Tag: Lifestyle Blog

Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Scrapbooking

What It Costs to Build a Page

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – YOUR STYLE CONTROLS YOUR COSTS

More Is More

Above you can see several pages I created during an online crop. Creative Memories has them every month and they are a lot of fun. You can use the time to drill down and get pages done with virtual friends from all over the world or you can be crafty. During this particular crop I got crafty, so I haven’t done very many since then. Perhaps one more.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a great place to learn a lot of things, try things you might have never tried to do before and you could win something. The problem for me and maybe you is the temptation to get all caught up making pages which might have no relation to photos you actually want in your album. That’s what happened to me. I made these pages and several others. Then I gave them away. They weren’t my style and I couldn’t figure out what of mine I wanted to use them for.

They weren’t my style because each one took a really long time to make and most of them had more embellishments than I would ever put on a page. The more you put on a page to decorate it, the more time it is going to take and the more money you are going to spend.

A Typical Two Page Spread

The two pages above are out of an album made during the pandemic, so that’s fairly recent and they are typical for my level of decoration. The photos and memorabilia are the stars and the other items just help tell the story. That’s how I do it.

Let’s pretend I just started scrapbooking and they are the first two pages I have done. To get started, I spent $75 to get the coverset, the pages and the adhesives, as I mentioned in an earlier post, but chances are you’d want more than 12 pages/24 sides, so let’s fill up the album with 36 pages/72 sides, which would take the total to $141. The only tools I bought to make these pages were a corner rounder, a personal trimmer and a 12 inch trimmer, which would have cost me about $85. I’m about $300 in, but I still need decorative items.

Decorative items have to be bought in packs. Let’s assume everything I needed for these two pages came out of one collection of decorative items, to make it simple. That would have been a printed paper pack, a pack of cardstock, a mat pack, a pack of stickers and a pack of embellishments. I would have spent about $50 to get all of that. However, the items you see on this two page would have only used about $4’s worth of that $50 or $2 a page. If life were simple, your $50 of decorations would easily cover 24 sides of paper, but you’d need $100 more to cover the other 48.

So, your first album would cost, $450. I can complete an album in about 24 hours, but as a newbie, it would probably take at least 3 times that, so more like 72 hours.

Those 72 Hours

I have been scrapbooking since my teens, which is over half a decade, and the hours I have spent doing it have been some of the favorites in my life. After your first album, you’ll get faster – maybe – if you want.

I have a sort of photographic memory of all of my supplies and I don’t spend much time in decision making. I’d rather have a completed page than a perfect page. I can complete 10 pages while my best friend does 2. That doesn’t make me better. It makes me different. It does however make it easier for me to do this as a business.

If you are are interested in scrapbooking as a hobby or craft, I am happy to support you in whatever ways you need from coaching to stickers. If you want to get faster, I will teach you my tricks. If you want to save money, I’ll teach you how to make the most of every inch of paper and every single sticker. And there are a world of CM resources out there to turn you into a scrapbooking artist.

While your first album would cost you $450, the next one would only be $315 – probably less if you are careful with your decorative supplies. You can join CM for about $50 and get a 10% discount on whatever you buy, plus $50 in credit for your first order. So, that first album would cost $405 and the next one $243, because your discount would go up. Do enough cropping and you get 40% off. CM has no quotas, so you can buy as much or as little as you want.

Of course, along the way, you’d want to buy more tools and you could turn into a paper addict like me, so while the cost of a single scrapbook would go down, your investment in scrapbooking would go up.

If this is exciting to you, then welcome to the world scrapbooking. You’re going to love it here. If it doesn’t then come back next week and we’ll talk about the economy of having me do your scrapbooks for you.

DESTINATIONS, TRAVEL, Travel Planning, United States

Bad Phone

Jane Sadek
Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com

Travel There – If You Can

So, as I faced the slings and arrows of rebooking the NYC trip, I was also trying to book a trip for Bill and I. We had Southwest Airlines credit which would expire in June. After much discussion, we decided to try out the American Club Med in Florida. We’d had an amazing time at their Punta Canta resort and wanted to repeat it, but in the Post Covid World, we didn’t want to stray too far from home.

