The theme today is: Anal retentive is bad... or good... maybe. I dunno!

Did you miss me?

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Or at least more stalkerish.

I had a ZILLION hits yesterday on my blog (ok, not quite a zillion but a lot). Sorry to disappoint in the "nothing new" category. Oh I suppose I coulda mustered up something, but in the end, I just didn't feel like blogging.

I did however, get some things done yesterday. The basics, dishes, laundry, getting dressed - 2 trips to town, etc. Felt like I was walking through sand all day tho.

I worked on this:
I had to rehang it as originally it was in the center and I'm soooo not symmetrical. I hate equally balanced stuff. "Oh I have one pic on this side of the fireplace, I must have another exactly like it on the other". Shoot me.

Reminds me of a lady once that came into my store when I had the craft mall. She brought in a pillow with her to match a mauve on a photo mat. She wanted two matted pictures to hang on each side of the couch, or room, or whatever. She's holding the pillow up to the mat, not the outer mat, but the teeny tiny inner mat. *I could not tell the difference in color*. But apparently she could. Mind you, I would hate to have the guest in my home that would shun me after holding up a pillow to a mat and proclaiming they were leaving when discovering the 2 colors were 1/2 of a shade off.

That set a benchmark of anal retentive for me. *don't be that*

ANYWAY....
The old picture window I spent quite a bit of time on. I bought it like 4 years ago, and knew what I wanted to do with it, I just haven't gotten around to doing it. I ended up painting it our lightest house color and then using a razor blade to get 40 years of old paint off of the panes. Oh that was fun.

In each of the panes there'll be an 8 x 10 photo. Several from the wedding, several of family members, etc. That might take me a bit to get filled while I pick my fav 8. Because I know my fav 8 will not be gene's fav 8. Like, my fav pic of Carol is from the wedding - her giving the Italian stink eye, but I just don't think that Gene would think that was an acceptable photo of his mamma. :p

Something else I got done last night was a project for the free Jessica Sprague class "Stories in Hand".

Traditionally, I don't do online classes. I tried it a couple times and felt like it was just fluff that I easily could have come up with on my own. By the end of the MONTH, I was just deleting the emails.

That and online courses have gotten really expensive.

Then Jessica comes along, and posts a class that is not only relevant to me, but that keyword: Free. What do I have to lose eh?

From her site: "Lately, I've been realizing, that for me, there needs to be a way to capture little stories that can either be made into scrapbook pages, or not. There needs to be a way to fill in those gaps for which there might not be a full-blown 2-page spread that took me 4 hours. But that is a story worth telling nonetheless.

I'm confident that I'm not the only person out there in this situation. So that's why I developed this class. We ALL have stories. And whatever way it is that we choose to tell them, we all need a way of capturing them first. So that's where Stories in Hand comes in."

Yeah, I've got those.

In fact, I'm the anti-journaler. I've felt guilty for having the thought of "who the hell needs journaling anyway? It's a pic a the park, dude, figure it out." I've considered making a post about "those ppl" that feel that every picture must have some flowery lovey-dovey script about how this moment changed their life. Sometimes, it's ok just to say "We went to the park. we had fun". Seriously, trust me on this.

But then there are "other stories". Those ones that every once in a while pops out of the recesses of your brain (like the mauve mat lady) that need to be told and put down somewhere because SOMEDAY, someone's going to give a crap what you did at some point in your life. Unfortunately, you'll probably be dead when they start to wish they knew more about you.... if that's the case, maybe you can embellish a bit.... you know, stories about summer affairs with leaders of communist countries and maps to non-existent treasures. That'll teach your family not to ask you before you're dust.

So I decided last night late, about 10:30, to start on the book project. Basically it's a book with tabbed sections and hundreds of prompts to help you remember old stories that you thought were gone forever. It took me around an hour or so to finish the book, thankfully I have a big chopper paper cutter and a paper drill. Flat out, the paper drill was one of my favorite purchases. $25 and it will drill a hole through a stack of 100 sheets of paper in a few seconds. If you're going to do any sort of book making on your own, you need one. It will also drill holes in chipboard and canvases.

Let me tell you, if all classes were like this, I would take more classes. Yay for anal retentive (despite what I said earlier... well, don't forget to not be anal retentive... no... do be anal...... crap I don't KNOW).

The little book you make alone is awesome, and would make a really neat gift by itself. And it's THICK. So thick I have to go buy larger notebook rings for it today.

Unfortunately they are no longer taking registrations, but maybe she'll do it again. I'm recommending taking her classes because there's attention to detail here, and I don't feel like I'm just getting left behind. I'm hoping to finish the class as usually life tends to happen to me and I can't keep up, but right now, things have slowed down a bit. Slow is good right now.

Which is probably a good thing as I think I'm getting a cold. I almost always wake up stuffy in the morning, but this is a new level of stuffiness in my right sinus, plus, Gene got me laughing last night which turned into a huge coughing fit, which was all rattly in my chest. BLEH. Colds suck. I might try to head it off at the pass with some Vit. c.

Also today, answer some emails, and run errands, ww today again, finally fold that basket of laundry and put it away, shower, take some photos for a promo that I'm working on, copy some contracts, get some packages ready to mail, run by the bank. *that's a short list folks*.

I swear I'm Gene's personal assistant, and I feel like *I* need a personal assistant. And a maid. And a chef. And a really hot pool boy.