Decluttering Craft Supplies

Are you one of my fellow lovers of craft and/or office supplies? I love pens, paper, pencils, folders, and such. I also love craft supplies, especially sewing and scrapbooking. I love to go into scrapbook stores and look at 1,000 kinds of papers and plan out how I will scrap a certain event and set of photos. I used to spend a lot of time scrapbooking. I'd plan big sessions for my school breaks and knock out a year at a time, hunched over my desk until the middle of my back went numb. My books from that time weigh about 7 pounds.

 

Here is the point where I am confronted by my Ideal Self and my Authentic Self. My Ideal Self is a scrapper. The kind that creates pages that could be published in magazine. The kind that regularly attends and photographs events that you'd scrap. The kind that does this regularly. But this isn't the real me, y'all. Not anymore. I don't make "real" scrap books anymore. I order them from Shutterfly and they are less than 1/2" thick.

 

Right now I am having a kind of "reverse nesting," where I want to purge and sort and organize. I want to contain and label. I want empty shelves so that I have a space to fill with baby clothes, books, dishes, etc. I want less and less stuff to keep track of. Today I ventured into what we call the "back bedroom," which is a room that is totally empty except for a video game chair. This won't be the baby's room, but it is where I store empty suitcases and a very small amount of craft supplies.

 

In the closet, I found this box of stamps. I am not a stamper, friends. I think my Ideal Self is a stamper, but the honest truth is that I don't make my own cards and I dont' want to make them. I don't want to own the supplies, I don't want to go through the process, and I absolutely do not want to store the finished product until I have a reason to send a card. I am also not really a card sender. I went through the box very, very quickly and found about $100 worth of stamps. Most of them I've had for about 10 years and most of them have never been used. I kept the one stamp I like to use when I send out Christmas Cards (I order those from Vistaprint, I don't make them). The rest are now in my very full donate box.

 

I bought about 99% of my stamps during a time in my life when I didn't know myself very well and did an awful lot of impression management. I really, honestly wanted to be the person that made and send handmade cards! I really did! My Ideal Self is that classy of a lady, y'all. But I still have cards that I made in August of 2007. I don't have a craft in mind that invovles stamps and I am honestly not interested in finding one. So I am getting rid of them. And now I have a nice empty ziploc containter that I can fill with baby socks.

 

If anyone out there is a REAL stamper and wants a few more, let me know. I'll have the box around for another 4 or 5 days.

Baby Valiente

Did you know that I’m pregnant?  I am, and very excited about it too. We announced this on Facebook after our 8 week ultrasound and I’ve talked about being pregnant about 100 times on FB, but I haven’t put anything here. It’s been a busy summer and a busy September and I just haven’t written about it here. Can we pretend this is actually a few months of posts, instead of just one? I’ve started this post about 20 times and nothing I write ever seems to convey how excited I am.

This week, on Thursday, I will be 22 weeks. I found out I was pregnant at 5 weeks. We had done everything right that month so I just took a test on the day I was due to start. Sure enough, I got a nice little plus sign that morning. I climbed into bed with the Yankee and work him, then whispered, “I’m pregnant” into his ear. He woke up very quickly after that. As you do, I took three more tests over the next week.

 

I felt the baby move at 17 weeks, which was pretty cool. I don’t feel the baby every day, but I do feel movement, kicks, and pressure most days, especially at night.

 

We found out at 20 weeks that the baby is a Girl. We are going to name her Emily Louise. I had a feeling for a long time that it was a girl. I found all these little “test” you can do to figure out the gender. My favorite test was this one: apparently if you pee on baking soda and it fizzes, it’s a boy. If it’s flat, it’s a girl.

 

My pregnancy has been smooth and uneventful. I didn’t have morning sickness and most days I have felt like myself. A tired and hungry version of myself.  I get heartburn a lot these days and I normally take about 6 tums throughout the day, which manages it. I do have a very hard time sleeping most nights. I am a back sleeper, which most doctors recommend you avoid. I hate sleeping on my side and having a huge belly makes it even more uncomfortable. We’re going to buy a recliner tonight to see if that helps me find a better position.

 

I haven't decided if I'll be posting any photos here. Probably not.

We Bought a House!

Y'all! We bought a house! Here it is, looking all homey and cool. Don't judge me for not holding my phone in "landscape" mode when I took this. I didn't know that was a thing.

We aren't moving in until June, which is a bummer because we are both so excited; for a few reasons though, this is working out to our favor. We've both commented that we wish we were just moving right now.This house has 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, 2 living rooms, a formal dining room, TWO PANTRIES, and a two car garage. Why does a house need two pantries? I don't know, but I'm pretty happy to have them (even though it's unlikely we will fill them both).

 

Neither the Yankee nor I have owned a house before (I did rent one in El Paso) and this will be the first time we've been out of an apartment since we've been together (5 years now, for the record). I am really looking forward to living with just him, no neighbors sharing a wall, no looking for parking spaces, no restrictions on what we can do in our home (within reason, of course).

 

As we've been preparing to move into a space that is literally four times the size of what we have now, we've started a list of all kinds of things to buy. Random stuff you don't think about while you're living in an apartment, like a hose and an outside broom. We were initially really stuck on a one-story house until we found how much more expensive they are, compared to two-story houses (is it like that where you live?). It's pretty easy to lose your damn mind and fill up a cart at Target with all kinds of **stuff** that you "need." And yet I am still committed to the ideas of thoughtful purchasing, minimal ownership, and intentional living.

 

I thought that when we moved to New York, I would have all kinds of adventures to blog about. Then I started a job that came with a three hour a day commute and that didn't leave much time for New York-ing. I do hope that I'll have lots to write about as we move in and make this our own home. And I'd still like to be someone's mother, so maybe I'll get a chance to write about that some day.

 

For today, I am a a happy girl.