All My Loose Ends

The One Where I entreat people not to think that handmade cards = cheap

I made my Christmas Cards today. :o)

This marks the the third year I have made card for Christmas, In 2003 I came in with half of my cards handmade and this and last year have made all 45 we send out. Every year I wonder what people think of getting them as I have never had any feedback.

I often wonder if people think I'm being cheap.

I'm not being cheap. I make cards becuase I like to, but I still wonder.

So, for shits and giggles I went out to Current to price 45 Christmas cards that I liked. It came to $28 dollars.

Here's what it cost to handmake my cards (excluding photo processing and postage, which I would have paid for anyhow)

50-blank white cards with envelopes=6.99
Cranberry ink pad=1.99
Stampendous Season's Greetings Stamp=3.49
3.5 rolls of ribbons=3.50
Permie Hermie=5.50
Misc. Embellishments=7.50
(what I mean by this is I used a partial bottle of Prima flowers, some christmas eyelet charms and 50 brads)

Total?=28.97

Exactly what it would have cost me to send out reasonabley nice Christmas cards from elsewhere.

And, I choose to do the labor, so I won't charge you for that. The process took about four and a half hours to complete. I picked a fairly simple design for that very reason. Last year I got too complicated and it turned out to not be fun.

My point? PLEASE don't think your crafty friends have "cheaped" out on you when they send you a handmade card? Please?

In Knitting Knews :O)

I am working on my HP scarf. We go to the movie on Sunday. I am half way done. It knits fast, but I keep getting distracted.

In Holiday News:
I made up my master cleaning list and master Christmas to-do list today. Obviously,w e can mark off the Christmas cards. I'll post that in the next day or two as I refine it. :o)

So.....

I've been having panic attacks.

How was your weekend.

Today is the first day in nearly a week that I haven't spent at least some time caught in the throngs of panic. I've worked very hard today to keep that under control, including sipping some very nice cherry wine. Yes, I know it's basically Kool-Aid with an alcohol content, but I like it fine and it replaces my usual Concord.

So, again, I've been trying to keep things quiet. Easy dinner. No chores. No yelling. No excitement. Tonight, I brought EMily into the bedroom to watch Double Dare and I got to scrapbooking. Three hours later, I had these...

This one is a part of a Becky Higgins sketch challange over on 2peas

This one is from my Designing With 2005 calendar. The inspiration? Desiree McClellan's "Gavin Always on the go" from March 24. .

I'm woefully behind in my scrapbooking. I have most of 2004 left to finish, including Christmas and our vacation and have hardly looked at 2005. I won't get into what it feels like to be this behind, but knitting and sewing may be taking a back seat to getting some layouts finished.

Lastly, the midnight sepia action for photoshop has been floating around photography boards for some time. I finally got around to downloading and using it and i have to say the effect is amazing.

I wonder how hard i'd have to beg for that D70...... ;o)

Scrapbooking Rulz!

Yeah, I've been watching I Love the 90's part deux and feeling like I'm back in high schoo. SO WHAT? Add to that the 90's channel on the XM and it's been 90's City around here this month so far.

I'm spending some time loading my old blogger posts into my blog here. I found the file when I was cleaning up my computer (three gig worth) and decided that there was no time like the present to do a little house cleaning.

I managed to finish uploading December 2003. I'll just pick away at it. It's not that fun.

I will probably upload my old reading blogs over to here too and then be done with blogger. I do have a reading blog operational here, I just haven't started using it yet.

No knitting. Sorry. I do have projects to take pictures of and share, but the batteries are dead on the digi. and I haven't bought anymore to put in it yet.

But I've been scrapbooking though. 26 pages so far this year. I went to a crop on Friday Night and managed to get about 1/4 of my 2004 Christmas album done. After some work this weekend, I'm about five pages away from having my family 2000-2002 album finished up. I'm thrilled about that.

One thing I found when I went to the crop is that I was actually MORE productive with LESS things to choose from. Packing (this was my first crop) was a NIGHTMARE! I took EVERY SHEET of 8.5x11 cardstock I OWNED! I knew there was no way in hell I'd use a quarter of the stack, but you just didn't KNOW if you'd need it.

I think I got 6 pages done, which is a LOT for me. Including a mini book for one of my pages. It was so great to not worry about my stamps or ribbons or embossing powder or those drawers of misc. embellishments I always dig into to see if I can use.

