Bursting At The Seams – An AWWWW CRAP Moment
While I am sometimes guilty of indulging in a few of the seven deadly sins (gluttony, sloth & pride being three of my biggies), envy is rarely one for which I have to ask forgiveness.
However, whenever I see someone’s great big walk-in closet or large kitchen pantry or super-organized laundry room, I have to admit that I not only indulge in envy…I wallow in it.
You see, we live in an older house. And despite many renovations done by previous owners, no one ever saw fit to put in decent sized closets. I am not a fashionista, nor do I have a shoe obsession, but even a woman of simple tastes like mine needs more closet space than what I have. But in the ten years I’ve been in this house, I’ve never freaked out about it or said “Something HAS to be done about this!” I’ve learned that when I buy something new, something old has to go. And until recently that was my philosophy about having limited storage. I only keep what I have room for.
And then three nights ago I tried to save a new layout to my hard drive, and my computer did the unthinkable…the unforgivable. It told me I didn’t have enough disk space!
What do you mean I don’t have enough disk space?!?! I have a gigantic hard drive!!!
Well…I have a hard drive that was gigantic by the standards in place three years ago when I bought my computer and terrabytes were but a distant dream.
So did I apply the “only keep what you have room for” philosophy that serves me so well in my “real world”?
Oh hell no!!!
I took my happy behind to dell.com and ordered the biggest hard drive they had. While I was at it I ordered additional memory as well.
In the meantime I did the unthinkable. I proceeded to MOVE (not copy, like any SMART woman would have done) all my completed digital scrapbook pages, all my digital kits and embellishments and templates and sketches all all of the other things I use for scrapping, and all my digital photographs to my back up drive where Norton stores all it’s ghost images in case I have a hard drive failure. (Does running out of room constitute a failure?)
Oh, and in order to have enough room to MOVE all these files, I had to delete my ghost images.
Of course, the inevitable happened. Somewhere in the process of moving, my movers lost some boxes. They lost some of my page kits…everything with a title that started with any letter after T. They lost all my boxes of embellishments. They lost all of my template boxes. They lost all of my sketches. They lost all of the last freebie kit I posted, and all of the Halloween kit I was working on.
Crap. Crap squared. Crap cubed. Crap to the nth degree.
I’m counting my blessings. All my precious photos are intact. All my completed pages are intact, including the ones I have yet to send out for printing. The few missing kits (whose names begin with U, V, W, X, Y & Z) have all been recovered except for a freebie I’d downloaded some time ago called WooHoo. I have to thank scrapgirls.com for their extremely generous policy of tracking all their customer’s purchases and making them available for download again in the event of this kind of failure. Those ladies are the bomb. As for WooHoo, I haven’t been able to find it on the net again, and that really jags me because there were some awesome embellishments in there…in particular a star-embossed brad that I’ve used again and again and again.
So…right now you’re wondering why I’ve bothered to share all this boring, why-should-this-matter-to-me-stuff with you.
First, it means the kit I’d planned to complete and upload today will be postponed. Look for it next Wednesday.
Second….learn from my mistakes!!! Please!!!!
Back up your files!!! I don’t care how you do it, just do it. And once you have, DON’T delete the backups!!!!
If you have to transfer files from one drive to another, copy…DON’T move. And don’t delete the original files until you’re certain that you’ve gotten everything you need.
Take good care of your computer, because your computer tries to take good care of you.
And come back sometime in the next few days to check on my progress and find out how I fare installing a new hard drive and to check out new links I’ll post as I find them.
In the meantime….
GO DIGITAL!!! (It’s WAY better than postal!)
Free Digital Kit – Chocolate Raspberry
I often find that my creative endeavors rarely end as initially planned.
I think that’s why I love digital so desperately.
I begin a project, digital photos in hand (so to speak) and think in my head, “Oh, I’m going to make it look like this. I’m going to use this background color, and these accent colors and these embellishments.”
And what I usually end up with is a FAR cry from what I first imagined.
Along the way I decide to change the background paper. Or rearrange my photos. Or resize them. Try taking a 4×6 photo and making it a 5×7 or 8×10 when you’re using paper products. You can do it, but it’s a hassle…even if you’re printing them yourself.
I put this embellishement here, but as I look at my creation, I decide to move it…and make it bigger…or smaller…and change the color.
That’s why I love digital scrapbooking. It’s forgiving of my many whims and uncertainties.
This kit that I’m posting is a perfect example of my ever-shifting creative process.
When I began the kit, my inspiration was my newly redecorated kitchen. I pulled my color scheme from it, and I was thinking of something a bit retro, a bit mod, a bit coffee bar influenced.
What I ended up with is so NOT retro…or mod…or coffee bar.
It’s much softer. More feminine…for the most part anyway.
It’s a big kit….10 papers, 24 embellishments, 2 alphabets. I’d intended to get this up on Wednesday, but the buggy bug bug has hit my house, and I’ve been dealing with sick children…who, of course, shared their buggy bug bugs with me.
YAY!!!!!!!!!!
