Hi, My Name Is Leslie and I Am A Paperholic

Is there such a thing as "Scrapbookers Anonymous"?

I commented to my husband today that my scrapbooking stuff is like crack cocaine to me. I think about all the new gadgets, papers, and embellishments I would like to have and then I think about how I can pay for them.

With money being tight this year for us I have been thinking about using one of our credit cards that have been put on hold until we can get it paid down.

Then, I think there ought to be a Scrapbookers Anonymous for family members, like for AA and their families. My husband is an enabler of the worst kind. Today while we were out getting groceries for our New Years Day dinner - he asked me if there was anything at Michael's I want.

My first instinct was to say yes and make a mad dash to the Michael's then to Hobby Lobby. My heart beat faster, and it swelled with anticipation of all the delights available to me on the shelves. I had to get a real grip on myself and say "NO, thank you". What a bummer. I want to go to Michael's so bad, just to look around and touch stuff, maybe buy one or two things. But I seriously can't. I begin with one or two items in my hands and then I end up having to go get a cart. I can't stop myself.

I used a few new techniques (new to me) on the Christmas presents I made for our family. Some of them were successful, others fell a little short because I didn't do it just right (perfect). But I learned something new and made changes on the next go round with something similar and made my corrections then. The oopsies I made on these items - no one will know except for me.

I have seen a website called Addicted to Scrapbooking and thought it was funny that anyone would be "addicted", it is not so funny now. I am fully, and irreversabily addicted to scrapbooking.

I guess it is better than being addicted to a drug. I'm not the only one that benefits from this addiction. Many people do, beginning with the store (drug dealer), online outlet (alternate drug dealer), myself and the learning curve of new techniques (good high or a dud - whatever it is called), and finally to my recipient. Thank God my recipients only get to see and touch the items and not be led down the garden path into this addiction.

If I have to be addicted to something, I guess scrapbooking is a good drug of choice.





This will be the one and only time our daughter will come visit my blog and this will ruin her Christmas present that was shipped out YESTERDAY.

New Grandson IS SUCH A CUTEY!!

He is absolutely adorable. I miss his little squeaks, grunts, and the sound of his breathing. Our daughter is in for a real treat in the next few years. He already seems to be holding his head up very well - for a newborn.

Next achievement will be for him to roll over from his back to his stomach, then sit without being propped up, then will be the crawling attempts. At some point he will make more noises and he will smile more often. Real tears will come.

When he begins getting around by himself, our daughter will have her hands full and develop eyes in the back of her head. Just a normal parent thing. I think it is really a heightened sense of hearing more than of seeing.

I would give just about anything to be able to hear him laugh. The sound that I love to hear is a baby's laugh. After seeing these on YouTube and on AFV I know that I am not alone in this opinion.

And, I am of an age where I can understand why the elder adults around me when my children were little like him said that raising children was for the young. It wasn't that they could no longer get around and keep up with the little buggers, it was just that they had become used to the lives they lead and were not continually hyper focused on where a child was every second of the day. That is tiring, indeed.

I Was Off Being Grandma

I have been blessed with the cutest little grandson. Pictures to follow at a later post - when I get all the thousands downloaded. That is if my computer doesn't decide to hack up a hair ball during the download - or upload. Whatever.

Two weeks with that little precious. The squeaks and snuffling noises. I used to lie awake at night just to hear my little babies make noises when they were little like that. Babies are so cute. They are a lot of work also.

I was thrilled when I was asked by my daughter to spend two weeks with them after the baby was born. I may have driven them crazy but it seemed to be my job to take care of the normal everyday housework stuff while they (Mom and Dad) dedicated their time to taking care of the new baby and for Mom to get healed up.

So much was going on during this time. Thanksgiving came and went, along with a whole houseful of people. Getting caught up on all the family gossip and hearing the news of everyone's lives and events.

I spent time with my new granddaughters (13, 9, and 8) making Christmas Cookies. That was an absolute blast. Listening to them talk about their creations and what each was, then little snippets of school or friends talk would come up. We also had a paper craft time together. I absolutely could not go to their house without bringing some of my scrapbooking stuff along to indoctrinate new people with stickers. Brainwashing, I think it is called. What better way to brainwash someone with something that brings out their creativity?

I had a few moments where I went back in time, about 15 years, and the cookie making was done with all of my kids who are now grown and on their own. Doing exceptionally well at being adults I might add.

I have an awesome family and I appreciate what each of them bring to my life. Now I have a new little one that will only enrich me further.

How could one woman be so lucky?

Creating A 2009 Birthday Calendar

We are a blended family. We have eight children between us (5 his and 3 mine - but they are ALL MINE), some have added spouses to their households and we have grandchildren - three I don't see for reasons out of my control and one brand new one I will get to spend the next two weeks (or more) with. I am so excited.