My bag from the crop is still sitting out on the table. I've been scrapbooking there this weeknd. It's nice because i'm mostly using cardstock and minimal embellishments with occasional trips back to the bedroom for small items.

I love trying new things and pushing some limits on my pages, but it was nice to not do that for a while and just get some work done.

I'd scan them, but there are too many to do that with now. I've loaded them into my albums and felt a lot of relief. I've felt really behind and with some of the big changes we have planned this year, I REALLY want my albums to be caught up. ;o) MOre on that to follow. :O)

What's on the agenda for this week:

Today I managed to get nearly the entire house cleaned. I have to call the Maid Brigade back and schedule my next clenaing with them (probably for next week). I need to pick up the bathroom and get to work on the bedrooms. OH and do laundry and change sheets. Being domestic sucks.

Manage to NOT go off my diet on the weeknd. It's been too easy lately and I'm doing the two steps forward one step back thing. Last week I was off for two days. This week, three. I have to fix that.

And add exercise. I've been crappy at that too. Walk away the pounds in the morning, Yoga in the evening.

I'm taking all of my library books back on Tuesday. I'm not interested in them. I've got a few new lists from Fiction_L that I might use to get some new things on Tuesday. I need to call and see if I can find out what the story time theme is for this Tuesday since we skipped last week.

I am going to finish my sassy sock. I know I promised Eric his fuzzy feet first, but the sock is half done. Why not just finish it. It would take one evening in front of a movie to have it done, so I'm just going to do it. I found the first sock in my drawer this week and noticed that I really WANTED to wear them.

I finished my one project for sewing already this month, but I think I will try and get to work on a few baby outfits for Em's dollies. Maybe I'll get my desk cleaned off early this week. I suspect I will be able to sew through a whole project in an hour or sew( pun intended).

This post is mostly about scrapbooking...

So, feel free to skip it if you aren't interested.

First, the knitting. I finished the bottums up bucket hat on Thursday and cast on for a little pouch to match it. Emily loves the color yellow and I don't, so I'll use this yarn up on stuff for her. Emily is always looking for little bags to tote her little things around in. I'll probably knit for a while, make some eyelets and do some eye cord drawstring handles on it. Just something really simple.

I frogged the dishcloth I was making in Eric's car as I realized I was knitting wrong. I really didn't like the way the yarn was working into the pattern either and will find another dishcloth pattern to use instead.

And I'll go back to work on my second sock. I swear I don't have second sock syndrome. ;o)

And now onto scrapbooking. :o)

Around Christmas time, it was rumored that Wal-mart was carrying little 3x3 albums for just a dollar. I didn't look for them as I didn't really care a whole lot about the whole mini album thing.

To make a long story short, they're back. We had to go to Wal-Mart on Friday anyhow and I found the albums. I picked up 5 of them. Got home, had a brainstorm and went back for five more. 7 or 8 of these will turn into brag book like albums for our distant (and not so distant) relatives. The book has enough pages to do one spread for each month of year plus introduction and conclustion pages. Needless to say, we'll be shipping these off to Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio and Michigan for Christmas.

I am also thinking of altering some unused, empty paint cans and making some items from Making Memories A Season of Giving book. Anyone have any idea where I can buy Lazertran?

Club Scrap and Christmas Cards

No knitting done today. I am happy to announce though, that I have made seven of nine gifts for teachers and co-workers (I'll make the other two tomorrow) and I finished my Christmas cards. My Club Scrap Evergreen Kit arrived today and it is beautiful. Just what I needed to crank out my last nine cards. Hooray! Now, I just need to sign, address and mail out. I should have that done by tomorrow. No pictures of my FO objects you, however, here is my Christmas tree

Also, a picture of my sleeping dog, minus his nose.
I just love that tree
Am suffering from a nagging cold. Caught it at Thanksgiving. Thought it was gone, but found out it wasn't. It's back. I've been coughing my head off since last night. I hope I hurry up and get over this darn cold. I've had more than enough
Tomorrow and Friday will be my big "Get it done" Christmas rush. I wanted to have this done weeks ago, but, alas I didn't. I'm hoping that it will afford me time to relax and maybe knit some next week. I'm really chomping at the bit to get some work done.