It's Monday

AND I took today off work!! YIPPY!! I'm going to tackle my rubber stamps again and hopefully make a birthday card for my coworker. I will post pictures if I get the darned thing made today. I spent so many hours on paperwork yesterday and it was almost 12:30 before I got in bed. Today I have done a bit more and it will only take me about another 15 minutes before it's all done...until Patrick comes home with more, that is! lol. So I'm off to finish that up so I can tackle my rubber stamps with a clean conscience.

UPDATE:

OK...I lied! lol. I ended up tackling another project. A while back I ordered 10 Scraponizer organizers for the Cricut cartridges. Today I gathered up all of my cartridges (41 currently with 4 more on order) and took them out of their boxes and put them into the Scraponizer. That thin plastic container holds 4 carts along with their overlays and booklets. I also had to go to Cricut.com and get them registered since I had only registered the first 10 or so I bought back in late 2007. 6 of my carts are the Solutions cartidges with don't come with instructions booklets. I bought a separate organizer for them. It is the size of 2 cart boxes and when you open it up it has a spot for 4 carts on one side and 4 on the other, with the overlays underneath. I have room for 2 more! :)....and that works out well since I think 2 of the new carts I ordered are Solutions carts.

It's just past 3:30 p.m. now so I might still start on the rubber stamps...or plan dinner. :)

My Saturday

First off I want to apologize for not blogging in a while. We have had some HUGE computer issues. We had let our virus program lapse a long time ago. Well, those chickens finally came home to roost!! We had a few nasty viruses and spyware, etc, on our computer. I bought the new Norton 360 virus protection and paid the extra to have them install it and do a complete tune-up on the computer. After a few days there were still problems - turns out they hadn't removed the virus before installin the Norton 360. So I placed another call and they spent about 6 hours working on my computer remotely (I LOVE THIS - I don't have to hang on the phone with them - they take over the computer and do all the work while I clean house or cook or whatever. They just call me when they need me). After 2-3 days the computer was locking up again and not working right. So I then had to go to the virus specialist and spend $99 to have them completely remove the virus. They give you a week for that $99. Well, it still wasn't working right. So yesterday I called them back and they spent a couple of hours on it and finally it is working like a champ!! I am really pleased with the turnout but just wish it hadn't taken so long to get fixed. Now on with my story:

Yesterday I decided to make a big pot of Spaghetti sauce. I then decided to invite Jahn and Deb over for dinner. They are such dear friends of mine and I love having them over...plus they always bring a fabulous bottle of red wine to share!! They have a great wine collection and love to share. Jahn is a professional artist - yes, he actually is lucky enough to get paid to do what he loves. I'm so jealous. When they were over for dinner on St. Patrick's day Jahn took his first tour of my scrapping room. He walked in, looked around and said "Why would you ever leave this room?". I just love him for that statement! He truly understands art and the love of crafting. Deb is pretty crafty herself. So last night we made another trek up to the room and ended up spending quite a bit of time up there. Deb discovered my Glimmer Mist collection and I'm going to be sending her to http://www.stampingscrapping.com/ to buy some. This is my new favorite online store. The owner, Cindy, prides herself on her superior customer service. She personally calls her customers and lets them know if there are any problems or issues. She only charges exact shipping...but has recently discovered that she spends so much money in packing supplies and tape that she has finally added $1 to every order to help make up that cost. She truly loves her customers and only wants to make them happy. We have become fast friends now! She is such a busy lady, too. She has a storefront either Wisonsin or Minnesota (I can never keep those 2 states straight in my mind) and that is called Lasting Impressions. Her husband really pitches in to help her pack and ship. She likes to ship packages out immediately upon receiving the items herself so her customers don't have to wait. Couple that with her fabulous customer service and it's no wonder why she is so beloved by her customers. She also has a Yahoo group - stampingscrappingdotcom. Check it out - join her group - you won't be sorry!!

