Make a Change Monday - Spring Cleaning and Pinterest

Like many of you across the country - we are having weird weather.  This time last week it was 50 degrees, this weekend it was 80.  What does a girl do when the seasons start to change?  Spring Cleaning!  Not normal spring cleaning of course - I didn't get out a vacuum or dust rags or anything crazy like that!  Instead I:

purged my Tupperware

cleaned out my closet

organized my Pinterest boards

While this may seem a little less motivated than say - repainting a bathroom or replanting the front yard, these piddly projects actually ended up making a few changes of their own.  Who knew?

Where the @#$% are all the Tupperware lids?
This is a phrase I hear at least once a week from Don, usually about 5am, usually when I am still in bed and he thinks he is talking to himself.   Don has started taking his lunch to work in recent months, which has helped us in a couple of ways.  We save money, it encourages me to cook more and in bigger portions so we have leftovers, and it is much healthier than grabbing fast food or something out of a vending machine every day. Even though the cupboard where we keep the plastic tubs started out looking fabulously organized - this is what it looked like on Saturday.

It took us less than 10 minutes to get everything out, match tops to bottoms, toss out the mismatched pieces, and put it all back in the cupboard.  While I'm sure it won't stay that way - it reminded us that it only takes a few minutes of working together to make life a little easier.

You're not in high school anymore (or needing to wear power suits).
Don and I met my family Saturday night for dinner at Brasa in Raleigh.  Incredible meal - wear elastic-waist pants and prepare to take a meat-induced nap afterwards.  Anyhoo - I needed something "nice" to wear, and all of my warm weather clothes were in the guest room closet. I was dragging them out one by one - picking something out, trying it on, deciding it wasn't the right thing, dragging out another piece...I finally got so fed up that I pulled out EVERYTHING, took it in to our bedroom, plopped it on the bed, and tried on every single piece of summer clothing I own (including - ugh - bathing suits). I took a REAL look at each piece - did I wear it last summer?  does it go with other stuff I own?  do I feel comfortable in it? - and got rid of almost 20 items.  I was so motivated that I went back through my winter clothes, tried on everything I hadn't worn in the last three months, and got rid of even more.  The power suit I bought "just in case"?  Gone.  The skirt I've had since high school that is too tight in all the wrong places?  Out the door.  The sweater my MIL gave me that I would never wear but have held on to for three years?  Donated. I thought long and hard about the "I plan to lose 10 pounds this year" story we all tell ourselves, and realized that keeping clothes that might fit "someday" just made me feel bad every time I went to get dressed. While it didn't always feel good to look in the mirror (my butt has gotten a little larger since last summer) - it DOES feel good to finally have a closet full of clothes I feel comfortable wearing out of the house.  Getting dressed just got a whole lot easier - I even organized my closet by color!

Using Pinterest for good
Jessica Turner (The Mom Creative) shared a great blog post last week about using Pinterest.

While I am already pretty good about tips #2-10, tip #1 really struck a chord with me.  I use Pinterest as part of my job (how lucky am I?) but I only had six boards, so I spent a LOT of time looking for pins I needed and wishing I was more organized.  I brought my ipad with me on our drive up to Raleigh and was able to organize about 90% of my pins in an hour and a half - and learned a LOT in those 90 minutes.  A few tips in addition to Jessica's:

Organize your boards AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.  I only have about 600 pins, but I still wish I had done it sooner.  Don't feel like you need to do it all in one sitting - if we hadn't been driving up to Raleigh I would have done it gradually over time.

100 pins maximum per board is a good number. When I started this weekend my "I create" board had over 250 pins.  I created some new boards and moved pins around, and when my I create board had about 100 pins remaining I was able to scroll through and feel like I had a good grasp of what it contained.  Having no more than 100 pins also makes it easier to find (and delete) duplicate pins. I had this recipe pinned FIVE TIMES.  Five!

Look through your board before you start moving pins around. I have a board called "food glorious food" - and I wanted to separate out sweet/dessert items from everything else.  I had about 120 pins on my board and was almost halfway through moving my dessert pins over to a new board when I realized that more than HALF of my pins were desserts! It would have saved a LOT of time if I had just renamed the board "desserts" and moved the other pins somewhere else.

Be prepared to learn something about yourself. I'm not talking about life changing lessons here...but you never know what you might discover!  Don and I love weekend breakfasts, and unless we have our nephews over (in which case we have pancakes) we ALWAYS make something savory.  I never thought anything about it until I created a "breakfast" board - and all but two of the pins were for sweet foods!  Looks like we might try something new next weekend! 

