Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

I neglected to post the winner of my SOS #52 BINGO giveaway! Well, this was easy since I only had ONE COMMENT from a challenge participant.  I don't even need to make up a non-scientific and totally unfair method of selection -- the answer will be the same!

So Dr J, come on down!!! Please send me an email with your mailing address and I'll get your embossing folders out to you.

Thanks for playing, everyone!

Happy Earth Day!

Today is a banner day, dear readers. Yes, today marks several important events in my world. This post turned out to be rather long, so get a cuppa and settle in. You will be rewarded. :)

First, today is EARTH DAY! In celebration of the day, the Jingle Belles have issued us a recycled challenge from last year, which is to recycle or repurpose something to use on your card.

How convenient for me I'd saved some frosted acetate packaging just for an opportunity such as this! Here's my card, then I'll explain:

The papers I used here were a prezzie from one of my dearest bloggy pals, Lauren, who just happens to be one of the chief Belles. *waves* I ADORE this paper! *mwah* The ribbon is from Miss Lauren's package that contained the papers.

The piece of stripey paper is some vellum I rescued from my OMG, WON'T SOMEONE PULEEZE TAKE ALL THIS VELLUM pile. I wanted a layer on my card, but I didn't want to completely obliterate the pretty musical pattern beneath it.

Because I'm all about sharing, here is a close-up of the acetate bird:

 You can see I've managed to attach the paper circle upside down. Yes, I have. But hopefully you'll be so WOWed by that bird that you won't notice ... except I just told you. ;/

The bird. Remember that die-cut class I'm taking? Well, after 3 days of attempting to cut the frosted acetate packaging with wafer-thin dies, and failing miserably, I had a moment of clarity and remembered I should have been using a steel-ruled die to cut the acetate. DUH! So I used one of my SU Movers & Shapers shapes to cut the bird. I (believe it or not) inked up the back of the bird with Versamark, applied some sparkly embossing powder and heat-embossed it. Yes, it curled up, and I was afraid I'd discovered a new shrink plastic, but it didn't shrink, and eventually flattened back out. I've attached it with Crystal Effects, which wasn't quite dry when I took this photo.

Why so much trouble? Because I wanted to see the pretty, upside-down music paper through the bird!

Now, about those letters:

 These are some silver glitter stick-on letters I got last year, and have used ... never. I used the gold ones once last year. I tried to color these with my Ranger Broken China Tumbled Glass Distress Stain, but it just ran off the top of the letters. Bummer.

Or did it? When I gave up and tried to peel off the backing, Look what I found:

Oh, sure, it soaked through, but failed to color the silver glitter. Perfect. I had to use my trusty MS gel glue to get these to stick.

One more thing: this card was based on the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge:

 that I turned 90 degrees to fit my tired brain:

Enough whining about my card. Guess what today is, besides Earth Day?!?! Today is ... are you sitting down? ... my FIVE-YEAR BLOGIVERSARY!  Yes, my beloved 3 (maybe 4) readers, I have been blathering about nothing for FIVE YEARS! Here is my first post from Sunday, April 22nd, 2007. WHO KNEW I had so much nothing to say?! To celebrate this momentous occasion, and in my continuing theme of purging duplicate crafty items, I'm having a G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y! That's right! One lucky person will win this:

That's two Cuttlebug embossing folders and a set of Nestabilities Petite Ovals Large. These can be yours by just leaving a comment on this post by 7:00 pm EDT on Wednesday, April 25th. I'll draw a random comment and that will be that!

Thanks for reading this far, and thanks for stopping by!

Winners, Winners, Chicken Dinners!

We have winners from my giveaway earlier this week! My totally random and unfair selection process was to pick the first 5 responders who didn't protest too loudly for me to just keep my stinkin' paper!

And the weeeners are:

Mary Dawn
Natalie
Melody
Mandy
Gail

Please email me your mailing addresses (do NOT put them in a comment for all the world to see) and I'll get that out to you this week.

Thanks for playing!

