The Great Purge

so, i've decided, once again, for good and for true, that i need to purge. and i need to be brutal. here are my new Purge Parameters:

1. if i haven't used it in 6 months, it's gone.
2. if it won't fit on a mini, it's gone.
3. if it's (still) unopened, it's gone.
4. if i don't know why i'm still keeping it, it's gone.
5. if it's not vintage, it's gone.
6. if i am still planning on using it for the same project i was planning 6 months ago but still haven't started, it's gone.
7. if it's a book that i don't look at, it's gone.

this purge will be brutal. this isn't for the faint at heart. i have a lot of stuff (still) that i've been keeping because i like it, but really, will i ever use it? i doubt it. so... there will be a lot going away. there will be rub-ons, paper, chipboard, more stamps, stickers, and God only knows what else. maybe even some gel pens (i know how much you love them! unfortunately, i don't use them all that often, so they may just have to go, too). there may be some BIG surprises in the purge. i haven't fully decided on a few things, but the way i'm feeling today, they may just Be Gone tomorrow (the bold letters give a hint).

my plan is to put it all in totes and store it until the next yard sale at CNP. i'll post a pic when it's done.

i'll be keeping a running list of everything going into the tote, so you can plan your yard sale purchases (but so you know, staci's already working on her list! lol). if you're desperate for anything i've listed, just let me know, and i'll let you know how much.

UPDATE: just so you know... i've got some BG collection packs in my tote, and there's going to be some storage items in there, too. verticle paper storage, and some photo storage (though i don't think it will fit in my tote, but it will be there in spirit), and a wheely-thingy (the word escapes me right now) to haul you stuff to crops and such. i work in mini now. i don't need a large tote thing. ooh! that reminds me, i need to call pam! toodles! :)

look at the progress! are you proud, annie?

check it out, folks. the boxes are in their spots on the shelves, and you can see desktop! i still need to find a place for a bunch of stuff, but it's all neatly in a basket on the table, so it's also contained. look at me... i'm productive! yay! :)

back at it...

and i'm actually beginning to make some progress! i know, i can't believe it, either! who knew there was actually a desk under there! did you know i have a BG magnetic mat? i do! and now, i know where it is, and i almost have enough clear space to put it on the desk... where it will be usuable!!!!! somebody pinch me! this is actually happening! wow! i'm speechless!

ok, you know i'm not. have i ever been? maybe once or twice, but alas, this is so not one of those times. anyway...

the reason for the post tonight is this: i am working on my desk, and that contest from the other week, when i told you to guess the number of "extras" i was going to find... yeah, that still stands. and so far, in the basket i have set aside for this very purpose, i have 14 items. now, there's still more. i have found an extra bottle of glue, and i'm debating about that. i mean, who can't use glue, right? so, maybe i should keep it. but, i already have 2 bottles on the go. well, 3, i guess, if you count this one. so perhaps i should include it in the "extras"? i don't know. i think it's only been used once or twice.

i'll keep you posted on my progress here over the next few days.in the meantime, i'm still purging, and still counting extras. and right now, included in this purge, there are some lovely glittery flowers, a 2-page layout i did for a crop circle (no title, no pics, but i'm not going to use it, so someone should enjoy it), a reverse image stamp, some chipboard, some Queen & Co brads in a nailpolish bottle (too cute!!!), and a very pretty sheet of paper. i've got more coming. i'm trying to be realistic (read: brutal) with all this, getting rid of things i really don't use/need. i'm keeping a few things, but a lot is going. i have found so many papers that i don't need, a couple flyers (including one for the CNP truckload clearance sale... last april).

well, i'm back to organizing. maybe i'll get my craft boxes back into their spaces tonight... i've already found a couple... boxes, that is... ok, and the spaces. they were buried behind crap. if you need me, this is where i'll be.

oh, and check the sidebar over the next few days, too. i may be downsizing a few other things here, as well. i know i've got a couple pizza box kits coming available, so once i get batteries for my camera i'll post some pics of those kits, so you know what you're coveting. alrighty? ttyl! :)

look! you can see desktop!!!

