Guess what?!

The new Stampin' Up! Idea Book and Catalog is up!!!

I love Stampin' Up! and this is fun for me.  Go take a look!

(I am still currently a demonstrator, but by the end of the quarter I won't be any longer.  Just can't keep up with it, but I will still be a loyal SU! customer.  Because the products are awesome.)

This is a swap I made for this month:

Paper: Rich Razzleberry, Very Vanilla and Crumb Cake cardstock
Ink: Rich Razzleberry and Crumb Cake
Stamps: Swallowtail, En Francais and Itty Bitty Banners
Big Shot: Itty Bitty Banner Framelits
Embellishments: Rich Razzleberry 1/4" Stitched Grosgrain Ribbon and Antique Brads

In other news, I've been SO. BUSY.  Doing and more doing instead of doing and blogging.  :)  But at some point, I hope to share what I've been up to in the past few months.  The biggest thing going on right now is another family wedding.  My brother-in-law is gettin' hitched in two weeks!  As with the wedding last year, I am doing the decor for the open house (getting married in Arizona where the bride is from, having an open house in Utah where the groom is from).  Here's a swatch of the color scheme just to whet your appetite!  :)

I have lots of fun projects to share from this wedding.

And last but not least, we've made great strides on the all consuming project of my craft room:

Yeah, I know, it's a mess...doing and more doing instead of doing and cleaning also, evidently...

Lower cabinets installed, countertops installed, drawers built and installed, bead board side panels installed and baseboards installed!  Hopefully by the end of the summer, the upper cabinets will be built and installed and I can start on the cabinet doors and drawer fronts.  I'll keep you posted!

Book Review: Sierra Jensen Collection, Vol. 1

Book Description:

Happenstance…or God’s Great Plan? 

She’s the bold, free-spirited type. She’s cute, she’s fun, and she’s following God. She’s Sierra Jensen, Christy Miller’s good friend, ready for her junior year of high school! All twelve books in the popular Sierra Jensen series come together in four volumes to reveal the ups and downs of Sierra’s incredible God-led journey! 

Volume One: In Only You, Sierra, she’s nervous to be the “new girl” after her family moves to Portland and wonders if meeting Paul in London was only by chance. Just when everything important seems to elude her, all it takes is one weekend In Your Dreams to prove otherwise. But even a vacation doesn’t keep her troubles away in Don’t You Wish. 

Okay, not gonna lie, I did not enjoy this series.  It is highly unlikely that I would have ever picked it up on my own, and I most definitely wouldn't have bothered finishing.  (I used to feel compelled to finish every book I started...now, I think my time is far too valuable to waste on a book I am not enjoying.)  The only reason I read it was for the Blogging for Books program.  And it took me months to work up the gumption to get it over with.

You know, I like Young Adult fiction.  And I like Christian fiction.  So what about this left me repulsed?

Well, for starters, I disliked the main character.  I suppose she might have been a realistic portrayal of a teenager going through a major transition, but man she was irritating.

Also, the story felt abrupt.  And unbelievable at times.  And...silly.  Silly because that was not the attempt.  There's lighthearted fun silly books, and there's books that are not intended to be silly but are.  Being Christian fiction does not automatically place it in the category of good meaningful book.

Feels so good....

After my difficult pregnancy and tragic hard drive crash....behold my first layout in over a year:

Happy to be back in it!

iNSD (or for those of you who don't speak digiscrap, International Scrapbook Day!)

It's technically Saturday (always the first Saturday in May), but many shops have already started their festivities and sales.  It's an awesome time of the year.  (Cue the big cheesy grin.)

But before I get into that, let me tell you a little story.  Once there was a lovely girl who had almost completely filled up her terabyte external hard drive with thousands of photos and WAY too many digiscrap supplies.  This was her only source for these things.  Her computer was getting older, so to make it run faster she stored nothing on the computer's hard drive and EVERYTHING on the external hard drive.

And then one day it crashed.  And the data recovery folks couldn't get any more than 8% of the data (for a cool $900!).  So she lost everything.  And she cried a lot.

Moral of the story: BACK UP YOUR FILES!!!!!

But that isn't actually why I'm telling you this story (though it is a good moral, believe me....).  I want to tell you about the....opportunity....this has given me in terms of my digi stash.  Before my hard drive crashed, I was trying to slowly make my way through my supplies and eliminate the excess.  It was a hard process.  Not a fun process.  But now since my involuntary purge, I "get" to start over.

When I first started digiscrapping, I collected freebies like crazy.  'Cause they were free!  Well, this time around, I am EXTREMELY picky about freebies.  I only download

1) Templates (I adore templates, they do the hard work for me)

2) Full kits that I REALLY like (no mini kits unless they are absolutely incredible)

3) The occasional alpha or something else that I fall in love with

I do NOT download

1) Mini kits

2) Anything requiring a daily download (I think my time is worth more than that)

3) Blog trains (again, the time issue, and I also feel often they just aren't cohesive, though there are some big exceptions to this)

4) Odds and ends

I have found that all those things just clog up my hard drive and I just don't use them.

This leads me to iNSD!!!  Man, is this a week of craziness in digiscrap land!  There are TONS of freebies, and this event (and iDSD in November) are my blog train exceptions.  So I thought I'd tell you about the freebie trains I'm following this weekend:

Pixels & Co full kit, More or Less

The Digiscrap Parade, That's Life

GingerScraps, The View

Scraps N' Pieces, Queen's Template Jubilee

And here's the top deals I'm taking advantage of:

Etc. by Danyale's Create Your Own Grab Bag

The Digichick's Pick Your Collab Grab Bag

Scrap Orchard's $1 Farmer's Market

ScrapMatter's graduated discount sale (up to 45% off)

The Daily Digi (this is not just a iNSD thing, it runs all year and is a TERRIFIC way to build your stash)

And some eye candy....some of my favorite purchases (or plan to purchase as soon as the sale starts!):
(images linked)

Whew.  Believe me, I could link up more!!!  :)
(And if you think I must be spending a fortune, well, you're right!  My husband offered me a very generous budget to replenish my digi stash since we didn't spend 900 buckeroos on data recovery...bless his little heart....)