Shopping til you drop...

I'm surrounded by shoppers, at home and at work - shoppers, shoppers everwhere! The funny thing is they all fall into different categories, let me explain.



The Shopaholic Diva: One guess as to who this is...Alexa, duh! She loves to shop, so much so that she keeps the shopping bags (only the cool stores, of course) as souvenirs. When she gets home she shows us everything she bought, emphasizes the items on sale and then she goes up to her room and photographs her buys! I kid you not. She's got a ton of pictures on her camera of her clothes - oh, to reminisce about the good times!



The Vegas High Roller: This one might be a little harder to guess. It's my MIL (mother-in-law) Joyce. Joyce is on a fixed budget and her one really big joy is the equivalent to hitting it big at the craps table in Vegas - using coupons! She grabs the Sunday paper, takes the circulars with her and goes over them the same way Phil Ivey sizes up the other players at the featured table at the World Series of Poker! Very often at dinner she'll announce how much money she saved that day (along with how many cute babies she saw during her travels!)



The Secret Shopper: Who's left - Norman. Norm will just run out to Dash's after dinner...and come back with all kinds groceries for I don't know what! Or, he'll just go out to run a few errands and come home from BJ's with more stuff for the freezer and paper goods than we need for a few months! My favorite is his favorite Friday evening, after dinner exercise, perusing the aisles of Barnes & Nobles - and coming home with a pile of books whose cost will not be mentioned...



The Lucky Shopper: no, not Abby, Sharon, my boss. She has the most amazing luck when she shops garage sales, antique stores, flea markets and estate sales. The store is decorated with many of her finds. Last weekend I got to go along with Sharon and Dimitra on a shopping adventure down to Caledonia. A story too long to repeat so check it out here.



Now, don't get me wrong, I love to shop but I usually don't take pictures of my finds. How excited can you get over Tylenol sinus and knee highs? I've never been the one for coupons. I'll be sure I won't need the Michael's or JoAnn's 40% off because I'M NOT SHOPPING THERE THIS WEEK AND I DON'T NEED ANYTHING!!! and sure enough I end up at either one or the other. Same with those never ending coupon cards from Macy's - 20% shopping pass! - You pick the date! The weeks I bring them - I don't go. The weeks I go, I forget them or don't bring because (refer to the bold print above).



I go food shopping and find my husband has already bought what we need and not told me, or he comes home the same night with the same thing!



Clothing - I don't even want to go there. Even when I do buy something new, Alexa gives it the once over and I get,"New top? I wouldn't wear that!" Duh! "How much did it cost?" and the twenty questions go on and on...



Wonder finds? - I'm the kind that likes nice even aisles, coordinated displays and everything out in the open. Half the time I walk past the best stuff! I have to know exactly what I'm looking for and I was never good at haggling over a price.



That said, I did come across something at an estate sale and went wild an woolly and got it because it was 30% off. Want to see?
I found these at an estate sale. The couple selling the house had lived in China for a number of years and the house had a lot of Chinese art, pictures and furniture. This is Chinese embroidery. It is just lovely. Brilliant vibrant colors and the artist's chop (signature) in the lower right corner. In front of it is a jade bowl with silver lattice work around it. Don't know if either is worth much, don't care - I just like them!

Oh, and the Shopping Diva - she left earlier this evening for a horse riding, sleep-over, shopping trip with her friend Brenda. She also asked for the Macy's charge before she left because she had both the 20% shopping coupon and $20 off coupon ready to go!

Warning: Parents of Teenagers BEWARE contents!

Exhibit A

You've been warned... So have I for that matter. I'm the mother of a teenager, a full fledged, fashion loving, selective hearing, selective behavior, Jekyll and Hyde teenager - and the female of the species at that - much, much more dangerous.

We've been having that age old tug of war between Mom and Dad and Darling Daughter - CLEAN-UP YOUR ROOM! It was so bad a little over two weeks ago that we grounded her for two weeks. Didn't work. We got her an organizer drawer set for her hair, makeup, beauty, skin, nail, etc. tools - Didn't work.

Exhibit B

Abby loves Alexa's room. She never knows what delightful (to a dog) wonders she is going to find. Adding to the problem is the fact that the door won't latch closed, so all Abby has to do is push it open with her paws, (she usually takes a running jump), and she's in - makes it her favorite room in the house.

So today when Abby(our other demon child) got into her room and disappeared under the bed and could not be coaxed out for love or biscuits (until she decimated whatever it was she found so appealing) I decided it was time to go public.

Exhibit C

Here the 'other daughter' is enjoying her find...Now believe it or not, the room was worse. You could not see the carpet two weeks ago, at all, not even a piece big enough for a big toe to fit.

Now, I admit it, I'm not neat by ANY stretch of the imagination, my craft room is STILL a mess, but the dog doesn't go in and grab my stuff and hide and chew it all to bits. I can still find stuff in my room and my door doesn't latch just like Lex's. With Alexa's room things just kinda migrate into it from their normal locations, like phones, cameras, chargers, food, other people's scissors, markers, glue and adhesives, nail polish remover, you get the idea. This has just gone too far and yes, I know, it's only going to get worse.... HELP!!!!