Organizing and a G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y

*** Giveaway is closed. Yeah, I know it says Friday, 11/14, instead of 10/14, but 11/14 isn't a Friday, and I wouldn't give you guys a whole month to respond, anyway. I'd forget all about it; I can't even remember what I had for breakfast and you want me to remember something for a whole month? Not. Sorry for any confusion. ***

As promised, here's a peek at my "before" and "after" efforts in The Captain's Quarters. First, the "before" pic of the side table:

Yeah, it was pretty much a dumping ground for things that slid off my standing desk, or that otherwise had no home yet. Those wooden boxes on the left and back of the table are some old CD storage boxes I have. They are perfect little spaces for inks and acrylic blocks. Unfortunately, I can't get to most of it because of all that other stuff. Plus, this table was fine before I got the standing desk, but I had to turn it sideways for the new desk to fit in the room, and in this direction the table was just too wide. Something had to be done. And I done did it!

Here is that space now:

I replaced the table with a much smaller one. I stacked the wooden boxes on the back, then put my small drawer unit (ribbon scraps, UFOs, etc) on the right front of the table.

Here's the stacked boxes:

On the top - now only one surface instead of two ... when space is at a premium, one must build UP - from left to right: my stamp cleaner, SU markers, and a box of my MFT and other dies that have no home. Some of them are so small I have no idea what I'll do, so there they live.

The cubby-holes of the boxes hold my most-often-used items: Memento inks, acrylic blocks, my SU mat pack that I was forever losing somewhere on my desk, you know - stuff.

The front of the table top:

That white box is from IKEA, and now holds all my Nestabilities and my border dies from several other companies. It may not be the best solution, but at least I'm going in the right direction. To the left of that box are some cards I re-discovered under the heap-o-stuff on the desk, and what's left of my "in progress" pile. I guess they could be called UFOs, but if I could just focus for a bit, I could complete all the partial cards in there. Believe me when I tell you my "in progress" pile was 4 times this size. I'm talking major purging here at the Crooked Household. Funny how something you had to save is no longer deemed necessary a month later.

Here's a peek inside the Nestabilities storage:

This used to be stored in a 3-ring binder, but then I had to have somewhere to put the binder, open, and that was always on top of something else. This way I can flip through them in the box and not have to move anything. Also, I realized I found myself looking for "something rectangle" or "something oval-ish" so that's how I decided to store them in here. Each set is on a 4x6 magnet sheet and (once I thought to do it) with the front of the packaging so I know which set it is.

Right now this box is too heavy to lift, so I probably need to upgrade to something sturdier. This box came in a set of 2, so the second one is unassembled and stuck under its sibling - no where else for it to live. :(

Lookie what I found along my travels in the "in progress" pile:

I made an angry bird! HAHAHA! And I don't even play, but I did watch a video so I could see what the sling shot was all about. It's made from punches, and is fun to do. I thought I might make some cards for Angry Birds fans, but you see how far I've gone with that idea. This is it, folks. Yeah, it's on the list.

As I've said for the past few days, I've been doing some major pruning and purging in the Captain's Quarters, and you will be the recipient of my "OMG, WHY do I have SO MUCH of this" efforts.

Okay, ready for a give-away? Today I have five (5) packages of SU Delicate Dots DSP that were part of SAB a few years ago. I've cut them down to 6x6 so they'll be easier to mail. Here's what they look like:


(Please click on the photo for a better look at the patterns.) I have displayed both sides of the four double-sided papers.

I have 5 packages, and each winner will get a whole package. How can you win? Just leave me a comment on this post by Friday, 11/14, at 6 pm Eastern Time US and answer the following question:

How many grooves are there on a record album? (You know, those vinyl things? Yeah, those.)

I'll pick 5 winners through a totally unscientific and probably not fair method, and announce the winners Saturday morning.

Good luck, and thanks for stopping by!

We Have A Weener!

Last Friday marked the 4-year anniversary of my entry to the Blogoshpere, and I posted a list of questions for you to answer for a chance to win a pack of two embossing folders. That post got 21 responses - TWENTY ONE! And most of you got the answers right, even. Am I that transparent? Were the questions too easy? :)

Here are my responses, or at least the ones in my head when I made up the questions:

1. What is my favorite thing to put on a card? RIBBON!
2. What do I do every Saturday in the Summer months? Farmers Markets
3. What's my favorite kind of card to make? Irreverent/snarky
4. What is my favorite color? green
5. What is my favorite snack? (trick question - I don't snack.)
6. What is your name? (most of you got this one right)

Okay, just to be clear, for those of you who answered "jalapeno poppers" for my snack, that was a good one, but when I make those, they are "dinner", not a snack. Close, but no cigar.

