OMG!!! I Am So Sick Of Receipts!!!!!!

I've been working away on all of the 2008 receipts and Settlements from last years work.

I have QuickBooks for MAC to do my data entry. I like this program because I can see where we stand, financially. Which loads and companies we drive for paid well, and which loads we lost our butts on. Thankfully, there have not been too many of the latter ones. We did have a few but the reason we did take those, knowing beforehand that it would not be a financial boon, was that the load would get us lined up for the better paying loads.

This is normal. Taking a lower paying run that gets us closer to the better paying runs is what we have to do from time to time.

Because we take four trucks at a time, it is harder for us to get work that connects from one place to another continually. Last year our deadhead was almost, not quite, equal to our paid miles. The cost of fuel was over $5 a gallon in some states and that really took a bite out of our profitability.

I dread doing this paperwork. It is a necessary evil that I have to get a handle on. Okay, cue the microscopic violin playing the "Poor You" song. I know, whining never helped anything get done. Neither does avoiding it and doing other things.

I had such a great plan going, too. Begin the paperwork at 7:30 am and quit around 2:30 in the afternoon and go do my scrapbooking stuff or clean the house for a while. I have diligently done this everyday, Sunday to Sunday, for the past month and progress is being made. I am up to October. I just have the last three months of the year to do - October, November, and December - and I'm having so much trouble getting going lately. Distractions are getting harder to ignore.

This morning, I spent some time reading past posts from one of my favorite blogs - http://www.deadrooster.com and before I knew it it was long past 7:30 am.

Okay, back to work. The sooner I get done with the paperwork the sooner I can get to the thing I enjoy most - Club Scrap papers and all the photos I have acquired. Being creative and having fun.

Someone Posted A Comment On My Blog!!!!

How the heck did "Anonymous" find my blog? I've tried doing a Google search to see if my blog would come up anywhere. After about page 10 I gave up.

Oh well. I'm just excited that someone had taken the time to read one of my posts. A post in AUGUST 2008 no less.

Thank you Anonymous for reading my post and posting a comment.

Joe's Radiation For Prostate Cancer

The radiation began on Monday of this week. He's got one full week down, eight more to go.

We don't know how he will feel as he gets closer to the end of the treatment. All the things we've heard is that he will have no major side affects. He won't lose his hair or have a drastic weight loss or be sick. If this all holds true then this will be a "piece of cake". Talk about cake, what's happening at Cakewrecks http://www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com? I haven't had a chance to stop by and see what is happening. I'll have to go there and take a look at what I've missed out on.

I'm plodding away at my paperwork for 2008 taxes. Slogging away is more like it. I am making progress though.

I've been getting in some absolutely beautiful papers from Club Scrap. I've found a lot of the older collections on Ebay. What a boon to my spirits. It is almost like Christmas around here.

Well, I got one entire kit of the Science Collection. Man I just love that paper. The colors and the textures. So I had to make a 2 page layout of Joe's radiation with these papers.

I finally cut some of the paper up. Quick, get me a paper bag before I hyperventilate and faint. I don't like cutting up the papers because they are so beautiful just to look at. And they are hefty cardstock.

Well, now that I have finally given myself permission to cut up this paper, I guess it is time to get the pictures of our new grandson put on this stuff. That will be my next job. I better get at it soon or he'll be starting school before I know it.

Adventures In Acrylic

For my daughter's Christmas present, I made her this "mixed media" book. It is acrylic pieces I picked up at The Yard Store in Wichita, Kansas four about $.15 each. These are 9 1/2 inches wide by 5 1/2 inches deep - EXCLUDING the leg things.

These pieces of acrylic are cast off pieces (trash) from some project done by a manufacturing company. The people at The Yard Store acquire stuff all the time. Mostly tools, but they do have some gems hidden amongst the "stuff".

Someone may know what stamp pad ink to use on acrylic. I do not. I used what I have in my stash - mostly permanent ink pads - and they DID NOT dry. The ink was still wet three days later, and after I used the heat gun on it to "set" the ink.

Also, heat embossing is tricky on this. If you use fine powder stuff (like black or silver), all the little bits that don't get off with the initial banging and flicking will need to be brushed off with a paint brush. However - I did find a fix for the problem. Rubbing alcohol - Isopropyl Alcohol - will take it right off. I am serious. It will take off all the hard work you just did. My cover page ended up going through a bit of a total makeover when I found I could remove the heat embossed mess I had made.

