garage sale preparations...

well, it's been a few days since i've posted... life is slow in the "dog days" of summer...

matt and i are getting ready to have a garage sale in a week, and consequently, we're travelling room by room through our house, purging those things that simply don't need to be kept.

it is *shocking* how much stuff a young woman my age can accumulate. and while i'd like to blame matt, i know it's not him... nope, this is my crap. in fact, most of it is from before "his time"... before we met... from my first apartment, things that were boxed up when i moved in with roommates, and rediscovered when i moved into our first house.

i have an amazing mound (okay, make that mounds) of stuff: furniture i've inherited from my mother who has also recently purged, extra dishes and kitchen objects, books, cds, videos, clothing, craft supplies - egads, the craft supplies, including, but not limited to several skeins of yarn purchased circa 1980, before my own arrival on this earth. as the living room is the only mostly-organized room of our house right now, everything is being stored there (thus, making it terribly unorganized), a veritable jungle of discarded, unwanted, unloved goods. i fear i may lose a cat in that mess.

next - tonight, i hope - we organize the garage. this was also done several months ago, so while it might look terrible, it shouldn't take too long to get back into ship shape again. then i can move my Garage Sale Jungle out to the garage, to make room for a stamp camp i'm hosting this saturday...

on another note, i forgot to post about my class last weekend.

friday night, allie came over to help me prepare... we headed out shopping first, and needed to make four stops. the first: purely selfish, a stop at Lasting Memories, to peruse the table of 75% off items, marked down for their moving sale. discovered some amazing finds, including several large Second Avenue rub-on monograms. didn't get any useful letters, but found some fun stuff (x, i, and o, which i think i can use eventually, and n, which i sent to nicole who was sweet enough to help me by scanning an article from a mag that i'd lost). the second stop: jo-ann's who, much to my dismay, *still* hasn't restocked their paper from the last time i cleaned it out, and thus left me out of luck for the cardstock i needed. we decided to scoot to our third stop, so that i could buy the necessary paper... however, upon arriving at Inspired Memories, we discovered that they had just closed... frantic phone calls to all of the other LSSs uncovered that they'd *all* just closed at 8pm... oh boy was I out of luck. back to jo-ann's... after plenty of "hmmming and hawing", we finally decided on some patterned papers that "worked" for each layout design. i wasn't thrilled, but it would do... we were up until nearly midnight, cutting, packing and arranging...

the day of went smashingly... only 3 of my 5 students showed, but that's okay - we managed without the others. had lots of fun, got mostly positive comments, and while it won't pay big bucks, it will be a nice surprise to get the check in the mail. additionally, i was able to take back most of the supplies we didn't use, so i didn't lose much on the supply fee. now, i'm beginning to consider october's class series, since august and september will be busy for me on the review team.

stopped by paperzone the other night and saw a sign requesting demonstrators... got to speak with the manager, who sounded very interested in my work. i should be receiving an application from her via email, and i can't wait to show her my portfolio. maybe next week... if you haven't heard, they're having their "white sale" this weekend, so anything white in terms of paper and envelopes is on sale. i love their products...

if any of you in the western washington area love stamps and want to make some new friends, you're welcome to join us on saturday at my stamp camp from 2 to 4pm. shoot me an email. ;)