Some Old School Scrapbooking and My Leaky Cup

So New Years is here and everyone and their brother is making their resolutions to lose weight, get in shape etc. Although I know that I have packed on a few pounds since the holidays, my resolutions this year include getting my office organized and functional and cutting back on my Starbucks consumption. Ha Ha.

As you have seen from my prior posts, I pretty much live out of my office space. The rest of my house will be neat as a pin but I can guarantee you a mess behind the office door. Most of my problem resides with incoming paper and constant craft projects. You see, I like to have several going on all at once. It's in my nature. I do this with books too. Have five going at one time. It drives my husband crazy.

So far, I have been doing a great job of getting everything organized. I purchased a stack of inboxes over at Costco for each member of the family. That way we don't have paper stacked on the front counter. I have been downsizing my crafting supplies since last year and only keeping the things that I know that I will finish.

One of my largest ongoing projects has been my pictures. I love everything about pictures. Although, I am not the best photographer, I love taking pictures. The problem is, that they get stuck on my hard drive and never printed out. Last year, I decided that I was finally going to go "old school" on my photos. I was just so "done" with all of the scrapbooking craze. I mean, don't get me wrong, I am in love with scrapbooking stores and all of the paper and the embellishments and everything. Embarrassingly enough, I probably have enough to open my own scrapbook store. The problem is, is it takes me so long to get one page done and every page seems to be so expensive when you are buying ribbon and grommets and chipboard words. I needed to simplify my life a little. I needed to get these pictures in books so that we could really enjoy looking at them.

My Grandma Margie is the most organized scrapbooker I know. Her albums are just pictures and captions. She takes pictures and has them developed and puts them in the same day. She sometimes includes announcements, thank you notes, letters, obituaries and the like. I love going to her house and pulling out one of the dozen or so albums and flipping through them. So, I decided to simplify my own pictures and do the same. I bought albums a couple of months ago and just started putting pics in chronological order. When I have time, I go back and add the captions in my own writing with a black pen. All of you scrapbookers are fainting in horror right now, sorry for that. Nothing fancy, no embellishments, no stickers, no glitter, just simplicity - and you know what . . . I almost have a whole year completed. I have been feeling very accomplished with my "old school" style of scrapbooking.

So as for my organizational resolution, I am still struggling with the organization thing, but I am slowly accomplishing small bits and pieces. I have downsized quite a bit and am feeling pretty good about my progress.

My other resolution this year was to cut my Starbucks intake in half. Ha Ha. It's the hardest thing that I have ever had to do. I started a few months ago when I bought some Oregon Chai Tea from the grocery store. Though I love the chai tea and how easy it is to fix at home. I just really miss going to Bucki's and saying "hi" to all of my Starbucks friends and getting my hot steamy latte from the friendly barista. Today I resigned myself to go because I had a little bit of a gift card still left and I was really jonesing for a hot drink. I knew that I should have abstained, my conscious told me so, but I still needed my Starbcuks fix. So through the drive-through I went and got my delicious cup of joe and began to pull away. I noticed a drip on my hand and so I grabbed a napkin and brushed it away, then another drip on my jeans as I was driving. Maybe the lids not on tight enough? I readjusted the thing and made it home and then...... drip, drip, drip... what the heck? And lo and behold I have a giant fissure running down the side of my cup. Ahhhhhhh! I was already home, so I grabbed a cup and put it underneath the leaky mess. Yuck! All in all, I should have stayed at home and had my cheap chai teal latte instead of spending $3.80 on my latte and leaky cup. Will I ever learn?