you will notice that the pile is significantly lower now. you can actually see the top of the desk! and so far i have found:

1. a vintage photograph of my great-grandparents on their wedding day.
2. 3 wooden coat hooks i was planning on altering for the kiddies.
3. a protractor.
4. a stamp set i was going to sell at the CNP yard sale. (Treat Yourself. it's all cupcakes and gumball-machine themed. very cute. very not me. maybe it will be in the prize pack. i'm counting as an extra, since it's a stamp set i didn't know i had anymore...)
5. a roll of Hypafix.
6. some cards.
7. my hydro bill.
8. a pile of BG rub-ons.
9. my Xyron.
10. my Infusion collection pack.
11. the packaging for my Infusion collection pack. these were not together. seriously.
12. the orange brads i wanted when i was playing with deb the other week.
13. 2 monthly challenge kits.
14. some flowers i don't want. they're cool, but, really, what was i thinking? they're not my style! they're not extras, but i'll count them. and they're going in the prize pack, too.
15. the books i'd borrowed from my councellor to read with the kids.
16. my jar of fibres. that's right. a jar. and it's tall. and until i actually stepped up to the desk, i couldn't see it. that's how high the pile was. i'm not joking.
17. some pics from asher's birthday party last year.
18. a coupon for $2.50 off a class at CNP. the coupon expired at the end of august. of this year. i know what you're thinking. i'm not that bad, you know. sheesh! lol

now, i'd like you not to notice that i am not posting a picture of my dining room table. and i will not be posting a pic of my desk in the morning after clearing off the table so we can eat breakfast. nope. by the end of this week, both surfaces will be clear and usable 100% of the time. but i think, for now anyway, i'll have to settle for an either/or scenario.

this too shall pass. serenity now, serenity now. i can do this. i can... can't i?

the "before... again" shot

ok, it's that time again... time to find my desk. here's my before shot, taken about 10 minutes ago. i haven't touched it yet. frankly, i'm scared to. i don't want to think of what i'm going to find in there... how many more bags of prima flowers, or papers i hate, or embies i forgot i had, or small children could i possibly find in there?!

hey, i know! let's have a contest:
guess the number of "extras" i will find on my desk this week. the person closest will win a pizza box kit, as yet unopened but nonetheless loved. i can't post pics of the papers yet, since i can't reach them at the moment. but i will, one of these days.

so, yeah, stay tuned this week to find out what i find. and seriously, if you want to play, just leave your guess in the comments here, and we'll see what i find!

ok, i've gotta get to work on this. come looking for me if you haven't heard from me by wednesday.

UPDATE: i already know about the 3 bags of Prima flowers i found earlier, and i've gotten rid of the ugly BG papers, so they don't count. this is "new" extras that we're looking for now.

Joe. gimme.

the challenge this week on Think Monday - Think ATC is coffee. almost too easy.

i say almost because, as some of you may know, i have an awesome coffee stamp (i used it on a 4x4 a while back, and i love it!). now, if you recall my post from the other day, my scrappin space is, well, messy. i can see desk, and the highest pile consists of a pen, some cards, a package of eyelets and a basket (listed from bottom to top). anyway, i searched high and low for that coffee stamp, but alas, it is nowhere to be found. and i just saw it the other day! arg!

so, if you noted my FB status tonight, it said "heather is going to make an atc tonight." then it changed to "heather is going to read tonight." then it changed back to "heather made an ATC after all tonight." and here it is!

not the stamp, mind you. no, that's gone. i'll find it... eventually. but while i was flipping around between blogs and listening to music, i was inspired to do the ATC anyway, and completely differently than i had originally intended. here's the final product. i like it. a lot.

the TMTA theme this week is coffee. and i was inspired. so here is my creation.

and while you're looking, please don't notice the fact that the mug is, in fact, paper-pieced. i stand by my post from the other night. i almost lost the handle at one point. and inking the edges is ridiculous. yes, i stand by my "i don't do paper-piecing" rant. but at least i've given it a whirl. i like the whimsy the mug lends to this ATC, but still, this will be the last paper piecing you see from this girl for a long time... like, forever.