Luckily for you, though, the answers do not even matter! Nope! I decided to use random.org to pick a number from 1 to 22*, and here's the result:

Comment #4 belongs to ... drum-roll, please ... Mary Dawn! Woo-hoo! (The crowd goes wild.) I shall get that off to you shortly. :)

I want to thank you ALL for playing, and for sticking with me these past four years. THANK YOU!

But wait, there's more. heh heh I have to show you a little something I made last weekend. Remember how I said "okay, just one more" ribbon wreath? Well, I tried to disappear some of my Every Color Pink Ribbon But The One I Need hoard. It didn't work, though I will say: as much as I don't like pink, I do use it for little girl cards.

Here is my girlie pink ribbon wreath under glass:

The photo is crooked and poorly lit, sorry. I'm pretty sure the letters are mostly straight. ;/ The letters are wooden, and colored with my new-to-me white acrylic paint marker. I kinda like this, even if it is GAH pink.

Okay, that is all. Thanks again for playing, and I hope to be back soon with something other than a ribbon wreath. It just might be possible for me to get tired of ribbon. ... ... Or not.

Thanks for stopping by!

* Luckily for me, random.org didn't select #22, because with 21 responses, that could have been awkward.

We Have A Winner!

At long last, I have selected a winner for my G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y! The goodies are:



And the winner is ...

Kerri Love

YAY! Woo-hoo! (The crowd goes wild!)

Kerri - Please email me your mailing address and I'll get these out to you this week.

Thanks for playing, everyone! And thanks for reading!

A G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y

As promised, I am finally getting to my 1000-blathery-posts-and-you-stuck-with-me-and-I-love-you-guys G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y post! For your (hopefully) enjoyment, I have selected the following two items from my stash:

A current Hostess Set from SU and a package of some DSP from Sale-A-Bration. Why these two particular items, you might ask? Well, let me see if I can explain ... um ... er ... I was a DIM WIT and ordered the same Hostess set in two consecutive orders. God, I need a keeper.

As for the paper? Well, um, I kept ordering and ordering in Jan/Feb and they kept telling me I'd earned another SAB set, and I already had the ones I wanted, so I got more paper.

Why do you want this paper? Let me show you!

It has houses!

... and MORE houses!

... and CLOUDS!

And because all the papers are double-sided, there are cutie-patootie petite designs on the backs, like this one:

So what could you DO with all this paper? I think they'd make wonderful Housewarming cards, or Welcome Home, or Welcome to the Neighborhood. What? You've never seen ME make anything with these papers? Well, er, that's ... kinda true. But I did open the pack to look at it! I DID! (The winner's pack is still shrink-wrapped, not to worry.)

SO, what do you have to do to win this stuff? All you need to do is answer a question! Easy-peasy. And that question is:

What is one of my pet peeves?

Seriously, you can only name one. Per comment. YOU CAN ENTER MORE THAN ONCE! YOU CAN! I have so many pet peeves, this should be stoopid-easy for my regular readers. For the rest of you - good luck! :)

Please post your entries to THIS POST ONLY. I shall consider all comments entered by 9 pm ET on Saturday, October 2nd. I shall select the winner by a totally unfair and subjective process that has yet to be decided.

So enter early and enter often! Let the games begin!

And thanks for stopping by!

The Best of Etsy

Did you know there is a very cool offering on etsy called The Best of Etsy? I didn't, until just now! Here is the listing. It's a box of 10 hand-selected items from etsy, and one of my Tweeps, @patriciamonkey (here's her etsy shop), was lucky enough to be selected for one. Check it out here.

If you'd like a chance to win one of these super boxes, go here to enter! Also think of this as a possible fun sample box to purchase and send to someone who appreciates hand-made items!

Okay, back to your regular programming. I hope to have something stampy to share with you tonight or tomorrow.

FREE STUFF (not mine)

Want a chance to win some free stuff? One of my Tweeps, PaperGrace, is having an "It's My Birthday" giveaway, and she's giving away stuff from CHA! Go check it out and leave her a comment for a chance to win!

Blog-iversary, Part Third (and Last) - We Have A Winner!

