on Thursday night. I was lucky enough to be able to join them for some pizza, visiting, and a lot of fun!

Pictured from left to right:

• Cheri of Dream Big Designs
• Jen who is a staff admin at Scrap Orchard
• Chelle of Chelle’s Creations
• me 
• Meredith Cardall
• Suzy of SuzyQ Scraps 
• another Jen who is also a staff member at Scrap Orchard
• Kristin Aagard

and since Kami Leonard of Ziggle Designs & big wig at Scrap Orchard was the one taking the picture, she isn’t in this one.  She’s between me and Cheri in this photo though.

 

It was such a fun night! I had the opportunity to hang out with some of these ladies in Anaheim in January so it was like meeting up with old friends. The other ladies were so easy to visit with and it was fun to meet some of the designers who I’ve admired for so long.

 

Steph came to town on Saturday afternoon and we went to lunch at Brio (yum) and then headed over to the expo. Kami was such a sweetheart and gave Steph and I a few t-shirts and some sweatshirt jackets. So nice! I absolutely love the saying on this shirt – “anything you can do I can do DIGI”   

 

The Scrap Orchard booth was adorable!

 

 

We also stopped by the Scrap Matters booth and I got to meet Amber of Stolen Moments Designs (also owner of Scrap Matters) and Angie of Down this Road Designs. Both of them were so sweet!

 

And Steph and I had so much fun with their photobooth props!

 

It was fun to see Chari – the owner of Persnickety Prints. I met her a few years ago at a blog conference, and it was so nice to see her again. I guess you feel a special bond with someone who prints out your layouts and makes them come to life!

 

Steph and I spent a little more time together after the expo, and then it was time to say goodbye. It was much too short of a visit! I feel very lucky to have met so many great digi peeps from The Lily Pad, Scrap Orchard, and Scrap Matters this year. I wish I could meet even more of the designers who live on my external hard drive. I also wish I could meet everyone on The Daily Digi team. That would be awesome! You never know, it could happen.

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