But it’s now up and you can download all the bits and pieces below:
If you download it, leave me a comment. I’d love to hear what you think of the kit as it stands, and I’m always open to CONSTRUCTIVE criticism.
As with any free download, please please please read my Terms of Use. This is for PERSONAL USE ONLY. Please do not upload the files to your website or blog, but please feel free to provide a link for someone to find them here.
Building a Solid Foundation – Awesome Sketches for Scrapbooking
If you know anything about construction, you know you can’t build a house without a solid foundation.
Well, you can, but you wouldn’t want to live in it.
In many ways, scrapbooking is like building a house. There are so many different pieces and parts that are needed to create a final product (and some pieces are fancier than others), but all those pieces rest on one very very important thing…the foundation.
In scrapbooking, the foundation is your basic layout. For me, creating a good foundation is one of the biggest hurdles I have to overcome in my scrapbooking (besides finding time).
I think of it as one part puzzle piecing, one part architecture, and twenty parts pain in the…
I’ve been known to walk away from treasured photos for months (sometimes YEARS!!!) because I couldn’t figure out how to make them fit together.
Then recently I discovered the Got Sketch? blog. The lady responsible for this piece of genius is Valerie Salmon, and when I tell you she is one gifted and talented lady, I mean she is truly gifted and talented.
If you’re like me and you struggle with foundations, take a minute to check out her blog. Trust me when I tell you it will be well worth your time.
Phreaky Day #3 – I’m BBBBAAAACCCCKKKK!!!
Based upon the wild popularity of my first few posts (ha ha!!!) , I’m at it again.
After years of using digital kits designed by others, I’ve finally begun creating my own. And I’ll be offering them here…yes, right here…for free. I love a freebie!!!!
My goal is to have one new free kit per week, and I hope to post it on Wednesday. Sometimes it will be a seasonal kit, sometimes it will be a kit I’ve created while trying desperately to get caught up on all those old photos that haven’t quite made it into the scrapbooks yet.
Posting here will be at random (other than the weekly kit). I’ll be including links to free kits I find on the web…not ALL the free kits on the web, just those I find that I really really love. That means all the links will be subject to my own personal taste…I’m feeling sorry for ya’ll already.
I’ll also be creating a page with links to the best tutorials I can find on the web. Digital scrapbooking opens up a wealth of possibilites, and what we can do with our programs and files is only limited by our technical knowledge and imaginations. I’m hoping you’ll find something here to expand both.
So…in the meantime, go digital!!!! (It’s WAY better than postal!)
Phreaky Day #2 — Crap Cubed
Frankly I’ve begun to worry about myself. I’ve been forgetting quite a few things lately. Not just things like forgetting to take the grocery list when I go shopping — which I’ve always done — but also forgetting BIG things like my committee meeting at church yesterday afternoon.
The kids and I pulled into the parking lot at 5:15 yesterday afternoon, which technically made us early because Awana begins at 5:30. But I noticed that there were A LOT of cars there already. In particular there was a car belonging to a dear friend of mine who is NEVER early. At that moment I realized what I’d done.
I’d forgotten our 4:00 committee meeting. I felt terrible. Awful. Stupid. Irresponsible.
The fact that I’m the CHAIR of the committee only made me feel worse. Irresponsible squared.
I also realized that I’d forgotten I also had an administrative council meeting scheduled for 7:30 that night.
Crap. Crap squared. Crap cubed. Crap crap crap crap crap.
I entered just as the committee meeting was finishing up, made my apologies. I made my exit with the excuse that I needed to make copies of some handouts for my Sparks group and ran to the church office to hide. (I really did have to make copies.)
Of course the copy machine wasn’t working, and my frustration over not being prepared for my clubbers that night combined with my feelings of complete inadequacy combined with all the other stresses going on in my life (which I won’t go into at this particular moment) combined, crashed down on me, and left me a shaking, quivering, blubbering mess.
The only thing worse than crying in the church office is having another church member walk in on you while you’re crying in the church office.
Yeah…I’m really starting to worry about myself.
Phreaky Day #1 — I Hate Days Like This
Two days ago everyone in my house was running around in shorts and flip-flops, and the air conditioning was cranking in a valient attempt to keep this nearly 100-year old disaster of a house cool.
Today I sent my kids off to preschool & school in long pants, long sleeved shirts, and jackets. The wind is leaking through the really-need-replacement windows, and the sky is hanging heavy and gray over my head.
I hate days like this.
I hate it that my almost-three-year-old Amazonian daughter is wearing a jacket a size too small for her because when I rushed out to buy winter clothes this week in expectation of the nor’easter that’s blowing right now, I didn’t think about getting a jacket. I hate it that since last year at this time, she’s grown TWO sizes. I hate it that she’s almost completely potty-trained and completely enamored of her Dora The Explorer panties.
As I watched her strut around in her brand-new size 5T leggings and shirt this morning, reality crashed down on me. I no longer have a baby. I no longer have a toddler. I have a temperamental, head-strong, stubborn little girl who is the spitting image of me both physically and psychologically.
God help us all!!!
scrapphreak 