It's Monday, and that means it is time to announce the third (and last) winner of my 3-part Blog-iversary G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y! This time I used random.org to do the work for me. I asked them to select a number between 1 and 5, and they chose ... drum-roll please ... ... the number 2!

Congratulations go to Mary Dawn! Let's hear it for the winner! Yay! Woo-hoo! Cheers! (okay, that's enough) Mary Dawn - please email me (do not post it here!) with your mailing address and the city name you'd like printed on your City Cards. I am SURE I have your address somewhere in my In Box, but, well, it was just easier to ask you again, ya know? :-)

Thanks for playing, everyone!

Blog-iversary G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y, Part Third (And LAST!)

FINALLY, the last one of these you will need to endure. Welcome to the third of three G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Ys to celebrate the 2-year mark of this blog.

For the past two weeks, I have asked you to WORK for your prize, so this week I'll ease up and all you will need to do is leave a comment on this post to enter. Cut-off time is 11:59 pm EDT Sunday (just before midnight), and Monday I'll pick a random comment as the winner.

Check out this post for what you'll win, and the second part of this one for the details.

Thanks for playing!

Blog-iversary, Part Second - We Have A Winner!

I am sorry to be posting this so late in the day, but it is still Monday, so I am not late, yet. Darn Day Job! It interferes with so much of my would-be life...

Congratulations go to Kathy H, whose name was chosen by an ever-so-slightly-scientific method from all the entries (I pulled her name out of a box, okay?) Let's hear it for the winner! Yay! Woo-hoo! Cheers! (okay, that's enough)

Kathy - please email me (do not post it here!) with your mailing address and the city name you'd like printed on your City Cards. I know, I probably have your address somewhere in the bowels of my In Box, but it was just easier to ask you again. You KNOW how lazy I can be sometimes.

Tomorrow I shall post the third of three G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Ys, and then we'll be done with all that! I'm thinking and plotting while I cut up a catalog to make some quick note cards, so maybe I'll have a clue by tomorrow. Heck, I may even post the note cards later this evening, if I decide I like them, that is.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blog-iversary G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y, Part Second

It's Week 2 of 3, peeps, and time for my second Blog-iversary G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y! Check out this post for what you'll win, and the second part of this one for the deets.

Let's see, what shall I make you do this week for a chance to win the goodies? Hmmmmmmmmmmm ... ... ... thinkthinkthink! ... GOT IT! I neglected to post a UHC challenge yesterday because I was lazy, tired, distracted, focused on my Stamp Camps, I had to go to work on Monday, the cat got stepped on, the weather was lovely, and ... and ... um ... I just didn't. But if I *HAD* posted a UHC, it would have been for Grey Day, which is celebrated every year on May 26th, which also happens to be my college roomie's birthday, though why I remembered that just at this moment, I am sure doctors all over the globe want to know.

So this week I am gonna make you work for it again and make another card, but the only rule is to be inspired by "Grey Day". After you've figured out what that means to you, go forth and create.

Da Rules (okay, there's more, so what?):
1. Be inspired, per above.
2. Must be a new card (though how I'd know, I haven't a clue)
3. Post it somewhere and link back to this post so we can see what ya did! Got no online gallery or blog? Just email it to me and I'll post it for you!
4. Enter as often as you'd like.
5. The cut-off for entries will be 11:59 pm Sunday night (just before midnight).
6. Comments on this post without entries are ALWAYS welcome, but will not get you closer to winning without an accompanying card.
7. Winner will be announced Tuesday morning.

Got it? Good! Now go stamp something!!!

Blog-iversary, Part First - We Have A Winner!

The winner of the first part of my Blog-iversary G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Ys has been selected by a very non-scientific method, and the winner is: Kristie's Mom, Coral! Yay!!! Woo-hoo!! Cheers!! (The crowd goes wild!) The winning entry is the second card in Kristie's link. Way to go Kristie's Mom!!!! Please email me (my email address is in my left side-bar) with your mailing address and the name of the city or town or township or whatever you want printed on your City cards. As soon as I get them made, I'll send out your packet of goodies. Thanks for playing!

The next GIVEAWAY will be tomorrow. I sure hope I think up a devious plan by then!