After dinner Pat and Jahn headed to Starbucks and Deb and I headed out to the Streets of London Pub. It was for a going-away party for my dear friend, Helen. She, along with another friend, Sarah, owned my LSS (Local Scrapbook Store), Scrapbook Addict. I LOVED this store. They had moved from Elk Grove, CA, to West Sacramento 2-3years ago. Unfortunately they had to close the store at the beginning of this year and I'm SO sad about that. I loved having their store literally 1 mile from my house! I did my best to try to keep them in business, but to no avail. Anyway, Helen and her husband are moving to Utah. They had talked about moving there over the years but it was never the right time. Well Helen lost the store and her husband was laid off so it became the right time. She got hired on at OhMyCrafts in Utah so now her husband just has to find a job in Utah. OhMyCrafts is another store I shop at online and I'm just tickled that she went to work there...in fact, I think I'm the one who told her about that store as a good source for Cricut cartridges. They are having an Alaskan cruise in May and I'm really wanting to go...but my oldest son, Dustin, (who is currently in Kuwait/Iraq) is wanting to take me on vacation when he gets back from the Mideast. He is hoping to get back the middle of April. He'll have 2 weeks of non-chargeable leave but he can't leave Texas. After that he will put in for vacation and we will head to Disneyland, California Adventure, Legoland and the San Diego Wild Animal Park. I'm SO looking forward to spending this time with Dustin and my wonderful, darling, adorable grandson, James.

We also had our taxes done yesterday and I'm still doing the happy dance today. Our tax bill is about half of what we thought it would be! I just can't tell you how happy that makes me since I thought we might owe close to $30k.

Okay...now I'm off to tackle the HUGE mound of paperwork for my auction business. But it's with a much lighter heart :)

Hugs to all of you who took the time to read this!

My haul from the Scrapbook Expo in Pleansanton, CA

On March 21st I headed to the Scrapbook Expo in Pleasanton, CA, with my 2 dear friends, Nicky and Lucy. Lucy is not a scrapbooker but she is a crafter...hand her a glue gun and she can make some amazing Christmas wreaths...she even made me an awesome Halloween wreath one year. I met Nicky online with a Cricut Yahoo group and we have become fast friends...but I digress. I picked up Nicky in Concord and we went together to the Pleasanton Fairgrounds for the Expo. Upon walking into the building it was truly sensory overload...where do you start? What do you look at first? Which direction should we head....we were little lost sheep with no Little Bo Peep to guide us along! lol. We did manage to find our way around but it took a few hours. There was SO much to do and see. I went to the Expo in Sacramento last October but I have always wanted to check out some others. By the time we were done, Nicky and I were loaded down with packages!! I darn near lost the circulation in my arms from the weight of the packages. Below are the photos of most of my purchases.



These are just a variety of lazer-cut pages and dies that I couldn't resist!










This is a great CD program the turns your photos into kaleidoscopes and other shapes. Really cool and user friendly...but I can't use it on my Mac :(. Also in the upper left hand corner of the photo is an empty storage box for my Cricut Solutions cartridges.



These are the goodies I bought at Tattered Angels. There are chipboard alphas and masks and other goodies. I already have all the Glimmer Mist they make - I LOVE that stuff!!



This is a scrapping pad - you put it on your chair and put things in the pockets - very accessible! The blue thing is a fold up bag - you can use it to put in your scrap trash or hold scrapping items.



This is the core-dinations cardstock I bought...and the air canister and air gun for my Copic markers...which should be in any day now!!



These are various epoxy stickers I bought...and some clear glue and, of course, some more Prima flowers because I don't have enough! lol




These are very cute chipboard pieces. I thought $1 a package was a great deal!





Of course I couldn't resist buying more rubber stamps...even though I'm going to have to take the wood off. Most of the stamps I bought were acrylic, but these were too cute!



Here are some of the acrylic stamps I bought...and the laser-cut cheerleader is for a gag card for a co-worker.



And more acrylic stamps



And here is some more acrylic stamps....



And more



more



The last of the acrylic stamps. Also pictured is a rubber stamp cleaner and a lazer-cut die package.



These are stencils to use for etching glass.



These are pencil-like rubber stamps...I won't bother taking these off the wood...and the other block has 4 rubber stamps - one on each side...and it's pretty thin, so it will stay on the wooden block as well.



