Crafty

I decided earlier in the week that I was going to be selfish with my weekend. I promised myself I'd say 'no' to any commitments, and darn if I didn't stick to my plan. So Saturday morning, the hubby & I consumed a ginormous breakfast at IHOP (under new management, it appears) and headed for the mecca known as Jacksonville. I was dying to hit The Cotton Patch for material, Barnes and Noble for a bookstore wallow, and Michael's for an all-out rampage.

We hadn't been to J'ville in quite some time, so we were completely unprepared for the Traffic from the Ninth Inner Circle of Hell (tm). Seriously, traffic in J'ville now surpasses DC and Baltimore traffic for striking equal amounts of terror and frustration in my soul. Even my even-natured hubby was growling cuss-words by the time we left. Anyhoo...

The Cotton Patch turned out to have Amy Butler material, a fact that made me very happy. I'm addicted to Amy Butler's stuff---material, sewing patterns, scrapbooking stuff. She uses fantastic colors and interesting patterns. Her stuff isn't for the faint of heart, that's for sure, but it's fun. I ended up buying an armload of material---a couple of yards of a yellow-background-floral and a watermelon-pale-pink with which to make a tulip bag; several fat quarters in various shades of red, black, and blue; a thimble; a pattern for the tulip bags. I also had the joy of playing with the owner's wee dog. When I say 'wee,' I mean really wee. My cats easily outweigh him, but he has energy and joie de vivre to spare. He brought me his stuffed lion so we could play tug of war with it. I wanted to scoop him up and smooch his ears.

I behaved relatively well in B&N. I did buy a couple of paperbacks and some magazines, and I had to renew my B&N membership. We were too full from breakfast to take advantage of the Cheesecake Factory goodies in the bakery cases, but we did sit for a spell in the moss green wing chairs in the cafe while we had a beverage break. Awesome chairs, y'all.

I told myself that I would try to behave in Michael's. I wanted to buy felt in various colors, take a look at their needlework hoops, and maybe take a peek at the scrapbooking stuff. SIL Kat gave me a beautiful scrapbook, and I was hoping I could find some papers that would coordinate well.

Oh, who am I kidding? I totally used the new scrapbook as an excuse, yo. ;) I'm shameless that way.

It turned out that Michael's had some freakin' awesome new paper packs, as well as a whole pack of Amy Butler paper (*squeeeeee!). I totally jumped on that. I did buy a bunch of felt and a couple of study plastic embroidery hoops (I'm too hard on the wooden kind). I felt a little better about my lack of control in Michael's when the hubby wandered over with a handful of silk flowers for the arrangements that flank the fireplace. (Yes, he made the arrangements. He used silk flowers we've had for a while, and they look like something you'd see in a catalog or a house magazine. He so totally rocks.)

So I've already filled up a few pages in the beautiful scrapbook. I'd done a layout with childhood pictures of my sweetie and me months ago, so that was my first page. I'm working on a page featuring Lythrum & Mawavi, and Quickbeam will be prominently featured too. It's bittersweet to look at those photos of our extended family in Alabama; I miss the three of them so much. I'm totally irked by the fact that I have to work for a living and can't fly down to 'Bama when the mood strikes. Grrrr. ;)

While I was working on the scrapbook last night, I realized I really need to re-arrange my craft room. It was put together rather haphazardly---a piece bought and plopped here, another piece stuck there, not really planned for its intended use. At lunch today, I mentioned to the hubster that I'd been thinking about moving things around in the craft room. "No way!" said he. "I was thinking about that too!" He'd seen some storage stuff at Lowe's that he thought I might like. Then he did some online research and decided the Lowe's stuff was better suited for the garage. So now we're looking at some of the craft storage stuff Michael's carries, and we're kicking around plans for where to move what. It's fun to have another house project.

Stay tuned for more crafty nattering! I should post before and after pictures of the craft room and maybe pix of ongoing craft projects.