I had done all my homework for both NYC and Club Med. Since I was going to NYC first, I got that booked, then I went to work on the Florida trip. Club Med’s site told me to get their booking confirmed before I booked the airfare. Once I had the confirmation, I started booking the air, but something was horribly wrong. Almost all of my Southwest Airlines credit was gone!

I was on the site, had the perfect flight reserved and was trying to pay when I realized the cupboard was bare. Had I had any way to anticipate the ramifications of letting those two seats go, I would have paid for the seats and then chased down my credit, but at the time I was more worried about what happened to my credit. I thought if I went ahead and paid, it would be a case of too-bad-so-sad and I’d end up with more credits I needed to use up.

Chasing an Answer

It took a six page letter to Southwest Airlines to explain everything that happened next and eventually I did get some “Gee we’re sorry” credits from both Southwest Airlines and Southwest Vacations, but none of that helped me when it mattered.

Along the way, I was treated worse than I had ever been treated by any customer service rep, anywhere, at any time. The bottom line was that Renee had lied, but I was the one who was going to have to pay money for airline tickets that according to him, I would have the credit to cover. The very worst part was, the flight I wanted had filled up and I was going to have to pay a now outrageous amount of money for a flight that left at the crack of dawn. Who wants to end their time at a luxurious resort by getting up at 4 AM?

Thanks, but No Thanks

I have a $150 credit from Southwest Airlines, but I am in no hurry to use it. I went to St. Louis in September, but we drove. I couldn’t face the headache of trying to use the credit. They will probably expire someday, but I don’t care. Travel is my joy and I’m not letting them buy it with their paltry credit, which will involve me having to book with them again. I think they should have given me a refund, not a credit. They do not deserve for me to spend more money with them. I probably will, because the drive to DFW from Heat is brutal, but for now, I am pouting.

Southwest Vacations tried to play the same game with me, but I erupted on them in a less than pleasant way. I figured venting my spleen in such an aggressive way wouldn’t actually get me anywhere, but I’d been through hell with them. When the pain continued after I got home from the trip, that was too much. I’d paid for everything in advance and came home to over $600 in charges. Southwest Vacations got me back to even, but they thought we were even when they let me know I had a $100+ credit with them. I told them just how unhappy I was about the whole thing and said the least they could do was to return the value of that $100, since it had come about from their mistake in the first place. No promises were made, but I did get a refund on my credit card.

Things have gotten out of control in the customer service world. Companies hide behind their computer screens and phone trees. Consumers are left hanging out to dry and there’s really nothing we can do about it. If we’re lucky, perhaps we get some token credit, but it is never on par with what we’ve suffered.

Companies should have to answer phones in a reasonable amount of time. If a customer waits more than 10 minutes for a representative, then a clock should start ticking and the customer should earn money (not a credit) for the time they are forced to wait. If that were the case, you can bet a whole lot more customer service jobs would be created and the companies would find a way to be sure they answered calls on a timely basis. Go ahead, record my call, but also be sure you’re timing my wait!

Also, there should be a way to seek resolution besides suing the company. Once a company sticks it to you, the only thing you can do is take them to court, but we all know what will happen then. It will be Joe Blow versus Corporate America and you know Joe Blow is going to lose.

The only thing we Joe Blows have left after a bad encounter of the commercial kind is to resort to social media and what good, I ask you, does that actually do. Corporate America keeps counting their money on the other side of their phone tree and laughing all the way to the bank. I think this explains, in part, why people are so ugly on social media. It’s the court of last appeals, but they have already lost.

OK, I’ve gotten that off my chest, but I have to mention that when I got home from NYC the hotel charged me a bogus $600+. As happened with Renee, I will never know whether it was an honest mistake, stupidity or just standard operations for milking more money out of tourists. Through more wasted time, on the phone and on websites, I got it resolved, but I almost spent as much time on the phone dealing with all these issues as I did on my vacation!!

I’m through complaining. Come back next week and we’ll board our Southwest Airlines flight to NYC!

DESTINATIONS, DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

The Weekend Report

Jane Sadek

TRAVEL HERE – BORING!

Turning the Corner to 2023

Believe me when I say, last weekend 2022 was winding down. It wound down to nothing.

Friday morning I spent some time with my new Cricut – my favorite Christmas present. So far it’s been all learning curve and no real spectacular moments of craftiness. I’ve spent more time learning what it can’t do than I have making stuff. Leave it to me to find the edges of digital technology.