These are the last of the stamps...the 2 packages contain unmounted rubber stamps. and the other ones are just on thin blocks and they will stay mounted on the wood.



I so lied about that being the last of the acrylic stamps! I love acrylic stamps. Also pictured are a few colors of the Shimmerz I bought. I want to see if I like the Shimmerz before buying more colors.



Here are a couple more Tim Holtz stamps I bought (I have several of his sets already).



Surprise surprise - it's more acrylic stamps! lol



This is truly the last of the acrylic stamps. In fact, a friend was over last night and noticed I already had this stamp (Heide Swapp's Damask stamp) so I gave it to her. :)

My new Rubber Stamp Organizer

Well I have been sick since last week...and now that I'm feeling better I'm getting stuff accomplished. My house is SO clean now that I hate to leave it to go to work tomorrow. I left work last Friday at 1:00 in the afternoon sick...so I should be ready to return.

A week or two ago I went to Staples to find a large Rolodex. I am in the process of removing the rubber from my stamps and I am stamping the images out onto Rolodex cards before I remove the rubber. Well, they had the Rolodex cards at Staples, but not the larger Rolodex itself. When I got back to the car I mentioned to my dh what I was looking for. He proceeds to tell me that he has one in the garage from his old office. We get home and he digs it out for me. It's an old, ugly tan metal one - you know, that kind that could wishstand a nuclear blast. I took one look at that and said "I'm going to have to change that up". He was okay with that and assured me he'd never use it again - especially if I was going to bling it up. Here are the before and after pictures. I only took a before picture of the bottom - sorry - but it will give you an idea of what it looked like before.

Invitation I made

Well I finally came down with bug that struck my dh and MIL. Sigh. I was feeling quite high and mighty not having caught the bug in all this time. AND I go back to work tomorrow and I've been informed that I will be in charge. So not fair...now I definitely can't call in sick....ugh.

I was somewhat productive today despite being sick. I got a good head start on the invitations for my son's girlfriend's Senior Recital. She's a senior in college and she is graduating in May. April 4th is the day she's giving her Senior Recital - it's a concert that she has to give and it has to be at least 45 minutes. She's a Music/Theology major and hopes to lead a music ministry one day. I am adding the photo that I just took but it didn't come out very well. When I get a better photo I will replace this one with the better one. I printed the photo and words on vellum and inked the edges with Cat's Eye Queue Chestnut ink and then attached that to pink cardstock (which I also inked with same ink) with silver brads that I painted a dark pink using Adirondack Alcohol Inks. I attached the pink cardstock to cream-colored cardstock (using my ATG tape gun) that was also inked with the Chestnut Brown ink.

Today is my first day off work for this work cycle. It started off with some major computer issues. Nothing would download - rather, I should say it would download but NOT come up for view after downloading. Then, nothing would shut down, even with Cntrl-Alt-Del. SO I was not a happy camper. It didn't need defragging but I did delete all the temp files and the Recycle Bin to free up some space. I don't know what the issue was, but it took several restarts to get it going right again. Sigh. Not how I wanted to spend my morning. So, I'm still in jammies because my other laptop (My MAC) has some upgrades so it required a restart...and now it's hung up as well...it's been a couple of hours and NOTHING!!! Still shows Installing 5 items. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... That's the computer I use for my auction business and I wanted to submit last month's bills to my clients. Sigh. Maybe I'll just start taking the rubber off my wooden stamps instead. It's a sign I was meant to work on scrapping stuff instead. lol. I am going to call Apple to see what the dealio is on my baby....I NEVER have to talk to India with Mac Tech Support - that alone is a HUGE bonus! lol Maybe I should clean house before tackling some of my rubber stamps? I spent a few hours recently stamping images on Rolodex card files and writing on the back of the cards all the info I had on the stamp. I will then store them in the Rolodex card file (Thanks for that great idea, Martie!) and the card will have the drawer that stamp will be located in. Ultra-organized when it's all done...it's just a matter of getting started - I have SO many wooden stamps!! I'm only buying acrylic stamps now. :)

Until later.............BIG hugs to all of you!