Blog-iversay G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y, Part First

Welcome to Week 1 of 3 of my Blog-iversary G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Ys! I have three packs of goodies made up of this stuff:

If you'd like some details of what's included, see this post. Basically, you'll get 1/4 of what you see here. My math: 1/4 for me, 3/4 to give away, 1/4 each week for three weeks. :-)

Today, plus each of the next two weeks, I'll make up a challenge for you and you'll have a week (conveniently including a weekend for my fellow working stiffs) to enter. I'll pick a winner using some non-scientific method on Monday, and post the next challenge on Tuesday.

For this week's challenge (yeah, this week you'll need to work for it), I'd like you to make a card with the following:

1. Ribbon (surprise!)
2. A button
3. Bonus points if you use something green (I love green).

Here's a little something I whipped up when I got home last night:

Everything but the base of the card is from The Heap. Yep, still working on it! I actually stamped three different images, chose three pieces of scrap patterned paper, then ended up using a completely different fourth piece of scrap patterned paper. And I've only used one of the three images, but this one went the best with the sentiment I wanted to use.

The ribbon is from a roll I got last year (or has it been 2 years?!) with Heather when we visited the ribbon outlet. OMG, I will never, ever, ever use it all. This particular piece is really nice, thick satin, and is quite yummy to work with!

The button is from my 1/4 of the pack of buttons that will be part of the winner's goodies. I tied it around the ribbon with a piece of SU Linen thread, so the tied button is what's holding the bow in place. Fun!

If you'd like to enter this week, please make a card following my made-up restrictions/demands listed above, post it online somewhere, come back to this post and leave me a comment and a link to your post. If you do not have a blog and you are not a member of an online gallery (read: you have nowhere to post it), just email the pic to my gmail account (link in the left side bar) and I'll post it for you.

More rules:

4. If you want to make more than one card, you can enter more than once! (I love making up the rules!)
5. You are allowed to comment and not leave a link, since I live for comments.
6. Winner will be chosen from the posts with links to entered cards, so if you leave me 300 comments (LOL!), it will not increase your chances of winning unless you also made 300 cards.
7. Please post by 11:59 pm Eastern Daylight Time (US) Sunday - that's just before midnight - so I can pick a winner Monday morning.

Clear as mud? Good! Now go create something! Thanks for stopping by!

A Little Bit O'Nature and A Peek A Some Goodies

After work today, I took the scenic route home so I could be a good girl and take a walk on the canal. It was a glorious day, and it would have been a shame to go straight home and begin my usual slugness so early. So I got there and started to walk. So far, so good.

This is one of the first things I see when I head from the parking area to the canal. This is run-off from the lock. The canal contains a series of locks that used to be used to help boats navigate the canal, which runs from Georgetown (DC) North 187 miles to Northwestern Maryland. This particular lock is around mile 19, which is how far North of DC I live. Isn't this purty?

This is the tow path, where the mules used to walk while they towed the barges. There are two or three locks still working with mule-towed barges for the tourists. It's fun, and if you are ever in DC, you should check it out.

Anyway, this is the path that runs along the side the canal, which parallels the Potomac River. People come here to walk, bike, run (with or without dogs), or ride horses. One of my best photos ever was the rear end of a horse. I'll dig it out of the archives and show it to you this weekend. It is a hoot!

So this evening I started my usual walk, and since I am a fast walker, I broke out into a sweat at about 100 yards, I kid you not. I am soooo out of shape. Plus it was buggy, so after about 10 minutes I bagged it, turned around, and headed back.

To get back to the parking area you need to cross back over the canal, so I took the opportunity to show you this particular lock in the closed position ...

... and the other side, which is of course open.

And because it was there, this is the former Lock House, where the Lock Master lived. Some of the lock houses along the canal are open to the public and you can take tours. If you look waaaaay off in the distance, you can see the Potomac River. One of these days I'll get back out there and take some better pics.

Enough with the nature stuff already! Wanna see some goodies? I am working on collecting stuff from The Other Room to have as give-aways in May. First of all, you need to consider that I am not famous, and I do not have any sponsors, nor do I have people giving me things, so don't expect things like whole sets of Nestabilities. Okay, now that we've settled that, let's check out what I have in the stack so far.

We have:

*Three (3) packs of 12x12 papers, which shall be cut into 4 6x6 stacks each. I'll keep one of each to scratch my itch, and the other three will be given away.

