Half a Month Gone

Yikes! The realization of that hit me last night as I was doing email maintenance and trying to make myself come over here and post. Don't get me wrong, I have an almost continuous conversation with you guys, just in my head. The day they invent a think-it-keyboard that I can afford, I'm blogging 24/7/365! Til then, though, my poor readers must deal with my pain-killer-induced ADD and patiently wait for me to finally blog the old fashioned way, LOL.

Anyway, today is the 16th. Hard to believe, huh? There's just under a month until Valentine's Day. Double yikes! I really wanted to make lots of Valentine cards this year, but I have so many things artsy and non-artsy on my plate begging for service that I am wondering if that's possible now. OH, well, such are the ups and downs of Life. We'll see....

Thanks again to all of you who took the time and care to express such loving comments to me. I've been laying low the past few days, spending lots of extra with Reggie and just basically flitting from one chore to the next when I'm not sleeping. The weather down here is typical January wet cold, just miserable.And, looks like we are going to have an entire week of it, too.

I've been keeping a list of stuff to blog about, so I'd better get to it!

First up, not a toot, but a little artfart maybe. LOL One of my layouts is on the Scrap the Girls blog. One of the things I love about these kind of sites is the collective display of readers layouts. Challenge sites that have the guest designers and the design teams all the time get old after awhile. The readers gallery follows no set theme, so you never know what you are gonna see. I like that!

Next, congrats to AMC's Mad Men and its star, Jon Hamm. Hamm, who plays Don Draper, won best dramatic actor at the Golden Globes, and the show won Best TV Drama. Another of my shows won too: Glen Close won Best dramatic actress for Damages on Fx. I cannot wait for both shows to return for another season.

Next, I have a product review of a new item I just received yesteray: the second generation Crop-A-Dile, called The Big Bite! I love it! This is how it came shipped to me from HSN. I never watch the shows, I just get the email promos. HSN's shipping and service is top-notch, by the way. This is my third order since Thanksgiving, the first two being the Bind_It-All and then a card-scorer and box maker.

Right off, I encounter probably my only problem with this product: getting into the package. Boo! This is ridiculous. Took me 7 minutes with my utility scissors. I timed it. The entire perimeter of the packaging had to be cut away on the seam.

After that, it was all sweetness and light. This is all that was included in the package HSN was offering. That's over 350 gromments. I've not used a grommet yet, but I plan to compare this tool with my MM Grommet Tool real soon, for another blog review. I wanted the Big Bite, so I had to buy the grommets since they came with the tool. For now, I'll just assume it grommets nicely, too.

To test the hole-punch power (which is why I got the dang thing), I used a popsicle stick.
My guess is that the pop stick is like 3 mm thick, cuz it looks about the thickness of .03 cm on my ruler. Never could get the hand of the metric system!

Anyway, on one end of the stick is a hole made with the original CAD, and on the other end, the Big Bite. No diff. Both went thru like butta. Vundabarrrrrr!

The Big Bite is awesome because it now gives you a 6-inch reach into the page to punch holes and set metal. It has removeable feet that keep it standing upright and anchor the tool for when you press down on the handle to punch or set. It sets the same size eyelets, too, plus the grommet sizes. And we get slightly better instructions on this one. WRMK has sucky directions. They are too small and hard to read. The Big Bite's could be better, but I'm glad it's an improvement, much like how I feel about the Big Bite overall. I give it an A-, and I am very glad I took the plunge and went ahead and got one now. Lots of places are now out-of-stock. Mine only took 5 days to get to me, so I am doubly lucky.

Well, that's it for today. Have a great Hump Day and evening!