Christmas in May

You can tell if I've been crafting because when I do, my craft room is clean.  I'm really good about working in a neat area and cleaning up after each project.  However, an extremely messy room is a good indicator that I have not been doing anything creative.  The space ends up being a total dumping ground for junk and things I want to get around to doing when I have time (HA!) and it's just terrible.  Based on my lack of posting this year so far, I'm betting you can guess what sort of state my craft room has been in.

Last Sunday, I told my husband I wanted to take a "personal day."  I went into my disaster of a craft room that hadn't seen any love in literally months, and I got to cleaning.  One giant bag full of trash, four bags of miscellaneous crafting supplies given away via my local Freecycle, a bag of paper and stickers to my neighbor's daughter, two boxes of stuff for the Goodwill, and a week later, my room is finally clean.

I did the bulk of the work on Sunday, cleaning and reorganizing for about seven or eight hours.  I did the final small tasks during the past week, a few minutes here and a few minutes there. It was a long process, but one that sorely needed to be done because my storage was bursting at the seams!  

It feels so good to have so much gone!  Gone are the remnants of yarn and cheapie skeins that I didn't really love and for which I had no plans.  They were given to a woman who makes hats for preemies in the hospital.  Gone are all the fabric scraps that were too small for any sort of cohesive project.  Gone are the cards I made literally a decade ago but never used.  Gone are the supplies I've had nearly as long that I haven't touched in years to two different ladies who are just starting out with scrapbooking.  Gone is the pile of brass embossing stencils that I had never, ever used.  Gone are the half finished projects that I know I'm just never going to get around to finishing.

There was, however, one half finished project that I knew I wanted to tackle:  My December Daily album... from December 2011!!!  Isn't that terrible?  It has sat on the corner of my work table for almost a year and a half; just this huge pile of patterned paper, stickers, and photos waiting patiently for me to get to them.  Well, since my room is cleaned I figured, why not today?  I sat down and worked all night until finally, FINALLY!!!  It was done.  

It's not as fancy as some, or in a great album, or anything like that.  It's very "me" though, and it's DONE.  That's good enough for this girl!

Rather than photograph the pages individually, like I've done for other projects, I decided to make a video like I did for the Gratitude Album that I made a few years back.  Pardon the shakiness - I broke my little tripod and haven't gotten around to getting another one yet.

I'm thinking I may do a room tour video if time and my little people permit.  Just something to show how my room is set up and what I do for storage of certain items.  I've been watching those on YouTube and I love getting to peek into other people's spaces!  In all honesty, those videos are what inspired me to get up off my butt and clean my room, so thank you to everyone who posts those!  I love them!

Lately...

...I sleep until noon most days.
...I stay up until two or three in the morning.
...I watch a lot of YouTube videos.
...I eat a lot of junk food.
...I don't get to shower as often as I should.
...I'm kinda lazy.
...I don't really want to do my chores and have been slacking.
...I've taken up playing video games, and not just on my phone.
...I've figured out how to use the xBox.

Dear Lord, I'm turning into a teenage boy.

One Month

Missing:  One Blogger.

She's been gone for slightly over a month.  Where did she go?  Oh, nowhere exciting.  She's pretty much been where she always is - at home with her children.

So why has she been away for so long?

I blame one precious little miracle.

That's a photo of what I deal with when I try to pump.  Or do anything really. Someone hit her clingy/stranger anxiety phase and she's hit it with a vengeance.  I haven't been able to do ANYTHING.  I shower maybe twice a week.  I never cook anymore.  My house is in total disarray.  Forget doing things I'd like to do, such as working on my Project Life or blogging.  Things are more chaotic now than they were when she was a newborn.  As I take two minutes to type this, she's clutching my ankles and having a total melt down.

Going to pee is no fun, let me tell you.

Lord help the person who gives me "helpful" suggestions such as "put her in a carrier" or "do chores or shower while she naps!"  Have I mentioned that my child will not freaking take a nap???  It's making me nutty.  Her brother was on a perfect, every three hour Babywise schedule when he was a baby.  This one?  No nap until Daddy comes home, then it's maybe 20 minutes in his arms.  Still, I feel like I can't complain too hard since she does sleep through the night like a champ and has almost since the beginning.