Friday afternoon, we had lunch at Community BBQ. For my bestie and I, it was a return trip, but we were joined this time by her brother and Mr. Bill. I shared a rack of ribs with hubby and avoided the loser mac & cheese, but I saw them take some to another table. It looked much improved.

This visit was not quite as good as our first. The wine was still free, because they haven’t gotten their liquor license, yet, but this time my ribs were fatty. The okra was delicious and I enjoyed a baked potato. Deb’s brother had the brisket and seemed to love it. She, like me, repeated the ribs and was happy. Mr. Bill was disappointed by the ribs, because they were beef ribs. He has very particular taste and if it’s not baby backs, he’d rather not.

Saturday morning I played Marian the Librarian. I keep the library at our small church going and we’d had a huge influx of books. I’d brought them home to prep them for the shelves and made a morning of it. That afternoon I went around the house and the yard taking down the Christmas decorations. The manger scene in the front was another of my favorite Christmas presents, but I got it early so we could display it for this season. Now, it’s in the garage. We have to figure out how to store it!

For New Year’s Eve, Bill and I ate our leftover ribs for dinner and sat on the sofa catching up on episodes of The Voice. That’s pretty lame for a couple who got engaged on Christmas Eve, almost three decades before, but we choose to stay home out of the madness. We drank good champagne at midnight and crawled into bed.

The New Year Arrives with a Bump

If it’s Sunday morning, then I’m probably at church. New Year’s Day was no exception. I shelved all the newly donated books, attended Sunday School and then during the worship service I got the bad news I knew was coming. Our pastor is leaving us here in the Bible Belt, where there’s an evangelical church on almost every corner, to lead a small church in one of the most neglected mission fields in the world – New England. Seriously!

My pastor and his wife had made it known about six months ago that they felt a calling away from us. At that time they didn’t know where they’d go, just that they knew they were done here. I was so sad. Finding my church had been a multi-year task. Worship formats everywhere have taken a turn away from what I love and I’d made the rounds without much luck. This church was an uneasy fit for me in some ways, but they have a traditional worship service and the teaching during the Sunday morning service was stellar, some of the best I’ve ever had.

Now I have to decide what to do with myself on Sunday mornings. No giant of theology is coming to fill the soon-to-be empty shoes of this marvelous teacher. In fact, the elders are going to take turns with the sermon. Natural attrition has taken away some of my favorite people in the congregation and while there are those I love, for the most part I am I fish out of water. I was there each Sunday for the teaching that won’t be there anymore.

Ten years ago, that wouldn’t be so much of a problem, I’d go find another evangelical church with a great teacher and a traditional worship service. Just finding a traditional worship service is one problem, but finding one with a live preacher is even more challenging. I’m just not ready for church on the big screen. So, God and I are chatting about what is next.

Strolling Down Memory Lane

As I mentioned earlier, Bill proposed to me at the stroke on midnight on NYE 1993/4. It had been a complete surprise to me – a good one, but he’d kept his secret well. So, January 1, 1994 I spent the day trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I was engaged to be married to the handsomest man in the whole wide world.

That afternoon we took a walk along the dock at Chandler’s Landing. Together we carved out our path for the coming months. Bill was ready to get married immediately, like could we do it in a few weeks as far as he was concerned. That was plausible if we had a small, quiet ceremony, which I thought was fine, except that he wanted a big wedding with all the trimmings. That meant I’d need a few months to pull it all together.

Chandler’s Landing was very members/residents only back in those days. There was no Yacht Club Restaurant open to the public. We were interlopers, but on that very quiet day, no one seemed to mind. On Sunday we still had to cheat a little, telling them we were going to the restaurant, when all we wanted was the restaurant parking lot, but we literally strolled down memory lane as we walked along the docks.

Chandler’s Landing has changed. It was fairly shabby in 1994, a mere shadow of what it had been designed to be. Today, things are different than they were back then. The HOA has taken over the facilities and hired a very good management company to bring it all back to its former glory – and they are doing a good job of it. The restaurant is still hit and miss, but everywhere you look things are looking better than they were twenty-nine years ago.

Our Ham and Black-Eyed Peas

We skipped The Yacht Club on this visit. We had to eat our ham and black-eyed peas, which I had for us at home. Nothing fancy. I picked up a ham steak at Kroger to go with the can of black-eyed peas I already had on the shelf. I like cornbread with that meal, so I also picked up a package of cornbread mix. It didn’t take long to put on the table, but we enjoyed it. Afterwards, we watched a little TV.

