To-Do and 2013 Project Life® Week's 23 & 24

As my daughter would say, it has been a total "struggle bus" making crafting a to-do item rather than a reward.

It has proven more difficult that I thought it would be.  I am an evening crafter - which was born more out of necessity than working with when inspiration hit me.  This meant my craft time naturally came after my housework was done.  Other than folding clothes and cleaning up from dinner, I don't clean at night; actually I try to be done with cleaning by noon-ish.  I crafted after the kids went to bed when they were small, or headed out for an evening crop.  Now that they aren't so small anymore and until I find another place to crop  (Archiver's closing and all) these aren't factors for my evening crafting anymore.

Friday I never really got started.  Saturday I spent at The Brown Palace with my mom, daughter, sisters and niece enjoying High Tea.  Though if you follow me on Instagram you saw that I did a warm-up card on Saturday night.  Sunday I decided to spread out my to-do list around daylight scrapping - just to force myself into doing it.  Chickas . . . it was hard, not gonna lie.  Dang.  

I decided to clean my way into it.  The basement was a mess.  My office was a mess.  My desk was totally covered.  My work table was scraps-central.  I'm sure I looked totally ADD going from basement to kitchen to studio to bedrooms, but there was method to my madness, even if it was only I who understood it.  Finally, my space was clean and it was time to just sit and play.  Man what the fingers may want to dig into the brain still says, "ah. . .no, you have work elsewhere."  I told my brain to shut-up and forced myself to scrap.  I chose to use the Simple Stories Daily Grind line found in the January Smaller than a Breadbox kit and to work on my 2013 Project Life® - where I'm in mid-June or about Week 23.  

Here is the line from within the kit:  the two weeks I scrapped (I'm out of printed photos for 2013), the card I made and what I have left over.  

The icon paper is all punched up, but there's a fair amount of the word paper so I can probably do one more card using cardstock from my own stash and add the brads and wood veneers.  After that the remaining embellishments will be sorted into my stash accordingly and whatever paper I have left goes in the trash.  Yep, trash.

To all you scraps keepers - breathe!  It's okay.  I'm not a scraps user.  I've tried keeping them.  Tried sorting them.  But I just don't reach for them once I'm done and they end up cluttering up my space and making me feel guilty.  If they're big enough they go in my give-to-the-kindergarten pile, but this method works for me.

Up next, a traditional layout.  I pulled the photos yesterday and then realized I had taxes due today and paperwork to finish so I could run the tallies.  I stayed calm, taxes totally freak me out, and decided to reward myself with continuing to flip through one of those new cookbooks I have content that I completed more than just the layouts above. . .stay tuned. ;)

Happy  Tuesday,