Let's just forget last week, OK....

Last week sucked - sorry for the language (that is one of my least favorite, never use unless desperate or really true)... So glad it's over and I'm starting on a new week. Nothing big happening, just taking care of some stuff that is long overdue, like the coin that weighs a ton that Alexa decided to roll a few weeks ago...not sure how I'm going to get it the bank (carry that is).

Puppy is getting her stitches out today and is going to groomer on Thursday. We'll have our beautiful, fluffy puppy back!

Norm got short changed on his birthday last week, plus he had to deal with my melodrama. I owe him a dinner...

Alexa is Alexa - spent from Friday afternoon when she got picked up from school by a friend's mother, to yesterday (Sunday) at friend's house for a two day sleep over with shopping thrown in...

Me, well I'm finally going to get some professional help for a pain that has been plaguing me for about 35 years now - enough said...

Good news - The Hillside Scrappers retreat is only 10 - count'em 10 days away! WAHOOO!!! We're going to have a Martini tasting party - if all goes well. Anyone got any good recipes out there??

Sunday - Funday...?

I'm too in a rush to move these so I'll pre-empt my blog notations by showing you a few recent layouts in photo form. Sorry there isn't a lot of close-up detail, but you'll see below I'm kinda-sorta-not-right-now-working on it.

Glam 13 - Alexa's 13th birthday party. The girls had their nails done, cake by Dessert Deli, games like 'Tin Foil Dresses' and make-up and glam photos by moi. The collage of photos was done by Walgreens - who knew?!?

I am always telling customers in the store that I don't stamp, I scrapbook! (usually in hushed tones) So here is a layout that features that statement - i don't stamp! {That's MY STORY and I'm sticking to it} I'm a scrapbooker! I put examples of my favorite stamp lines along with a list of them (yeah, that many).

I took a 5x7 of Alexa's school picture for this year and I'm trying to channel some of the designers I most admire from My Creative Scrapbook Kit Club to do a layout of our girl.

Several months ago I did a layout with a photocopy of a vintage photo of my mother as a baby, my grandparents (my grandmother, on the left, is so young and pretty in this photo) and my great grandparents on my grandfather's side (I think) using Graphic 45 paper and Prima flowers. The black oval scallop in the center is where my journaling should be - I'm getting there.

Now on to my blog entry for today:

Someone, Connie I think, accused me of not posting lately :-( Well, I did just this past Thursday, but I thought I'd give it a go again. My scrap room looks even worse than after the last time my so called organizing tornado swept through so because I have a whole Sunday at home with hubby and DD downstairs to keep Puccini (the puppy) company, I'm going to spend the day in my room cleaning - or a similar facsimile thereof...

Mind you, the tornado has spread to the hall where I've stacked organized stuff so I can get at my unorganized stuff...and later today I hope to ooze down to the living room to lay out paper for sorting (It's the only room big enough, without foot traffic and doggie paws).

So of course I'm starting my day by doing nothing related to this clean-up at all...trying to figure out how to post layouts and stitch layouts better on 2Peas. Since my layouts are all at work, I've gotten a reprieve from doing that but the governor of scrapping has denied my appeal for delay again, on starting to organize and clean. So here it is, a new post for Connie a photo attempt of my latest layouts (till I can do it the right way) and a shout out for Brian Vickers to come in in the top ten or PLEASE top five in today's 'Hotlanta' Nascar race.

Girl, in the immortal words of DW - Boogity, boogity, boogity!!! Let's go cleaning????

Happy Birthday Abby????...

Today is the puppy's 1st Birthday! That's the good news! The not so good news is she is spending the day at the vet's getting spayed :-(

Poor baby came through her surgery OK and I'm going to pick her up in a few hours. What a birthday present!

Sorry no image, computer doesn't seem to want to access my photos today, what else!?!?!

Winter Hibernation...

Just call me "Bear". I'm really getting into this hibernation idea. Get up in the morning, have some coffee, let the dog out, settle in to read a little, then watch afternoon at the Olymics - Curling is my favorite for a relaxing afternoon. Slide into the 5:00 news, have a quiet little dinner, do only what you have to until 8:00 p.m. when you settle in with the remote and a dog on your lap and watch the evening Olympics until midnight. Your options for the end of the day are: wait until the news is over (preferably with a Law and Order re-run) and watch the Olympic review, watch the shows I DVD'd or go quietly and sleepily to bed, having been lulled by your daily hibernation routine - now complete. Wake up the next day and repeat...

Yep, just call me "Bear".

I've pretty much been an Olympic junkie since last Friday. I do make a few exceptions like "Jack" (24) on Mondays, but I pretty much will tape anything else I normally watch. Outside of that it's been pretty much me and puppy. Alexa is back to school after the week off. She went shopping, had two sleepovers, went ice skating and managed to collaborate with a friend on a frightfully creative cell project - complete with midocondria and protozoa in a colorful 3-D display.

