We Be Cool

Good morning and happy Tuesday! Guess what?

63 more days until you-know-what!

Guess what else?

Aside from buying a few materials, I have not yet started my gift-making. At all.

How about you?

Don't hate me for bringing it up! I don't want to upset anyone or make your blood pressure rise, just puttin' it out there, LOL, for myself as much as for anyone else. We have time still.

I order most of my purchases online, have for almost 5 years now. And as far as scrapbooking supplies, one store I've bought from every year, Scrappy Dreams, recently announced they are going out of business, effective 12/31/07 (Loraine, the owner, is going back to school).

Since she's closing down, Loraine's having a 50% off sale, and I placed what I guess is my final order first thing this morning. I know that I am on a no-buy Dollar Diet, but that's a working rule. As with my diet, I stray from time to time and the rule keeps me from going wacko. I can tell you, the order I just placed was one smart deal.

Let's see, I spent $25 (plus $5 shipping), and among the goodies I got are: Scenic Route Rockland papers and Capitol Hill chipboard alphas; some black Doodlebug pp's and cardstock and some yummy striped pp's; 2 Stazon inks I don't have; some Junkitz long bradz, a few Chatterbox papers I didn't have; some 7G's Brompton pp (the last of it, I think); and some Modern Textures Specialty Paper in Purple Fizz.

She has a great assortment of specialty papers, which come in real handy in certain styles of cardmaking and altering. I would have doubled my order amount buying it all up if I didn't already have most of it. Okay, I have mostly scraps left and probably should have just ordewred it all over again at these discounts, but I was trying to be good! And I wanted to buy up every Junkitz Ringz she has, but with my arthritic hands they are sometimes hard to open. I'd decided a while back to switch to the 7Gypsies ones I can get at Joann's, but the Junkitz ones are so cutely colored! {pout}

Anyway, if you enjoy shopping somewhere trustworthy, and that's kinda picked over so you really don't know what you'll find til you look, check out Loraine's store. She may carry the one thing you've been looking all over for. I'm really sad to see her close, but I totally understand, she needs to move on to the next chapter.

Well, temperatures here are nice! Our cool front moved in yesterday and we got both rain and wind bustin' down from the north. Gusts even in the middle of the night! I sleep under a window and was actually woke up once from the noise of the shrubs lashing against the pane. And, a couple of times, my house frame creaked from the gusts. Since it's a very sturdy brick house, that's a forceful gust. In fact, it's still blowing. My wind chimes are singing nonstop, LOL.


Even so, we are sorely lacking down here for seasonal color. The leaves have begun falling off our oak tree in the front yard, so there is plenty of brown to mix in with the green lawn. But I took a photo under the tree looking up, and there is only one little forlorn reddish leaf in the entire canopy! Do you see it? Is that sad or what?

Sad for me, it is. The challenge this week at Funky Photo Friday is to photog our local seasonal changes. Well, that's my one leaf! Pitiful. Guess I won't be able to play in this one.

Well, all good things must end, and I have had nothing but annoying problems since installing my music player on my blog. So, gonna have to take the player off. I'm glad I tried it out. Learned to do something new. But, for me, choosing the songs took forever and they get old real quick, playing over and over again. The perfect player would be one that chooses congs from certain styles and always shuffles them so that I don't keep hearing the sames ones. Actually, the perfect player is one that operates as a standalone and does not suck my computer resources dry, who am I kidding? Time for me to get my Creative Zen player out and just listen to that. I have never had good luck with all-in-one devices or setups of any kind.

Which brings up a good question for those of you who download songs to an mp3 player that is not an Apple iPod: where do you get your songs? Please email me or leave a comment and tell me. I need to find some new tunes.

Have a great Tuesday, everyone!