The New Year is off to a good, if quiet start. I am wrapping my life around the resolutions I have made for a “Better Me in 2023.” As befits a new year, my Travel Talk posts will be taking a new turn to New York City. Then Memory Keeping 101 will focus on punches to go along with all that paper I love. I hope you’ll join me for the fun.

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

Getting Punchy

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – TOOL TIME FOR SCRAPBOOKERS

A Sampling of Punches and Border Makers

A couple of years ago I made the poster above to demonstrate the many shapes you could make with Creative Memories Punches and Border Maker. Some of these are no longer available, but they’ve also come up with all kinds of new ones. I always want every single one they introduce, but you soon learn to get a little picky.

Punches, Border Punches, Frame Punches and More

Punches are individual tools you can use to make anything from various sized circles to a variety of borders. However, each punch only makes one thing, be it a single shape or a certain pattern. The great thing is you can make them out of any color or pattern of paper you want to. Punches start at about $25 and go up to about $30, according to what the punch will do.

If it makes a single shape the punch is less expensive. The more you can do with with a punch, the more it costs. Some punches can stand alone on the page or make a border, like the Masquerade and Nativity border punches above. In the top picture of the poster, towards the bottom is a beige square. That’s one of the Frame Punches which will either make a border or the square you see above. Then there are the circle punches. They only do one thing and it requires a flipping the paper over in the middle of the process, but CM has only made a few circle punches and they are the most expensive. None are available at this time.

That’s the basic operation of punches, but if you are patient and you are given to a little experimentation there are all sorts of things you can do. Some croppers have figured out how to get some of the regular punches to do the same sort of thing as the specialized punches. Others use two punches and make a border with two shapes on it. These are the crafty people. You can spend all day on CMTV, the Creative Memories channel or on You Tube watching all the crazy things people figure out to do, but you’re not going to find me there. I just use the tools for what they were intended and never run out of ways to use them.

Border Maker System

Like the Custom Cutting System, the Border Maker System is a collection of tools you use together. With the Custom Cutting System, you get a mat and some blades to go along with several shapes and sizes of patterns. For the Border Maker, you get a two piece tool that works together to hold and cut your paper. Then there are a plethora of cartridges you can buy to use with the two piece tool.

While the punches have a tendency to sing, dance and serve hors d’oeuvres, all the border system does is make straight borders. The basic system is $35.50 and then the cartridges are $19.50 each. After your initial investment in the two piece tool, which does come with one cartridge, it is less expensive to buy the various shapes. I used to say that generally the Border Punches made wider strips than the Border Maker, but nowadays it’s hard to tell, just by looking, what tool made any given border.

Making Your Tools Work for Their Supper

Nothing in scrapbooking is in a vacuum. I’ve been traying to make it simple during these intro posts, but the more you learn about scrapbooking, the more there is to learn. There is more than one kind of page. There are several choices of adhesives and which one you use depends on what you’re sticking down and what you are sticking it to and what you want it to look like after it is stuck down.

When it comes to punches and borders, the same thing applies. There is absolutely nothing wrong with punching out one border and placing it directly on the page or the wallpaper. However, once you start working with them, you can get as crazy as you want to. Some punches only cut an edge off the paper, while others cut on both sides making a chain. You can use the edge punches on a wide strip of paper to make fancy strip cut on both sides. You can start stacking your strips and come up with completely new looks. Some crafty people make borders that are several layers thick, incorporating everything from letters to stickers and embellishments. About all I ever put together is 2-3 layers, but that’s me. You do you!

Obviously, you could go bankrupt buying punches and border maker cartridges, but they only represent a portion of the tools available to scrapbookers. There’s a corner punch which will create two different corners for your photos or mats. The 12 inch Trimmer has seven fancy blades to interchange with the straight blade. There’s a decorative trimmer to make your own wavy strips, a circle cutting for making infinite circle sizes and a zero centering ruler which is very helpful. I love the multi-purpose tool for scraping up things I’ve stuck down by accident and there’s a pointed end which I use for all kinds of tasks my fingers are too fat for. You need pens for journaling and there are two different scissors, both of which I use. And templates – did I mention them. Well, they can be used for several design jobs. Then there are sorting and storing tools which are really nice.