My equally intelligent husband is leaving for Taiwan on Wednesday with his boss to finalize an agreement with a university there. He's already looking forward to the warm temperatures. His "Silly Game" season gets underway shortly as the cards from Strat-O-Matic came in the mail last week. For those of you who have never heard of Strat-O-Matic sports games - BE THANKFUL!!!! This game is one of my DH's very few vices. Every year since he was in high school (we're talking 40 years!) he sends away for a new set of cards that reflect the statistics of every major league baseball player from the season before. Norm sits down with all these cards and an atlas (yes, ATLAS) to create his own teams and name them after cities, and towns all the country. Then he divides his teams into two leagues (American and National) and starts playing.

Now, this will give you an idea why my DH is so techno challenged. This game has no batteries, no lights, no fancy spinners or game board, no automatic scoring and uses no electricity! You have scorepage, you roll the dice, match the numbers on the dice with what it says on the card and somehow get a full nine inning game of baseball out of it - not counting games that might go extra innings...Norm starts playing in March and plays until he has played an entire schedule of games, post season and World Series. He usually finishes around July or August with a stack of scorecards of each fame about three inches tall (because you score by hand)!

This is Norman's idea of relaxation, excitement and just down right fun. The only thing that would make him happier would be to be in Italy, in a Tuscan villa, playing this "Silly Game". Me I'd rather be on Lake Como with George Clooney - but hey, I always have scrapbooking in Buffalo!

Still Working on it...

OK, now that I've found and tried another "pretty my blog" site I still have no clue to what I'm doing. I'm sending out a full blown HELP!!!
1. How do I get my title on the header? I think I have to have it fit on the lined tag - ACK!!
2. Am I supposed to put a picture (mine-ACK!!x2) in the box on the right.
3. How do I get the header to stretch to edge of the border?
4. How do I get the label off the top of my printing?
5. Why am I so lame at this?!?!?!

This does nothing to help my feelings of inadequacy. I think I need computer therapy (and the other kind too)...

Changes...

Hi gang! You know the title of my blog just above this posting, especially the sub-title, Life happens when you're making other plans? Well I think I just put my words into action.

I've been cruising many blogs looking for card, stamping, scrapbooking and other paper arts ideas and I came across this 'make my blog beautiful - for FREE' banner on several very artistic blogs so I thought I'd give it whirl.

Sure enough, I've screwed up the whole thing. What you see now is what is left of my original blog template and design. It doesn't help that it's 11:44 at night and I'm working on my laptop instead of on my desktop with my original artwork and the majority of my photos etc.

I hate it when technology and my lousy typing reminds me how incompetent I really am on a computer!

Anyone know how I add a growling smiley face???

New Year 2010...

Happy New Year?! The good thing about a new year, besides the cool number 2010, is that it gives me an excuse/starting point/reason to begin a major organization of my scrap room. There is a challenge on 2Peas that has a method for organizing a space that will have a new chapter every week. This first week is to do a scrap audit of your space, and to do a layout - and as you do it write what works about your space as you work and what doesn't.

These are photos of my space before my last purge and update. This bookcase is gone replace by a white cube storage system that is not working for me because I haven't organized it well enough. I've got three tiers of large white cubes in 3 drawer, one large drawer and two 6 shelf cubes. Above the two shelf drawers are two of the smaller Michael's cubes, part upright shelves and part two shelve cube. On top of this are my paper cutters and finished projects and other decorations that make me happy. Also on the end is a two tier Clip-it-Up storage rack. On the wall behind it is a small spice rack with MM paints.



The bookcase in this photo is still here the ribbons have been replaced by a four self unit that stores projects completed on top, ribbon in jars on the second shelf (which I'm not sure that I like now that they are stored that way, assorted plastic drawer storage (not working) on the third shelf and open storage of assorted stuff on the bottom shelf (again, not working). There is a wire cube behind the bed that stores my cardstock paper by color. Piled in front of the cubes are a few plastic drawers and a tackle box I use for embellies. Needless to say, it's hard to get to any of it let alone remember what I've got. The bed has way more stuff on it now and the floor has lots of stuff too.

Well, nothing like a rousing start to the new year! Do they make a twelve step plan for scrapbookers?

What's on your new year's list of things to do???

I found it, I finally found it!...

And what might "It" be - my camera!! Happy New Year to me! Alexa was going to have a sleepover so we dragged the trundle mattress out from under the day bed in my craft room. All the stuff piled up on the floor of my craft room in front of the bed is now on top of it and I was able to search underneath with a flashlight and I hit the daily double. Not only did I find my camera but I also found my watch that I had misplaced even longer ago than the camera!

I found a picture of Abby in one of her favorite positions - sitting on our laps or legs as Norm or I sit in the recliner. She has a complete view of the family room, the outside through the Florida room and anyone coming in from upstairs. The queen oversees her domain! You can also tell it's an older picture because she has hair! All of this is gone now, ahhh...Hopefully she will be back to her glorious, cute as a button look within a couple of months. I consider this a good sign for the year to come. Got camera, got luck!