* Cork letters. Yes, they are lame, but I have three of them, and maybe one of you can do something cool with them, as I cannot.

* 4-packs of stickers. These are very cool. You can use one on each of 4 cards, like I did. ;-)

* Packs of paper flowers. Lotsa potential here.

* Paper napkins. Yes, paper napkins. I have a whole pack of these. I used one to make 4 cards, and heaven knows I do not need ALL of these. If you peel apart the layers so all you have is the top colored layer, you put plastic wrap between the napkin and your card stock (with lots of scrap paper under and over all of it) and you iron the whole thing. The plastic wrap acts like the glue, and it looks VERY cool.

* Ribbon. Surprise!

* Buttons. I have a gazillion buttons, so I plan to share.

* See that pack of City Cards on the left? Yep, you'll get those, too. Now I am not dim enough to think you'd want note cards that say "Gaithersburg, MD", but each winner WILL get a pack customized with their own town's name. Or a made-up name. I really don't care, but you'll get to pick the name.

I reserve the right to add more stuff as I find it In There, but this is the stack so far. NOW, if anyone has a good idea for what kind of contests or challenges I should have to give this stuff away over a three-week period in May, please let me know. I am certainly open to suggestions. If you guys don't think of something fun, you will be at the mercy of whatever evil plan I devise, so consider yourselves warned!

Okay, I'm off to stamp! Thanks for stopping by!

We Have A Winner!!!!

I ran the numbers for my Ribbon G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y, and here's the result:

#6 is the winner! So Wanda, please email me your mailing address (lqhanna@gmail.com) so I can get this bag outta here send you your ribbon goodness tomorrow morning.

Thanks for playing, everyone!

Ribbon G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y

You know me by now - everything needs ribbon! For the longest time, I could not bring myself to discard the cuttings, so I saved them. I had to set a limit, though, or I would now be sleeping in a nest of ribbon cuttings, so I decided the piece had to be long enough to USE in order to keep it. Now, 'long enough to use' can have several interpretations: Long enough to tie into a bow? Long enough to tie into a knot? Long enough to tie around another piece of ribbon into a faux knot? Long enough to poke out from under a layer? Long enough to ... you see where I am going with this. I bring up the subject of ribbon scraps because I discovered this in my last effort to clean out a box of stuff:

This is a one-gallon size zip-top bag o'ribbon. Here's one side of it ...

... and here's the other side. LOTS of ribbon. And since I.do.not.need.more.ribbon, I have decided to give it away! That's right - the WHOLE BAG goes to one lucky person. Who shall that be? Lessee, how about you answer a question I am about to formulate, then I'll use the random number thingie to select a winner. K? K! Here we go .. this is a tough one ...

What is your favorite embellishment?

Real tough, huh? It's okay if you like buttons better than ribbon; you will not hurt my feelings at all - not one little bit!

Please post your answer by Thursday, March 5th, 10:00 pm EST. I will select a winner on Friday so I can mail this out on Saturday and get it out of here before the Clean Sweep. :-)

Organizing, Crafting, and a G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y!

It all started innocently enough on Sunday. I thought I'd go through the three+ boxes of stuff from SU I have piling up in here and take stock of what I forgot I had. The good news is I got it mostly down to one box. (yay) The bad news is I have an embarrassingly LARGE amount of stuff that I actually did forget I had. I decided to put away as much as I could, since The Other Room really does not have the space, which is why it was piling up in the Living Room in the first place. Wanna see the "after"?

Here we have a stack o' card stock:

Mostly Whisper White and Very Vanilla. One can never have too much White or Vanilla card stock. Well, maybe one can. You see, when I place a Demo order, I try to hit $150 to get some free stuff. Yes, I do the math, albeit Demo Math, but I will not take an order from $120 to $150 to get a free set I do not want. The numbers just don't work for me. So you see, I do have some level of restraint. ;-) So ANYway, for the times when I do hit $150 and get $15 in free merchandise, guess what? A pack of WW or VV card stock is $7.50, and twice that is an even $15.00. No muss, no fuss, no MATH. So I am not too surprised to have this much on hand, but I was a little surprised that I had ordered that much of it recently. I did put it away, mostly.

