A Picture An Hour Swap

Hi Partners,

Here are my pictures for the Picture an Hour swap.  I took them on my Iphone with Instagram.  These were taken Friday, September 2nd.

6:45 - I'm in bed.  My husband had to get up and go to work, but I had the day off - hooray!  I can go back to sleep!

7:05 - Actually I couldn't fall back asleep... So I laid around in bed for a while and played on my phone.

8:05 - By 8:00 I was ready to get up, so I decided to go to my craft room and work on some ATCs for a few swaps.

9:00 - At 9, I had finished quite a bit of work on the cards.  I still had some work to do, but I wanted to go out and run some fun errands before my husband got home around noon, so I decided to stop there.

10:00 - At 10 I was at Hobby Lobby!  Yay!  I had already been to Michaels before that, and I went to Joann after, but I forgot to take a picture at both places...  At least I remembered Hobby Lobby!

11:30 - At 11:30 I was back home again with all my goodies! I got paper, note cards, beads, fabric, punches, and a ton of foam stickers and those silly little shaped rubber bands for my niece.  They were on super duper clearance, so I decided if I can be the best aunt in the world for 30 cents, why not?

12:00 - At noon I was playing with my cat.  Hi Sarah!

12:30 - And at 12:30 I was still goofing around with the cat.  She was very excited in this picture because she could hear Daddy opening the garage door!

12:45 - At 12:45 my husband was home from work, so we decided to go run a few errands and go to lunch.

1:10 - First we dropped off some stuff at goodwill that had been sitting in our kitchen taking up space for WEEKS!  I'm so glad we got that stuff outta there!

1:30 - At 1:30 we had lunch at Newk's.  It's new in town and I'd never been there before, but it was REALLY good!  I had a delicious chicken salad sandwich - yum!

3:00 - Then I forgot to take a picture in the 2 o'clock hour...  We were at Marshall's, and then we went to Ross, seen here.

4:15 - Home again by 4:15 - look at all the exciting stamping/crafting stuff I found at Marshall's!

4:45 - I'd gotten some frames at Marshall's and Ross so I went about framing my photos of my little nieces - cutie pies!!

5:00 - At 5:00 I was lying on the couch playing pocket frogs on my iPhone - thrilling!!

6:45 - and as often happens when I'm lying on the couch, I fell asleep...  I woke up really hungry, so I ate my chips leftover from lunch.

7:10 - Then we watched an episode of Iron Chef that my husband had recorded.  Hello Jeffry Steingarten!

8:10 - Then we went to get sushi for dinner.  I'd worked a lot of extra hours that week (which is why I didn't have to work on Friday), and just finished a HUGE project, so a sushi dinner was my reward!

8:15 - Here we are, waiting for our takeout order...

8:30 - And home with our delicious dinner!!

9:00 - And then we watched some Mad Men - hello Don Draper!

10:30 - Then, a miracle occurred.  Baylor beat TCU!!  My husband and I are both Baylor alums, and we both work there now, so this was VERY exciting!

Sarah was excited too.  In fact she was so excited she decided to eat my shoes.

11:30 - Then I was back in bed!  It was a very full and fun day!

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed seeing my pictures and hearing about my day!

Happy swapping and please remember to rate!

JBolech

Clean House Challenge #2- Office/Craft room

Hi Partners!

This swap was just the opportunity I needed to get my craft room at least partially cleaned up.  I helped host a scrapbooking shower for a friend a few weeks ago, and I ended up pulling out all of my supplies, packing them up, and lugging them to the shower.  Then when I got home I just dumped them in the middle of the craft room floor, and there they stayed.  I have some sewing projects I needed to get done this week, so my main goal was to get the floor cleared off, my sewing table straightened up, and my craft shelves organized.  I'm going to need a little longer to get the whole thing cleaned up though. See what I mean???

This is the view of my craftroom (and guest bedroom) from the door.  It's never been quite this bad before!  And here's the after shot:

So much better! There are still a few little piles of things to put away:

Some boxes that need to get stored in a closet somewhere,

I'll probably use them for mailing Christmas presents.  

My scrapbook paper is stacked up here too.

This is a small pile of various little things that don't have  place yet. 

Plus a drawer for a storage cabinet that I'm working on fixing up 

- it will make a great addition to my craft room when it's done!

My wedding scrapbook project.  

Let's pretend that it hasn't been over 2 years since I got married!

This may as well be the before and the after picture of the bed. I didn't really do anything with this.  It's mostly a bunch of fabric scraps that I got off of freecycle.

Here is the before and after  of my craft desk. I know it doesn't really look that different, but I promise it is!!

Before

After

I realize now I don't have a before picture of my craft shelves, but here's the after:

Here are the before and after photos of my sewing table.  This was a big improvement!  I've already gotten some sewing done!

Before

After

And here's another angle of the horrible floor!

Before

After

My main strategy for cleaning up a mess like this is just putting everything in a big pile in the middle of the room and sorting it out, and then put it back away.  Lucky for me, I was already well on my way to having everything out in the middle of the room - haha!

I had a little bit of a tough time getting this project done because my cat Sarah really likes to "help".  And of course by that I mean, get into everything and sit in every box she can find.

Eventually I found a piece of cardboard she could play with and threw it out into her cat room.  It kept her pretty well entertained!

I really enjoyed doing this swap.  Sometimes I need that extra motivation to get projects like this done!  Keep the clean up swaps coming!!

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed and please remember to rate :)

JBolech

Show Me Your Mailbox Swap

Hi Partners! Here's a look at my mailbox!

I don't have an actual mailbox, just a mail slot:

It's right next to my front door, and my mail drops in to the opening just inside the door (it's actually covered by the coats hanging from our coat rack most of the time...)

My letters don't always drop down to the inside, so I have to open the front door and check to make sure there aren't any letters stuck at the top of the slot.  This mail slot is actually really poorly designed.  When there is too much mail, or big mail the mailman leaves it hanging out of the slot, like today's mail.

Then, when I try to open the screen door it knocks the overhanging mail on the ground:

When it's really big mail, or stiff mail, I can't even get the door open far enough to get the mail out.  I either have to sort of sneak my fingers through and scootch the mail out onto the ground, or go out the side door and walk around to the front door to pull it out.  What a pain!!

Another problem I have checking the mail is our cat Sarah.  Whenever the door opens she runs to try and look out!

I try to feed her right before I check the mail so she is distracted, or I pick her up and check the mail one handed.  Good thing she is so darn cute and cuddly because she is sure annoying sometimes! :)

I don't really know what I'm supposed to do with my outgoing mail.  I suppose I could clip it to the mail slot, but that seems a little unsafe so I always just drop it off at the post office instead.  Our mailman usually comes around 3 PM, and he talks on his blue tooth cell phone the ENTIRE time he's walking his route.  I can't imagine who he could be talking to for all those hours every day, but I do know that I'd HATE to be a walking mailman in this Texas heat!

That's my mailbox for you!  I hope you enjoyed my story!  Happy swapping and please remember to rate me :)

Jenny (JBolech)