but you noticed that the mug is BG infuse, didn't you? i know you did. i'll get you all hooked on BG, just gimme time (if you're not already addicted, that is, because really, how could you not be?). ;)

annie, don't read this post. you'll cry. especially if you see the pictures. don't look. seriously. consider yourself warned.

my desk and so forth. at least, this is where i remember last seeing my desk at some point. i assume it's still in there... somewhere.
look! my desk barfed paper and prima flowers all over the dining room table! i'm not kidding, this is like some terrible antibiotic-resistant sickness that has invaded my scrappin space. not cool, people, not cool. pretty. and expensive. but not cool.

this week, i realized something. i need to get better. my disorganization is out of hand. allow me to illustrate with a couple stories.

so, who doesn't know of my weakness for chipboard? i mean, really. i love it almost as much as pretty paper, beautiful journals and free pens. well, the other week, my dealer/enabler/good friend/LSS owner brought in a HUGE order of new stuff. included in the shipment was some Making Memories chipboard alphabets. love them!!! and they were a good price!!! how can a girl resist? especially when she has no willpower to start with?! truly, chipboard is like crack for me some days. lol you laugh, because it's true for you, too, admit it.

well, last week was a rough week for me, for any number of reasons. so, on thursday afternoon, i headed out for some much-wanted retail therapy, so off i trekked to CNP. and purchased some MM chipboard monograms. i was so excited, because i love these letters, i've been coveting them for ages now, and now they're mine, all mine!! so i came home and went to put them away, in their little spot on the shelf on my desk. right next to their friends. that's right, folks, i had already purchased this exact set of MM chipboard, and TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THEM!!!! not that i'm complaining, and they will get used, but seriously!! oh, wait, that's not all!

the other day, i was digging around on my desk (well, moving large piles while trying desperately to prevent anything from falling to the floor, if i'm going to be perfectly honest here. i'm not even exaggerating. it was a full-body effort. my mom helped). i was looking for my large notebook. yup, not something little. a big thing. but that's not what this story is about. so moving on... i was moving stuff, and i found, beneath it all, tucked under a box and some stamps and some paper and a book and some dimensional medium, was a purple bag of Prima flowers. i thought to myself, "oh, i forgot i had these! how lovely! now i don't have to drool over the ones at the store! yay!" and i went to put them on the shelf on my desk. and as i did so, i realized that i was about to put them... you guessed it... right beside another bag of Prima flowers. oh, but wait, the story's not done yet! i saw this second bag of flowers, and thought to myself, "hold on, i don't remember taking them out of the pouch i took to the midnight crop the other week. where's that pouch?" and there it was, under a book i just bought and a card from some friends and some more stamps. and in that pouch were some stamps, a black chalk ink (also one of several - but it's ok, because it's pretty much the only colour ink i'm using lately), a couple metal embies, and yup, you guessed it, another bag of Prima flowers! so, the (current) total of bags is 3. i think that's it. don't worry, they'll get used... by me. these are not up for grabs. are you kidding me? that's almost $30 worth of flowers right there! dear me, can you imagine if i have more in there somewhere?! i don't think i'd be surprised at this point, but i'm really hoping i won't find any more.

and yet, i still have one more tale: i was sorting through my patterned paper this evening. i need desperately to purge, and i'm trying to be brutal. i'm giving a friend a TON of 12x12 SU cardstock that i simply don't use. i can't even say it's eye candy, since i've forgotten it's there. for 12x12 i use the stuff pam sells at the store, and whenever i use SU cardstock, it's the 8.5x11, and even that is mostly neutrals. so what am i going to do with all this cardstock?! so, i'm giving it to a friend who will enjoy it... and use it. but that's not the story here. the story is this: i'm going through my papers, keeping only a fraction of my stash. well, you know i love BG. except for one line: that horrid birthday one. yuck! i mean, what were they thinking?! leave birthday stuff to Around The Block, they do "spunky" better. BG should stick to elegant, vintage, cute frogs, and all things coffee-, bipolar- and mythologically-inspired ("eva," "stella ruby," "colour me silly," "infusion," "euphora," "ambrosia.") i just don't like that birthday line. what's it called? cupcake or something dumb like that. yeah. don't like it. truly, yuck. a gross disappointment.