Happy Spring to all - if you are on Pinterest I'd love to check out your boards!  Share your link in the comments section here on on my FB page - let's inspire each other!

 

Make a Change Monday - new and improved blog coming soon!

When I wrote my first MAC Monday post last week, one of the things on my list was to improve/overhaul/focus on my blog.  With the exception of my cilantro "issue", bettering your blog was the number one thing folks commented on - on the blog, on my FB page, in emails, and in person. A few people asked me how I was planning to do it - so I'm going to share with you the good, the bad and the ugly of how I got here.  I hope along the way I will inspire a few of you to create your own blog, encourage those of you who have wanted to take the plunge and really make a go of blogging, and most of all help ALL of you to avoid the time and energy draining issues I've had.

*Note to all - if you are looking for a technical "how to create your own blog for profit"...this isn't for you.  This is more of a "blogging encouragement for beginners and/or computerly challenged folks who just want to try it to see if they like it".*

1. If you are a computer/technology idiot - admit it. I am. I know this about myself. I don't totally understand my smartphone, I know there are a MILLION things my computer can do that I haven't bothered to try, I just print out my photos as they are instead of spending time editing them with fanciness, I am just an idiot.  Or just don't care as much as I should.  Or something.  If you are like me but are interested in starting a blog, DO NOT believe your friends who tell you "you can totally create a blog yourself - it isn't that hard".  They are only about half right. It isn't that hard to create a blog...but it is hard to create a blog that doesn't look like, well, a blog created by someone who has no clue what they are doing. That being said...

2. Try it anyway. There are many, many, many free blog sites in the universe - blogger, typepad(theirs is a "free trial") and wordpress just to name a few. I can't say that one is any better than another - I ended up here because I asked a few friends and they suggested typepad.  It does not hurt a THING for you to sign yourself up for a free blog and mess around with it for a bit and see if you enjoy it/understand it/want to commit to it. Just remember...

3. Don't forget to read the fine print - and don't upgrade right away. There ARE added costs if you want to upgrade to this or add that - so read the fine print before you choose the site.  This is where I made a BIG mistake. I had my blog for a few weeks and wasn't satisfied with how it looked, so I just ASSUMED that upgrading to the next level (and paying) would solve all my problems.  It won't.  Upgrading to the next level does not make you more computer literate, it just gives you more things to have to figure out, so...

4. You might get frustrated. Because I am computerly challenged I spent MANY MANY hours trying to use the "help section" of the site or googling questions like "how do I embed a video" or "why can't I reply to individual comments" or "how do I add a blinkie" to figure out how to make my blog look halfway decent. I got REALLY frustrated, because I created a blog to share my thoughts and creativity - not to become a computer programmer. It almost made me stop blogging - it sure made me blog less because I just felt like a dummy all the time. Don't give up though!  Just... 

5. Keep a list of what you like/don't like/don't understand about the blog. Also keep a list of blogs you come across that you think are beautifully designed or appealed to your style. I've had this blog for over a year (I don't recommend waiting this long - I think you'll be able to tell within a few months of starting your blog), and even though I was frustrated with the "technical" side of the blog I really loved having a place to put my ideas and express myself, so I wasn't ready to give up. I knew I was ready to make a real investment (of either time or money - see #6), so I took a good long look at the list of what I wanted to change on my blog and had to make the decision to...

6. Spend time learning how to be more technologically savvy - or hire someone. This ALL comes down to personal choice (and finances).  There is no right or wrong answer.  If my husband had a blog, his answer would be to teach himself how to be more technologically savvy.  There are literally thousands upon thousands of articles and help centers for people who are do-it-yourselfers who want to create a better blog. He loves to learn and challenge himself and would enjoy the hours spent teaching himself a new skill.  I wish I was more like him.  Instead - I am me. I don't want to learn how to create my own header or how to figure out code - I want to write my blog and I want it to be pretty and I don't want to wait the 500 years it would probably take me to learn how to do it and I'm willing to pay a few hundred bucks to make that happen.  So I decided to hire someone. If you take this route...

7. DO NOT "hire" a teenager from your church or a college student from your neighborhood to do it for you. It isn't going to work (with the VERY rare exception). I tried this tact myself about six months back - posting on my FB page and sending out emails to almost everyone I know asking if anyone "knew anyone" who would do it cheap (or even better - "for the experience").  Yeesh. You'll get what you pay for - and you'll probably wait five years to get it done.  So, since you aren't going to do that, you need to...