Using the heat gun on this acrylic. After a while the acrylic will bend and begin to bow. Not good. The acrylic piece is VERY HOT and it is pliable. I had to put it down on my craft table and find the coolest spots around the bow and press down. I had to work my way towards the center of the bow to get the piece flat again. Lots of "ooooch, ouch, hot hot hot" mutterings went on while I did this. I'm not sure what would have happened had I just left it alone. It may have flattened itself out as it cooled. I didn't want to take the chance of it not working.

I have some course embossing powders by Personal Stamp Exchange in the Tapestry line. That worked out really well on the last acrylic piece on the outside.

I had my husband drill the three holes along the edges of three pieces of acrylic. He's my "Go to guy" when I need stuff like this done. I have tried to drill acrylic before and I have cracked it and made a huge mess. I knew he had the proper tools and expertise to do this job so I enlisted his help.

Okay, now a little bit of a heads up. I did not have a "plan" in mind of what I was going to do with this project. I knew I wanted to use the acrylic and maybe some papers, and I had a stack of pictures I wanted to use. That was the extent of my planning.

I didn't take into consideration that PAPER TEARS when ribbon or wire is worked through it. The opening and closing of the book would cause the paper to stress at the holes and all my work would be junk. I figured that out after I had the pages built. So I glued 1 1/8 wide ribbon on the edges and used clothing grommets through the ribbon and the paper to make a better whats-is.

If you plan on making something like this USE REALLY STRONG CARDSTOCK. Or at the very least, sandwich a piece of chipboard between your decorative papers. Give the pages some substance and not flimsy.

I love, love, love this photo. My daughter and her girlfriend took their spouses on a cruise. This was one of the photos they had taken before the formal dinner. I just love it.

Oh, while I'm at it. When you make something with clear acrylic - there is a backside to it. Duh. I had the front side looking pretty good. I looked at the back saw all of the glue dots and smears from attaching the burlap. Yes, I can't believe it came as a surprise to me either.

I got to paw through my stash of stickers and decorative tags to cover stuff up.


The little picture at the top left is my daughter's girlfriend and her husband. "Come here you wild thing you!" I thought this was so cute.

I have some stickers with these little kid like figures. There are x's and o's all over the page. I got them from Ebay one time when I was in the midst of a buying frenzy. Don't ask me why I thought these little guys were so cute that I had to have them. I don't know. Now I have to find things to use them in.

While I was "auditioning" them on the page, they stuck. Crap. So no background paper was used. I used some of my pens and made the "stitch" dashes around the figures. Turned out kinda cute.

This scrapbook thing is a learning process for me. You can see from this page where I used the 1 1/8 inch ribbon and the clothing grommets for a sturdier edge. I glued the ribbon down real good and pinched the devil out of the grommets so they wouldn't go anywhere.


This page I traced the flowers from a thing from Club Scrap. I have no idea what color the flowers are in real life but I thought these colors were pretty. The two oval words are from my stash and fit in the blank space between the flower and the dotted border.

The "Tabs" are from a set of stickers I have from 7 Gypsies I bought in Sparks, Nevada one time. There is a scrapbook store about three blocks away from the hotel we were staying in. I had to go check it out. Like I said in an earlier post - I am a paperholic and I have to get my fix where ever I can.

In Wichita, Kansas is a little store on Kellog street (I think) called the Scrapbook Garden. I can loose myself in that store for hours. I've find scrapbook stores in nearly every state we travel through. When we have a few days downtime and I can wonder around I find a place to take pictures, or I find a scrapbook store.


The cute sticker at the top left is a cloth sticker from Club Scrap in their "Textiles & Notions" collection. I just have the stickers. I had to touch it and rub it for a while before I pulled if off its backing paper. I could not believe it was fabric.

Yes, I know - "It doesn't take much to entertain and idiot".

My daughter's girlfriend got married in Hawaii. So cool. I'd go to Hawaii anytime - if I didn't have to go over WATER. Yes, you can all chime in now "bok, bok, bok" (chicken noises).


This was where I found out that permanent ink doesn't dry on this kind of acrylic. Yes, you are seeing the backside of this swirl image. I thought this was just the coolest thing I've seen. The view of the previous page through the swirl.

What I ended up doing - since the ink would not dry - was use Glassy Accents over the silver ink. When the Glassy Accents dried I figured the silver ink would be there for ever.






Okay, this is the end. Go have some fun with acrylic stuff.

2009 DayPlanner - Handmade

I've spent the last three weeks making things for my family. I thought I would take a stab at making something for myself. Being in need of a DayPlanner for 2009, I thought I would make one instead of going to the office supply store or ordering one online.