now, i know by now you must be picking up on how much i do not like that line of BG. so you can feel my surprise when i found in my stash a sheet of the confetti/sprinkle paper from that line. how hypomanic was i when i bought that?! but wait, it gets worse! behind that sheet, was the number paper from that line (i think that pattern was called "invitation" or something like that). whatever. they go in the pizza box to be donated or something. well, i keep going through the stash, and a dozen or so pages down, i find another sheet of Invitation! wha-?! so, it, too, went into the "purge" box. that's right, folks, i'd barely started purging and had already come across 3 sheets of paper i have always hated. and two of them are the same paper! well, that's awful, i know you're thinking. i thought that, too. until, about 10 minutes later (yes, that's how big the stack of paper was, that it took me that long to go through part of the pile), in the same pile of paper, i found... ANOTHER SHEET OF INVITATION!!!!!!!!! you have got to be kidding me! i hate that paper! and i have 3 sheets of it! i'm not even joking here!!!!

i think pam and deb were onto something this evening. deb suggested a binder that pam keep at the store, and every time i go to purchase something, we look it up in the binder. that way, we'll know what i'm buying, when i'm buying ("how often" is also implied here), and the phase of the moon. ok, not the phase of the moon. although, that would be an interesting thing to study. and when i find my giant notebook, maybe i'll get on that, tracking scrapping purchases and cross-referencing them to the phase of the moon. hmm... nah, i'll just stick to impulsively purchasing large amounts of the same things over and over, whether i like them or not.

yeah, i need help. although, after working some more tonight, i can now see desktop in several places. and it's white! who knew! lol

if you don't hear from me in the next few days, please come over and look for me. i'm likely trapped under a pile of ugly patterned paper (all the same design) and prima flowers and chipboard. ;)

how did this happen?! oh, yeah, i'm a slob.

ok, so, we all remember why i started this blog. or, maybe you don't, in which case, may i suggest you go back and check out the first few posts. you will note that one of my reasons for this blog was to inspire me to organize - and use - my scrappin space (hence the name of the blog). and hopefully, to keep me accountable and organized, due to the likelihood of my desk showing up in pictures on posts.

well, that last part hasn't really worked, thanks to the genius who invented scanners. and so, in the spirit of openness and transparency (and blissful semi-anonymity) that can only truly exist in cyber-space, i am coming clean (oh, the irony) and showing you what has happened to my desk in the intervening months. so, brace yourselves, and take a look:

well, even i cannot work like this! so, i decided to clean up my mess. and here's my progress, as of a couple hours ago:

see? look closely - you can see the desk! woohoo! here's some of the changes i made:

1. i bought another shelf to put on top of the desk. i left a space between them for books that i consult frequently, current magazines, my vintage children/fairy pictures, and my crop-a-dile.
2. i bought a couple more photo boxes to put my stamps in. i already had a box with some random stamps, but i put all the SU stamps i'm keeping in another box. (these boxes are now on the shelves.)
3. i put the multitude of gel pens in the cupboard.
4. i call them, "catch 'ems." i acquired some baskets to put on the shelf, as well. one is for my acrylic stamps (i don't have many at the moment, so they fit in there). another one is for scrap paper. the third one is my miscellaneous basket. little what-nots (random embies and such) that are lying around, but that i plan on using in the next couple of minutes, go in there.

that's about all i've done in so far. still a lot to do, like where will i put my funky black box which keeps my skinnies and such. probably along the short side of the desk, but i'll get to that later this afternoon.

so, there you have it. i'm a slob. but at least now annie can forget any ideas about an "intervention." i'm not disorganized. i'm just lazy! lol

i'm on a roll

i love days like this. it seems that my most, how can i put this, hormonaly charged days end up my most productive. that could be due to a lack of emotional wherewithal to cling to things, so i'm much better at the purging part of organization. whatever the reason, i've made quite a bit of progress today, i'd say. you can actually see quite a bit of desk now! and you can see the wall behind the desk, too! even better, i've actually used one of my tools out of my Around the Block box (the solid olive green box on the shelf there). yup, not a bad day as far as all that goes.