Every child (not children anymore) gets a call on their birthday where ever we are and we sing Happy Birthday to them. We do such a bad job of being off key and out of sync but they love it - Thank God. At some point through out the year I get asked "When is ------'s birthday?". Most of the time I remember, but not always. I especially have a hard time with the spouses, but I have my trusty iPhone with the calendar feature and I think I have them all now.

Okay, watch. This will be the very first time that all the kids come to read my blog. Money is pretty tight this year for us. After my husbands prostate surgery last year, and the resultant bouts of terrible infections he spent December and January in the hospital and he was not recuperated enough to get back out on the road until mid March. We have been playing catch up with our bills.

I had picked up a thing or two in our travels, but mostly this will be a hand crafted Christmas.

At the end of August we all got together in Denver for four days and all the kids got to see each other for the first time in about 10 years. It was awesome. Photos taken at every opportunity. Like most every other family, we have spoken about a spouse to the members, and the time we all spent together was a time to put faces with names. Thankfully there are no divorces in the offing after having met and spent time with this brood.

I am so blessed.

Well, anyway, one of the things I'm making from my humongous stash of scrapbooking paper is a Birthday Calendar for 2009. I only have one finished. The rest I will tackle when we get back from being Grandma and Grandpa. I only have two pages as a sampling, but I'm pretty proud of the way they turned out.


This is the September page. It is like a scrapbook and a calendar in one. Not my original idea, I sort of stole it from seeing the calendars you can purchase at Office Depot. The papers on this page are all from Club Scrap (www.clubscrap.com), well except for the white pieces.

The calendar part was printed onto thin cardstock from my stash. I used a program called The Print Shop (www.broderbund.com)to create the calendar months.

The one for July, since there are so many of us with birthdays in this month, I had to make a flip page. There are more photos under me (the red part).





I thought I would be really smart and punch the hole to hang it with as I went. Somehow I got it off kilter and had to repunch the holes when I was finally done. Man was I upset over that. All that work and time I put into it. My fix for it was to put strips of ribbon in the bad hole. Now there are pull tabs for each month. I can say I planned it that way if someone asks. Don't tell them different.

I have many ideas floating around in my head of what to do for Christmas. I will have time later to get at it and have little bits of paper tracked throughout my house from all of my creative genius.

I Have Fallen Into The Deep End

I was doing so well. Working diligently, daily, on my paperwork, doing housework in snippets of time - or taking an hour or two to get some work done, and after dinner time I would spend a couple hours in my craft room to get things made for family for Christmas presents.

Everything came to a screeching halt about two days ago. I went bonkers. I went mad. I lost control of my senses.

For about a year now I have been checking in on "Craft TV Weekly" and the Scrapbook Lounge for ideas and seeing how some really fantastic things get made. If you are a crafter and have not seen this site, go check it out. http://www.crafttvweekly.com/main.php

When I began scrapbooking, I wasn't very good at it but I gave it a try. As I got more experience and became more confident with my tools and techniques I got more excited about doing this.











While watching the Scrapbook Lounge one evening (last January) I saw a "formula" of sorts for making my layouts look better and more to my liking. Well, that started a whole new way of thinking for me and this craft I so love to do. I have so much paper - none from Club Scrap - that I figured I could use the "Design Guide" as a reference point for choosing papers. I was able to get about 15 layouts finished in a few days (minus any photos) - this was still last January when I was home tending to my husband after his surgery - and I was very pleased with them.





Well, the last time I was home, for more than just overnight, I went to http://www.clubscrap.com and looked at everything they had for sale. I was able to just look around and not be possessed to purchase everything I saw.

Friday, I lost perspective. It started out by becoming a member and selecting the "Club Scrap Jr. Paper" kit on a monthly basis. I figured for $11 a month for three months and cancel at anytime I could do that. The full kit membership - with all the embellishments, bling, rubber stamps, doo dads, and gee gaws - is well over $45 a month and I didn't want to go that far.

Everything would have been fine if I had not decided to go to Ebay and see if anyone had full kits for sale. There were six. 6 of them, I tell you. My brain fired up and I had to control myself from bidding on all of them. I only bid on two.

Getting out of Ebay as fast as I could, I went back into the Club Scrap site and looked it over. In the "Community" section is a place (Oh, my further undoing) called of all things - "Garage Sale". There is a section for Full Kits and I just had to press the button to enter. I just had to. I could not help myself.

Coming in the mail, some time within the next week, will be my very first Club Scrap Kit, then there will be two coming from Ebay (I din't get out fast enough), and I will have made a purchase from the Garage Sale at Club Scrap.

I am soothing my conscience with the notion that Christmas is just weeks away and we don't have the money to do Christmas up like we did a couple years ago. I can make things for our family. I have hundreds of photos of places we have been during our normal working. Photos from different states that I have admonished myself for not getting to and lessening the amounts of photos. I can make cards, or packs of cards, and send them to our children so they will have something to send a friend or family member for birthdays and get wells.