8. Do some research. I googled "custom blog designer" and probably spent an entire night looking at websites.  I have to admit - I had a blast!  I loved seeing all of the creativity - and here are a few tips. -If the designer's page didn't have MANY blog samples available to look at on their site I didn't bother digging any deeper. -Review your list of sites that you like, but don't go strictly by that list. When I was looking at the blog designers websites I found some new style ideas that I'd never even thought of and never would have found otherwise. -Find at least two or three designers whose work you like (this is where I made another big mistake), because...

9. This isn't like taking your car in for a tune-up. I found a design site that I really, really loved.  They had an online "tell us what you want from your blog makeover" form that was pretty extensive, and I was taking this very seriously, so I spent a LOT of time answering the questions. They included things like: provide links to five blogs that inspire you and tell us why, attach or link four color schemes that appeal to you, etc. Two days later I got an email from one of their designers. They rejected me.  REJECTED ME*!  Carl's Auto doesn't reject me when I show up wanting my oil changed, my dry cleaner doesn't turn me away at the door, but apparently blog designers do.  So be forewarned.  It was pretty crushing - I started to get a "did they read my blog and think it wasn't worth it?" self-doubting mess in my head, but if someone had told me that being rejected was even a possibility I think it wouldn't have stung as much.  So here I am - telling you.  :)  Don't let it throw you - their loss! If I'd had a list of my top few designer favorites I could have just moved on to the next one - but I sort of had to start over.  Save yourself the time and have a list.

*Don says I should use the phrase "declined my offer" instead of "rejected me".  Blogs are a very personal thing and being "declined" really made me feel like poop - so rejected it is!

Once you HAVE found a designer you like and they have ACCEPTED you...

10. Again - read the fine print and ask questions. The designer I selected (whose info I will pass along to everybody once the new blog is up and running - for now I'll call her Georgia) doesn't work in typepad - only in blogger.  So I had to make the decision whether or not to get a blogger site (thankfully aintshecrafty was availalble over there too). She told me she would transfer my old posts and help me with whatever I needed to make it work. I had a LOT of questions about the possibility of maybe one day getting my own domain name and Georgia was VERY helpful and patient and happy to explain to me how the process would work and what she could do on her end.  If your designer doesn't seem open to your questions or doesn't explain things to your satisfaction then pick someone else because you are going to have to...

11. Tell the truth - even if it hurts. This is where I am now.  Georgia also had a lengthy "what do you want from this blog" process that we went through together, and we were upfront about everything - what I expected from her, what she expected from me, the timeline we were working with, and I was ESPECIALLY upfront with her about my lack of computer skills.  I knew I was going to need a LOT of hand holding and I wanted that to be clear in the beginning so neither one of us got annoyed later on.  Then - when she sent me the first draft of the blog - I had to be honest about the things I didn't like.  We are women.  This can sometimes be VERY hard for us.  Of course I said it in the nicest possible way, but as a creative woman it was PAINFUL for me to tell another creative woman that her creation wasn't what I wanted.  This is going to happen in your process.  A stranger is creating a landscape for you to express yourself.  You can describe yourself in words and colors and photos but this person doesn't KNOW you.  There will be some trial and error - but if you have the right designer for you (like I have - yay Georgia!) then the give and take will be totally worth it.  I've given her my suggestions, she is creating a new draft, and I should have it in the next few days.

Hopefully you all will see the results of this journey within the next week or so - until then, if this has demystified the blogging world for even one person then I will be one happy camper. I'd love to hear your blogging stories (successes and...uh...challenges) - and if you've started a blog I'd love to check it out!  Please share! Happy blogging my friends!

Melissa Frances Chipboard Houses Tutorial

As I mentioned on my FB page a while back, I am OBSESSED with these houses. As I also mentioned, I am so disorganized during the holiday season that I meant to post this how-to BEFORE Christmas, but here we are. So - apologies for the lateness, but to make up for it I am giving away a few of these kits  (post your New Year's resolution by December 31st on the aforementioned FB page to enter) and I FINALLY present to you step by step instructions so you can make some of these houses yourself!  These would make WONDERFUL wedding or housewarming gifts too...chipboard houses ain't just for Christmas any more!  :)

PS - I would also like to give a shout-out to my mom (who we will refer to as Crafty Sharron from now on) who is here visiting for Christmas and helped me with the photos and made some fabulous houses of her own while I was working on this tutorial.  Thanks Mom!