All this and you haven’t yet bought a single sticker or embellishment. Oh my! Have you begun to understand just how expensive it can be to get addicted to this hobby?

Next week, since you now have an idea what it costs to take up scrapbooking, let’s talk about the value of letting me do it for you.

DESTINATIONS, TRAVEL, Travel Planning, United States

Gee Thanks Covid

Jane Sadek
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Travel There – Booking Nightmares in a Post-Covid World

When we returned from Vegas, the trip we hadn’t planned for or anticipated, I had loose travel ends I needed to decide what to do with. My bestie and I had credit with Southwest Vacations for the NYC trip Covid had obliterated and with Hubby I had credit with Southwest Airlines leftover from the resort deal we decided to abandon.

Plans for the Big Apple

The trip we’d planned to NYC for May of 2020 is not one that could easily be replaced. My bestie’s son, a young man I’d watch grow up, was graduating from Pratt and was scheduled to receive his MFA at Radio City Music Hall. That’s one of those events you can’t rewind. However, I’d never really been to NYC and I wanted very much to enjoy that orgy of entertainment.

Though Deb and I talked about using up our travel credits every time we got together there was always the lingering masks and Covid surges discouraging us from planning anything definite. Then she was invited to a christening by her family in New Jersey and that proved the impetus for us to go. We selected the week before the christening as our travel dates and I took on the responsibility for getting it booked.

Have I Reached the Party to Whom I am Speaking?

Perhaps you remember Lily Tomlin and her operator skirts or maybe you’ve just seen clips of her on You Tube. If you have then you’ve heard the question above. As I called around trying to figure out exactly how to use the credits we held from Southwest Vacations, I felt Lily’s question was appropriate.

My travel agent had been one of the early victims in the massive layoffs experienced by the travel industry. When NYC shutdown, I went through several different representatives with the company she’d worked for and eventually ended up having to contact the president of the company to get the credits we were due.

Two years later, I had no desire to reconnect with a company who had not only fired my favorite travel agent ever, but they’d done an awful job of helping me in the aftermath. So, I asked my old travel agent if she knew anyone still in the business which could help me. She gave me a name, but that name had no interest in helping me if there was no money on the table for the trip she’d be helping me with.

I anticipated what a nightmare the rebooking would be and did not want that headache. In the world before Covid, a travel agent would be happy to help you rebook travel, even if they didn’t make anything from it, because they wanted your business for the future. The travel industry is in such dire straits, courtesies like that no longer exist. That meant it was up to me.

The Nightmare Begins

I made the call to Southwest Vacations and I honestly thought the hour and a half I waited on hold would be the extent of my nightmare. When Renee finally got on the phone with me, he was so nice, I thought all of my troubles were over. I had no idea they had just begun. See, I don’t know whether he was stupid or he just lied, and after months of dealing with the aftermath of the conversation it’s still not clear.

The easy part was getting booked in the wrong hotel. I wanted the Sheraton New York Times Square. He put me in a Four Points by Sheraton in Times Square. During the call he always said Sheraton Times Square, so I thought we were good. It wasn’t until later I realized the gap between what I wanted and what I got. However, except for the LONG wait on hold, waiting for a representative, changing to the right was relatively easy or at least seemed that way at the time.

The hard part was what happened to my Southwest Airlines account. Renee said he was taking some credit from that account to cover my airfare for NYC. As we were talking he told me it would be about $25-30. I blissfully can’t remember at this moment, but at the time I had written down in my notes and it was in that range. I asked, “And that will leave me with XXX amount of credit with Southwest Air?” His answer was, “Absolutely,” but he was absolutely wrong.

The nightmare continues, so come back next week and let’s find out how badly Renee’s wrong answer messed me up!

ART, Attractions, DFW Metroplex, Music, Performing Arts

The Weekend Report

Jane Sadek

TRAVEL HERE – SIX, A TRIUMPH AT THE WINSPEAR

So this year, Winter showed up with a bang. On the first day of winter, the warnings were ominous and quite accurate. I kept close to home on Thursday and Friday, working on a sorting job for one of my clients. I saved my gift wrapping until Christmas Eve and then it was time for the really big show.