but then i had a problem. it seemed that under every few inches of stuff, i would find more pictures. pictures that i had printed, some as long ago as mid-january (oh, yes, it's like an archeological dig around here today!). pictures that had never found their way into storage. or onto layouts. i meant to scrap them, but when have i had time? anyway, i packed up my daughter and off we trekked to Michaels, in search of photo storage. and the solution?

tada! my new cropper hopper photo case. i think this should hold most of my pics. lol and it gets even better! not only did i get to have some retail therapy on an intensely hormonal day, but...

IT'S ON SALE THIS WEEK!!!

i'm really so easy to please on days like this. just buy me stuff. that's all i ask. because if you're coming at me about anything, you'd better preface it with, "here, honey, i thought you might like this" and unless it's prozac or midol, i'll be happy. so, i feel loved and happy, eager to get organizing, and now i'm just waiting for hub to come home with a new feeding pump for asher (see his blog in a few minutes) and lunch. because i am SOOOOO not cooking today. :)

i think i can see some progress. if i'm not mistaken, that's a desk over there on the left. and the pile of stuff is getting smaller. on the right, in that big basket, is a bunch of projects and alter-able things. i'm keeping them in the basket, but it's going to go under the desk. still accessible, but not on my desk. i'll post more pics later, since this is project o' the day.

but you should have seen what i was finding on there! i found my new mastercard that i didn't know had come yet, and some newsletters from blithe's school, a ton of pictures, and pamphlets about congestive heart failure and cardiac caths. i've also come across some newspapers we're in, and some chipboard and felt stickers i forgot i'd bought. i love finding "new" embellishments! can't wait to use them.... soon.... very soon..... i hope.

anyway... i think i'll be going up to michaels today to pick up a cropper hopper box to store all my pics. what a fun day! re-discovered embies, a clean(-ish) desk and a trip to michaels! i think i'll need to go through my magazines at some point. i need to purge, so i may be giving away some magazines later. talk to you later! h

why, yes, Virginia, there is a desk under there.

look how much better it's looking already! i can actually see my desk in some places! we're making progress today, but i think we're going to call it a day. haven't really managed to purge anything yet. i still need to ruthlessly go through my paper box, and then there's the baskets full of embellishments and potential projects to sort and purge. oh, the fun i'm going to be having over the next little while. i hope to have this done by the end of next week. we'll see, especially with asher heading back into the cath lab for some more stents, but i'm just trying to live my life, and we'll cancel and adjust plans as needed.

hopefully i'll get some scrappin' done tonight, and i'll post any layouts here. have a good day!

and so it begins

the process has begun. i took my punches out of a photo box i had. the box was pink and flowered, and does not at all go with my room. i think i bought it originally for blithe to use, but then i took it over. so the box is now gone, and i put my punches in a flat basket, where they all fit and i can see them better, so i know what i have. and maybe this way, i'll be able to use them more, too! :)

and if you look at the top picture, you will see something mysterious at the bottom there. i'm not quite sure what it is, i know it's been a while since i've seen it. i'm already finding things! i just asked my mother, and she says it's called a "floor." that sounds vaguely familiar.

i think i could get used to this. i can now walk right over to my desk without having to step on or over or around anything. what fun!

My So-Called Desk....

ok, so i need to organize my scrappin' space. then get scrappin'. this blog is about my quest to find my desk, and to post the layouts i get done there, despite and after the mess. and if you're lucky, maybe i'll have some give-aways, too! because i have TONS of stuff i don't need, and, due to the lack of organization, i missed the yard sale at my friend's LSS, where i could have gotten rid of stuff. so, check back often to see my progress, see my layouts, and maybe get free stuff.

a lot of this progress will be based on said friend's Organizational Challenge, but perhaps less structured. in fact, it will be less structured, but hopefully just as productive. i hope this works.... and that i stick to it. i'll admit i'm a bit of a slob, so this is an on-going battle in my life. sigh. well, best get to it.