They have cost me about $25 each year to get the kind that is a combination of monthly and weekly. I use the monthly pages for the hotels we stay in for a quick "at a glance" reminder of where we have been. The weekly pages for some of the more in depth info - like where we picked up and delivered - and if there were any circumstances that would be noteworthy for the day.

I've watched on Craft TV Weekly how to make some "books" and thought I would give it a try. There are some rather complicated things (in my opinion) to get the covers and spines on, but mostly it looks real easy. Ya - right.


I did a Google search for "Printable 2009 calendars" and, as usual, got a gazillion hits. It was with trial and error that I found the one I wanted to use - both monthly and weekly. I got them from http://www.vertex42.com .

Not knowing quite how to make our printer do double sided printing I chose to print out all the pages. There was a "What The Heck Were You Thinking?" moment when I saw all the paper being spat out. My choice at this time was to just glue two pages together. Easy, huh. Well, not quite. I had to CONCENTRATE and really pay attention to what I was doing so I would not glue the pages together incorrectly. Getting the Month in the appropriate place with the weekly pages was a trick. What was even trickier was getting the following pages glued without getting my sticky fingers all over the papers and tearing it. I did use a piece of sponge to spread the glue, but it still got all over my fingers. What the heck, it is mine and it is not going to someone that I would want this to be "perfect" and mistakes at a minimum.

I have a rubber stamp in the image of a birthday cake. I thought it would be a great idea to put the cake stamp on the appropriate day so I would remember the birthday person. As you can see, that left no room to write anything in the date box. You will see the other stamped image at the bottom right. The succeeding months are all in the bottom right with the date and person next to the cake stamp.

After I had all the pages glued - successfully I might add - I thought I was going to have a problem with the Bind-It-All. I only have one size of wire things - 5/8 inch. The stack of papers was now well over the Bind-It-All wire doo dad. I also needed to have a bit of cardstock paper on both the front and the back of this planner to glue it into the covers so all my hard work would not fall out all the time. A little squeezing and five sets at a time I got the job done. Not just once, but three times. Woohoo, I was pleased.

For the next day and a half I alternated between knowing how to cover some chipboard with cover papers and feeling inadequate to the task before me. I cut two pieces of 12x12 chipboard down to 8 1/2 x 11. Then from one of the scrap pieces I cut a piece 8 1/2 x 1 inch - for the spine. The next was to select a good sturdy paper - Lord knows I've got a ton of that stuff.

I had my papers picked out and my chipboard cut. Now it was to get the confidence and really commit myself to making the covers. Not having someone to guide me step by step through this process, I went to the next best place. Craft TV Weekly and watched Tricia Morris' episode titled "Make The Grade" for step by step instructions on how to make the covers and the spine. I downloaded their "Design Guide" and printed that out also. I still fluctuated between insecurity and confidence in making this book.

I just finally said "To heck with it" and jumped in. It really didn't take very long to complete it. There were some things that happened that I'm not quite sure what went wrong. The outside edges of the papers were supposed to be 1/2 all the way around the front cover, spine, and back cover. Something went a little wonky and it was not quite right. That sent my insecurities into high gear.

I muddled through and made the best of it and I think it worked out quite well. I fell in love with this paper when I first saw it. It is Club Scrap's 2005 Science collection. I just love that blue paper with the gold embossing.

At first, I just wanted to leave it with the Sound Wave stencil from Club Scrap and the year tag of 2009 on the book. I didn't want anything else to hide the pretty paper. It still looked like it needed something and I thought about all the buttons I have in my stash of goodies.

Future Note: Do not use Elmers brand of Gorilla Glue. When it dries, it does not dry clear. Any of the glue that squeezes out is yellowish in color and looks similar to that insulating foam goop in a can with all the air bubbles. This Elmers glue stuff is really hard to get off. It says on the bottle that it has to be sanded off. I used a box cutter and very carefully scraped off as much of the dried glue as I could without damaging the buttons.

I'm very well pleased with how this came out for my first attempt. Next time, I will make the spine the same height as the Bind-It-All wire doo dads instead of guessing and using the one inch spine. There is too much room left over in the book itself and the cover has a bow to it.

I am way too critical of myself and the things I do and make. But, what the heck, if I don't try I will never, ever succeed at making things right. Trial and error. Failure can be good. Not that this is a failure.

I do have the confidence to make future books, because I know what all goes into making them and I also know the problem areas to watch out for.