Christmas Eve Treat

While most of the ads on Facebook are a waste of my time, occasionally they deliver just what I was looking for. After Thanksgiving I’d been shopping around the internet for a potential short trip, when we were offered the opportunity to barter some real estate photography for a weekend stay in a gorgeous beachside rental property. That satisfied my traveling bug, but I had my eye out for something to spice up the holidays.

During our 2020 holidays I had planned some epically bad holiday entertainment and in 2021 we’d won a trip to Las Vegas, which was almost as epically bad. I needed to up my game. The Galveston/San Antonio trip was a winner, but I needed a little something else. Facebook delivered SIX!

I had been in New York earlier in the year and opted for an oldie but goodie, because nothing Broadway was offering up looked better than Moulin Rouge. I hadn’t exactly kept my ear to the ground about what had come out since, but apparently SIX hit the Great White Way with sizzle! When Facebook let me know it was coming to the Winspear, I could tell immediately it was right up our alley. I sent Bill the video and he agreed.

So, we booked our seats and decided going on Christmas Eve would make it extra special. We were right! With our older generation on the other side and having never provided ourselves with a younger generation, when the holiday parties are over and everyone else focuses on family, we’re a bit at loose ends. A matinee at the Winspear was a perfect way to spend the day.

Bundle Up, Park Close & Get There On Time

Though the iciest temperatures were behind us, the temperature was quite nippy on Christmas Eve. Bill hates paying for parking, but I warned him I did not want to hoof it from the parking spaces on the other side of the DMA. Thankfully, he accommodated me and we parked in the Cathedral underground parking. My boots might have been made for walking, but not for walking far.

We even made it there with time to spare, which is not always the case. Bill’s not one for hanging around much before the show, but for me he got there about half an hour early. The Winspear had actually called me the day before and warned me about the theater’s closed door policy, because apparently the cold weather was a challenge for some of their patrons. The early arrival gave me time to make a potty stop and do a little people watching. We were amazed at the number of people standing in line for SIX merchandise. Haven’t they heard of the internet?

However, Bill didn’t want to get to our seats too early and held me back until about 10 minutes before the start of the show. Then we began our walking tour of the Winspear. About two levels up, we found an usher and asked her where we were headed. It didn’t do much good though, because with the mask she was wearing her instructions sounded like (mmm mmmmmm mmmmmm mm mmm mm). Thankfully, she also pointed, so up we went.

We found another human being and found out we were almost there. Just one more set of stairs. We found the right door and headed in. We were in the middle of the first row and everyone else was already in their seat, but it was fixing to get ugly.

I knew the Grand Tier was not a place for me to sit. Not only was it nosebleed high, the chairs are not even bolted to the floor. I’d sat in Dress Circle seats before and had enjoyed it, but the seats were higher up in the section. One might think sitting in the middle of the front row of the Dress Circle would be a good thing. If you’re not acrophobic, go for it, but I thought I might just head home!

We could see our seats, but without the kindness of strangers, there was no way for us to get there. The first row of the Dress Circle at the good old Fair Park Music Hall was luxurious with extra leg room. At the Winspear there was no legroom. Here we were, several stories from the bottom floor, with nothing but a knee level bar to hold us back and we were supposed to scoot along in perhaps a foot of space. We were about to get up close and personal with a dozen or so people we didn’t know.

Bill went first, I looked toward the standing strangers we were inconveniencing (they had to stand or we couldn’t get by) and got ahold of him with a death grip. If I was going over, he was going with me! For a few moments I actually thought I was going to die!

When we got to our seats, I sat down and clutched the arm rests until my blood pressure went back to normal. I can’t say that I felt comfortable at that point, but it was better than hanging out over the great abyss. According to a Google search I just did, only about 9 people have died from falling out of a theater balcony, but I sincerely do not want to round that number out.

The show was about 5 minutes away and I browsed my program for pertinent facts about the show. The lights went down and the curtain went up.

A Rollicking Good Time

While I cannot in good conscious recommend our seats, I will say the show was marvelous. No complaints! It is an hour long thrill ride, loosely tied to good King Henry VIII and his six wives. The cast and musicians are all women and they do grind the whole women’s issue stone throughout the show, but I managed to ignore it, because most of it was in good fun. The costuming made whimsical nods to the fashion of good King Henry’s day, but was all firmly rooted in today.