Then I think about my regular job. I spend so much of the year out on the road and all this paper patiently waits for my return during the winter times and after I have done all my other paperwork for income tax stuff.

It will, eventually, go to good use and I will be glad I have the tools and papers available for me to do this and be creative. This really isn't a bad thing. I just got derailed from my paperwork for about three days.

Tomorrow is another day.

Modified Flylady Routine

Being self employed I need to have some form of structure in my daily work life or I don't do anything.

If you have read my recent posts, I am an all or nothing kind of person. I am on a first name basis with Procrastination. I have spent so much time with Burn Out that the relationship has gone from being acquaintance to a dysfunctional cohabitation.

I want to do so many things. Wait, strike that. I have to do so many things and the pressure to get them all done can be overwhelming. Everyday there is something else added to the list of To Do Today that I am surprised that I have not been spotted by the military in a No Fly Zone while I'm zooming around on my broom.

I am getting things done. In fits and starts. I am not thrilled with the progress of some stuff. Though I am quite happy with the progress of other things.

My "schedule" for the last two weeks has been:

7:00 a.m. Coffee brewing
7:15 a.m. Check emails for new billings from Corporate Lodging
7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. QuickBooks
1:30 p.m. Lunch
1:45 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Housework
2:45 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Craft time
4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Fix dinner
6:30 p.m. Load dishwasher
6:45 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Whatever I want to do

There have been some days I've gotten up later than I had wanted to and some of the work load I had to shift around a bit. Also, there have been some days that the printing goes on for quite a while - over 10 minutes - so I vacuum during that time. Laundry, also, gets done during printing time.

There have been some days that I don't eat until dinner time. By that time I'm quite fuzzy headed and could be considered a doddering old fool.

My housework is slowly getting done. I mean s----l---o---------w----l---y.

My paperwork is getting done a little faster. March and April are finished and I'm beginning May. If anyone tells you that QuickBooks will make your job easier - only half believe them. Last year I spent one whole month setting up all my accounts, vendors, customers, and banks. That is a job. I did have the foresight to contact an accounting firm and have one of their gurus help me get set up properly. It still was a lot of work and a lot of time spent in getting the thing set up to do what I need it to do.

I figure it takes about three days to complete a whole month of business and personal expenses and incomes. The data entry goes fairly quickly. It is the bank accounts and credit card reconciliations that bog me down. An item will show up on one of these statements in the particular account and I find I spend about 45 minutes hunting for which account I put it in and make the necessary changes. Being so far behind in this work causes a few glitches.

All in all, it is coming right along. Things are getting more orderly and files are being put away as I use them. There is a structure here and I am feeling good about it.

I have such strong urges to get back at the paperwork after dinner and I have to forcefully restrain myself from going there.

So, if you find yourself in a situation like mine. Tons of stuff to do and limited time to do it in, take an hour and go to http://www.flylady.net and check out the site. One word of caution though. If you sign up you will be getting emails from them everyday. Put it in DIGEST FORM so you get them all at one time and can pick and choose what you want to read. If you don't do this you will have so many emails all day long you won't get anything done. I am serious about this.

Well, back to the laundry and getting supper ready. I really should not be here right now.

Ink 0 - Hairspray 1

This morning, while marking up the grocery list from Word, Joe's pen stopped working. He had put a refill in about a week ago. How long it had been sitting around before use is any one's guess.

Joe made a comment about his new refill already being old. I looked over at him, long enough, to see he had his Zippo out. I've seen others do this before but I've not paid much attention to where the fire goes.

The next thing I heard was "Oh s*&$". I looked over at Joe and he sported a purple thumb, index finger, and blotches on the palm of his left hand. He got up and went to the sink to wash the ink off with Lava. It was not taking the ink off his hand.

Many years ago I learned that hairspray would take ink out of fabric before washing. Saturate the ink stain on fabric, let it sit for a minute or two - the time it takes to load the washer with clothing and laundry soap - then throw the item in the wash. Ink comes right out of fabrics.

I went to the bathroom and came back with a bottle of hairspray and handed it to Joe. With major skepticism in his voice he tried it. He sprayed the hairspray on his fingers and palm where the ink stains were and rubbed it around. I had him dry his hands off first from the washing up with Lava. His response was "Momma strikes again". Compliment to be sure.

There was ink on the table top. Gone now with the hairspray. There was a good sized blob of ink on the linoleum floor. Mostly gone with the hairspray. It is a faded spot and not very noticeable unless you know what you are looking for.

So, if you have an ink stain on fabric or your skin, go after it with the hairspray.

Joe says there is solvent in the hairspray and that is what makes it work. Who knew (I didn't), perfectly coiffed hair is held with solvent.