Supplies needed:
Melissa Frances ornament cottage kit
Three (3) coordinating patterned papers - I used MME Lost & Found Christmas
Xyron 510 with permanent adhesive refill
1/8" Scor-Tape
Liquid glue
Craft knife and self healing mat
Two (2) coordinating misting sprays - I used Clearsnap Smooch Spritz Vanilla Shimmer and Perfect Pearls Bronze Mist
Coordinating acrylic paint and brush
Bazzill Basics textured vellum (optional)
Clearsnap Fairy Dust Glitter
Melissa Frances mini bottle brush tree
White cardstock and printer
Distress Ink - I used Antique Linen
Two (2) coordinating mini brads
Foam tape

Select the roof, house and base from your kit. Find the "top/front" of each piece (based on the way the pieces are scored).

Put the three pieces in the Xyron 510 with the top/front facing DOWN. 

Once you run them through the 510, peel off the clear film and then GENTLY peel the pieces from the backing.  Chipboard is created in layers so if you peel too fast the top layer of chipboard will come right off.

Place the adhesive side of your chipboard on the BACK of the patterned paper for each item (see photo of completed pieces below...for example - the yellow piece of paper that the roof chipboard is attached to has a red swirl pattern on the other side).

Use a craft knife to cut out each piece and sand if you want to.  :)

(photo of completed pieces)

Use your craft knife to gently cut along the score lines of the roof and house.  You don't want to cut too deep, but if you do over-cut don't worry - see my HELPFUL TIP at the very end of this post.

Apply misting spray to your base piece ONLY. Set aside to dry.

Apply misting spray to your window and door pieces. Set aside to dry.

Apply paint to your fence. Set aside to dry.

Take your house and roof pieces (NOT the base piece) and put them back in the Xyron 510 with the patterned paper side facing DOWN. Run through the machine, peel of the clear film, gently peel pieces off of the backing and lay with the patterned/adhesive side facing UP on your workspace.

Apply glitter to both pieces, rub with finger to cover and tap off excess.

(photo of completed pieces)

Tip: If you are using patterned paper that already has glitter on it, you can use the tip of your craft knife to scrape off the top layer of glitter, revealing the pattern on your paper.

On the back side of your house, place Scor-Tape around the edges of the door and window.

At this point I should stop, take a moment, and explain to you that I am usually not a crazy adhesive woman.  When I put a photo on a layout I use some adhesive on each corner, not adhesive all around the edges and then some in the middle for good measure.  I'm not stingy with my stickiness, but I am not going through five refills per project if you know what I mean.  HOWEVER - because this is a project that I want people to use and enjoy (and I know it will be put on a tree, taken down and put away, brought out again next Christmas, etc. year after year - not something that is going to sit on a shelf forever) I used A LOT of adhesive on this project.  A LOT. I recommend you do the same.  :)

Flip the house over, center your door and window, and press to adhere.

Flip the house back over and apply scor-tape to the back of the door and window.

Cut two small pieces of textured vellum (or use the red cellophane that came in your kit) and cover door and window openings.

Apply Scor-Tape to the bottom of your house*.  I do not use liquid glue until later in the project because I HATE to wait for liquid glue to dry.  Using Scor-Tape allows me to put the project together quickly and then go back and "shore-up" any parts of the project that need liquid glue. 

*Line up the edge of your Scor-Tape with the front of your house, so the rest of the Scor-Tape is "hanging off" the back edge of the chipboard.

Use your finger to "roll" the Scor-Tape on to itself, making a thinner strip. It won't look pretty - but it will hold fabulously!

Repeat on ONE end of the house.

Fold house in to shape and adhere to your base.  I adhered mine pretty close to the back of the base, but I have seen them put on kitty-cornered and centered, so the choice is yours!

Repeat the Scor-Tape process on the roof edges of your house.

Insert the ornament holder in to your roof and apply to your house.

(photo of house with roof)

Use liquid glue to adhere your tree and Scor-Tape to adhere the fence to your base.

If you are applying a "plaque" to your house, print out your phrase in several different sizes.

Use distress ink to apply color to your phrases, cut out and determine which size works best with your house.

Use your craft knife to poke a small hole on either side of your paper.  Insert brads.

Fold both ends of your brads towards the center of your paper.

Use a small piece of foam tape in the center of your paper and adhere to the front of the house.

***HELPFUL TIP*** These chipboard houses ARE fragile.  If during the process you tear your chipboard along one of the score lines or feel like the Scor-Tape isn't secure enough, once your house is COMPLETED you can easily go back and fill in the gaps with liquid glue.  Apply the liquid glue to the affected area then sprinkle some glitter on the glue and tap off the excess.  It will strengthen your project AND cover up any small errors.  Thank God for glitter!  :)