Next we have a pile o' adhesives, which I also try to use as order fillers:

We do go through a lot of Dimensionals and Glue Dots at my workshops, so I need a bunch on hand. And that Red Tape is (was) for a workshop project I never got to, but if I ever DO, I am READY!

Next we have the really embarrassing part - DS paper:

This is some from the retiring stuff from July & August that I stockpiled because I loved it, but mostly from the new catalog (read: since August). Ugh. I had forgotten I had some of it, which is not hard to do considering how much of it I have. I do have two or three packs of some of the patterns (I think for two of the papers) as I'd planned to use it for ... a workshop project that just never happened. You see, when I DO think up projects, it is usually the week before the workshops, and there would never be time to order the extra papers and get them in time. Soooo, when I think about it, I order three of something I like, with plans to use it. It's just the "using it" part that fails me.

And when it was all done, I was left with this partial box o' stuff:

There is a stack of Rub-ons there in the back, some of them from as far back as SAB. I have no repository in The Other Room for rub-ons, so here they languish. I also have some ribbon (surprise!), and several containers of Jumbo eyelets, um, from another planned-and-never-executed workshop project.

Oh, and that 3-pack of tins on the right side of the box? That was for an idea I had to use up some of the retired 3x3 Love Notes I have left over. I was going to make some number of Love Notes, all decorated nicely, and put them in the tins with a fancy, schmancy belly band and sell them at my holiday craft shows (all 2 of them this year.) But the tins cost $3.33 each, so I am not sure I'll be able to make any money on them, so I never pursued the project.

Ya know, if I could ever remember all these great ideas I have over the course of the year, I might have my next workshops' projects all planned out. HA HA HA HA HA! Oh, that's too funny. I crack myself up sometimes.

To celebrate the consolidation of all that stuff, I took out the pack of SU Chipboard Ornaments Kit I'd bought in a Good Demo moment and decided to assemble them. Many, many, many (many) hours later, I had made these:

Let's go through all of them, shall we? Here we have some words (all of the chipboard pieces, by the way, have patterned die-cut papers stuck to both sides of the chipboard):


And some more words, and some round things with star punch-outs in the middle:

And some plain ornament shapes:


And some funky-shaped ornaments:

And some long thingies:


And some Fleur de Lis (outers):


And some Fleur de Lis (inners):

And one heck of a lot of stars:


Phew! Man, oh man, but that's a lotta chipboard ornament parts! Unfinished chipboard ornament parts, in my case, because I stopped right there and put it all away. You see, I do not "do" Christmas, so I will never, ever use these things. But I can tell you, if you do Christmas, and you like to decorate your house and your tree and maybe even your packages with pretty things, and if you were to take these babies to the next level and make them pretty with glitter and some of those stars and some, oh, I dunno, ribbon, then punch holes in the tops so you can hang them easily, this would be one good deal. But not for me. I think I'll give them to my customers and maybe they can make something of them.

And if you are still reading (amazing ...), there is one more thing. You see, we (yes we) hit a new milestone in Blogland last week. Lookie:


Woo-hoo! You did it again! And to thank you (and I DO thank you!), I am having a real G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y! By "real", I mean not some s-crap from The Other Room. No, siree! This is something from my Kitchen floor! Yes, I have overflow everywhere. Several months ago I bought these:


I had this idea that since I do not cook a lot, but when I do, I make a normal recipe, meaning I have a lot of left-overs, I thought I might prolong the life of these left-overs with a vacuum seal system. Needless to say that all never happened; I had to take these out of the bag to photograph them.

Here is the main attraction:

And this starter kit includes:

Plus a box of Quart and Gallon bags. Hey, when I shop, I shop, okay?

So, do you want to win these goodies? Yeah? Do I hear a YEAH, BABY!? Well, to win these, all you have to do is tell me why YOU deserve to win them over everyone else. That would be why YOU, one of my three (maybe four) beloved readers, is so much more deserving than the others. Got a sad story? Do tell! Do you cook a lot and hunker down for a long, cold, Winter, living off only the food you are able to preserve in your root cellar? Then tell us all about it!

So spill your sob story as a comment on this post before Sunday noon, and I'll pick a winner based on some as-yet-undecided non-scientific method.

See, good things can happen to you here in cyberspace! Comment on!!!!!! I cannot wait to read your answers! ;-)