And that carrier business?  Did I ever tell you that I'm short?  Did you know short people have short arms?  With a baby strapped to my chest, and considering I have a bit of a belly and 36DDD boobs (yeah, I went there) there is not a lot of arm length left over.  I'm not doing many chores like that, and I'm especially not cooking.

Even when she will play on her own I have to watch her like a hawk because she is also loving to stick junk in her mouth that shouldn't be there.  At least once a day I have a finger down her throat fishing out some piece of detritus that is causing her to choke because I had the nerve to look away for one second.  Imagine if I didn't have eyes on her constantly?

I'm frustrated.

Did I mention I have another kid too?

He's hardcore testing boundaries.  He talks back like it's his job, doesn't listen, has an attitude.  I know it's his age, and hopefully this too shall pass, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant.  I also have quite a bit of guilt because I'm just not able to give him the one on one time he so desperately needs.  I'm certain that a lot of his acting out is just an attempt to gain some attention.  At this age, negative attention is better than no attention at all.  This is a dangerous trap into which to fall!

So, if you are wondering where I've been, and why I am not around as much... yeah.  :(

PL 2013 - Week Three

Hooray!  Week three!  I feel like I'm really accomplishing stuff here!

Left side:

I got a few more good hybrids in there this week.  On the Doctor card the background and the manila tag are digital, but the button and Thickers were added after printing.

Here's a close up of some of the digital cards:

Here's the right side:

The quote was found on Pinterest and cropped to fit in Photoshop.  The font on the Hello Cutie card is Clementine Sketch.  I printed the Walking Dead cards on my printer at home because I didn't want to get in trouble for violating the copyright laws or something.  I think it's important to document stuff we enjoy, like tv shows and music.

Close ups of the digital cards:

Font is Batik Regular.  That's pretty much my "go to" typewriter font these days.

Letters are Sahlin Studio.

Font on the title is Sketch Rockwell.  I can't remember what I used for the text.

The journaling is Batik Regular, and I forgot what I used for the title.  The notepaper, as well as the chipboard looking background on the previous card and the graph paper background on the "So Sweet" card are from here.  I use something from there on most of the cards I make!

As promised, here are the freebies for February:

I decided to go with 4" x 6" cards this month, but of course I labeled them 5x7.  WHOOPS!  I don't know why I did that!  I will correct the file before I post it.  These can be found by becoming a fan of my Facebook page.  These are free for personal use only.  Please do not pin them directly from the hosting site. Enjoy!

PL 2013 - Week Two

Woo Hoo for two posts in a row!  Here's week two of this year's Project Life.

Left side:

This week is a pretty good mix of digital and traditionally scrapped cards.  The title card is all paper, for example, while this card about the new piece of Pyrex I got that week is all digital.

As is this one about the baby's bed head:

I have all my digital cards printed at my local Walgreen's on matte paper.  They do a pretty good job and since they're only a mile up the road, they're super convenient too.  It's cheaper than doing it at home and constantly having to buy ink and paper!

Some cards, such as the Mow card are hybrid.  I added the typed journaling on a piece of cardstock with a few staples to there would be a bit of texture to my page.  Everything else on the card is digital.  I found the scrabble tiles here.

Here's the right side:

The calendar is actually a screenshot of an app I use called Cuptakes that has the cutest wallpapers for the iPhone.  They put up new ones each month and they work great as these cards too.  If you follow me on Instagram you've probably seen some of the ones I've edited on there to use as placeholders so I can tell what happened each week.

The one that looks like an old timey newspaper at the bottom with the weather report is a screenshot of another app called Daily Weather.  It was worth the buck to me because once you crop off the ad on the bottom, it's the perfect size for a Project Life card!

The Operation Shink-A-Booty card was on my January freebie sheet and can be found by "liking" my Facebook page.

And here are the close ups of some of the digital cards:

Can I tell you how cute it is that they play together?  It doesn't happen all the time, but I was surprised to find how well they interact.  I didn't expect it to start this early, but I'm happy it did.

I added a bit of a paper doily to this one after it was printed.

Truth.

Notes from a fun evening out with my friend Suzy.

Bubba's pet inventory as of the end of January.  It's like a Littlest Pet Shop class photo or something!

That wraps up week two!