The show is an hour with no intermissions and with the closed door policy firmly in place, if you show up late you are out of luck. I had no trouble hearing and understanding the lyrics of the songs, so that was great.

If there had been voting for the best wife, I would have chosen Catherine of Aragon for her song. It had the touch of a Latin beat and a distinctive Nuh-Nuh-Nuh-Nuh riff that became my earworm of the show.

Number two for me was Anne of Cleeves. I wanted to bust out laughing every time she sang, “I’m the queen of my castle,” with a definite nanny-nanny-poo-poo tone. The other wives disqualified her from winning the award for best wife, because she did not suffer enough. In fact Anne’s song was Bill’s favorite for the hilarious German accents they copped for it.

Anne Boleyn, was a little bitter in the funniest of ways. No matter what anyone else claimed to suffer, she would remind them of her beheading with a very firm nod, which left her pretty helpless in the face of Katherine Howard’s fate. Jane Seymore’s fate, death in childbirth, rendered her fairly saccharine as she spoke of how she was Henry’s only true love and the mother of his only son. She was all but disqualified from the competition and would have been if she hadn’t reminded them that she DIED. Katherine Howard was played as the whore of the castle who might have deserved what she got.

All this had to end somehow, so Catherine Parr calls and end to their competition. This was the weakest part of the show for me, but libbers everywhere probably loved it. They reprised their complaints and it was time to go home.

While we loved the show, we decided we don’t love the Winspear. We’ll try to take our entertainment doses at the Meyerson or the Majestic – or even the Eisemann Center, for that matter. The signage at the Winspear is non-existent and everything is just a little too tight or too high for our comfort.

Christmas Day

What can I say about Christmas? I started the day at my church’s worship service, then went over to my bestie’s to help get Christmas Dinner done. I love any time I spend with her. We enjoyed prosecco in the kitchen while her guys watched movies. By 5:30 or so, the other guests who had been variously entertained elsewhere arrived and dinner went on the table. The meal was glorious and opening our gifts was marvelous.

Come back next week. The last installment of Las Vegas will come on Wednesday and we’ll talk Memory Keeping on Thursday. Happy New year to you and be safe during your NYE celebration.

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

The Fun Stuff(?)

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – EMBELLISHING YOUR PAGE

A Brief History of Embellishments

Back in the day there were two kinds of embellishments – die cuts and stickers. You bought them. You used them and it was all over. Then you had to go shopping for more die cuts and stickers. Fast forward until today. You can still get die cuts and stickers. The assortment available with Creative Memories and other suppliers is limitless. However, you buy them, you stick them down and they are gone. You want more – you buy more.

The Custom Cutting System was one of the first forays into tools you could use to make limitless embellishments in the colors of your choice. The only shapes available at first were circles, but it was revolutionary. If you’d wanted to have a circle before the CCS, you used a plastic template to draw the one size available and then used scissors to cut it out freehand. I was dismal at it, so I was happy for an option that made perfect circles at least more often than I could cutting them out freehand. I still had my challenges, but it was better.

As they started adding other geometric shapes to the Custom Cutting System, they also started making punches available. At first, like the CCS all you could get were geometric shapes, but it was still cool. Then they added others, like leaves, cars, planes and such – but in the beginning, they were really small and didn’t make much of a statement on the page.

They also came out with a variety of trimmers so you could make strips. There was one for straight cuts and then a second one with a couple of wave patterns. They even came up with various blades for the straight trimmer so you could get different kinds of edges. I have to tell you though, those rotary blades were dangerous because you could slice your finger easier than you could get a good cut in your paper, but the new trimmers all have enclosed blades.

A Border Warning

I guess this is the place where I have to talk about borders and titles. Borders and titles are a thing among a lot of scrapbookers and CM pushes them like the local drug dealer offers gateway drugs. In fact, CM recently put out a book with 110 borders ideas and believe me, they are beautiful.

The borders start with a strip 2-3 inches wide and then you layer letters and embellishments on them. The borders can be put at the top and or on the bottom or added to the sides or even run through the middle. Some consultants advisors (the old CM used to call us consultants, but we’re now advisors) spend their days creating borders to sell at workshops and crops.

Some people start every page/2 page spread with a pair of borders at the top and bottom or at either side. No wonder scrapbookers want to buy them pre-made! Now, don’t get me wrong. I love borders, but I don’t use them on every page. I sure as heck don’t make them several layers deep with one of the layers being a jigsaw puzzle of small paper pieces.

You can make beautiful, simple and quick pages with just photos, memorabilia and a few items of decoration. I do it all the time. People pay me to do it and they love every single page – even the ones without borders.

You can also use lots of borders if you want to. I just don’t want you to think you have to spend your days cutting out minute pieces of paper to layer on a pair of 2-3 inch borders for every page. You need to decide whether you are a memory keeper or a crafter.

To me, this kind of scrapbooking is expensive in time, materials and space on your page. It also puts the emphasis on the decoration of the page, rather than the photos and memorabilia. Borders push scrapbooking from the realm of memory keeping into the world of crafting. I am not a crafter. I don’t have the skill, the patience or the time (not to mention the money) to be a crafter. My focus is preserving memories.

I say this now, because we are treading on dangerous waters here. Scrapbooking is fun and it can certainly be a craft, but when you start down the road of embellishments, you start adding to the time and money you devote to the job of memory keeping. Time and money are the top two inhibitors which keep people from memory keeping.

As I flipped through the new idea book, one of the first ideas I saw had a woven paper lattice on a three inch strip decorated with layers of punches and floral embellishments you can buy ready-made from CM, to go with those you’d need to make. It was gorgeous. I wanted to make one right away.

Then I thought about the time, materials and tools I would be using and the fact that I didn’t even have a page to put it on right this minute. I actually have all the tools used in that particular border, but as a flipped through other pages, I was dismayed by the number of punches, bordermakers and blades I don’t have.

I am happy to support your scrapbooking, however you go about it, but if you’re like most people, elaborate pages are the wide and straight road into frustration, incomplete pages and guilt from overspending. I’m warning you not go there without your eyes wide open. A few punches will enhance your pages. A lot of punches could be a dream or a nightmare.

Okay, enough of a warning, come back next week and all introduce you to the other dangerous habit I have to go along with my paper addiction – punches and Border Makers.

Accommodations, DESTINATIONS, Restaurants & Bars, Road Trips, TRAVEL, United States

Bye Bye Vegas – We’re Happy to Go!

Jane Sadek

Travel There – Trial by Footsteps

Among Bill’s photos of our trip was this screenshot from his Fitbit. In spite of the Deuce and the Big Bus, we got in a lot of steps during our Vegas vacation. I was really surprised it was so many. It’s no wonder I was exhausted at the end of each day. I’m not accustomed to so much walking.

Now it was time to go. It was a busy morning for delivering photos, as most Fridays are in our business. Even though our flight was not until four, we needed to be out of the room by 11 and it was a close call.

We checked our luggage with the Bellman Desk and headed over to the Bellagio. Bill had visions of a lovely sit down breakfast, much as he does when he sleeps late on a cruise and the results were the same. All the sit-down breakfast venues were closed. We were left with a short order café called Quick Eats which featured American fare. Not exactly our dream come true. There was a lovely view onto a courtyard, but that’s about all there is to recommend it. Even the coffee was bad.

Still, we didn’t have much time to linger, because the company providing transfers wanted to deliver us to the airport hours and hours before our flight. We went to the bellman and retrieved our luggage, because we had to drag it over to that non-descript entrance at the back of the hotel where vans drop off and pick up their patrons. Paris, please note, this arrangement for arrivals and departures is not conducive to happy memories of a stay. You initial interaction with the hotel is less than warm and fuzzy, but it’s the departure that leaves the worst taste in your mouth, because you are stuck in this awkward place waiting for your transportation.

We did all the stuff you have to do to get on a plane these day, including all the stupidity Southwest includes as you board your plane. The most exciting thing about the whole thing was the Aunt Annie’s Pretzel I had for a snack.

Of course, we weren’t able to sit together, so it was a lonely flight. We arrived back in Dallas after 8:30 pm. Our bags arrived with no trouble, but then there’s that long walk to the long term parking. It was after 10 when we got home and I went straight to bed.

At that point I had no idea what my next trip would be and if you’d offered me another free trip to Las Vegas, I would have just laughed. I may have not known what my next trip would be, but if you come back next week, you’ll find out!

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Restaurants & Bars, Scrapbooking, Shopping

The Weekend Report

Jane Sadek

Travel Here – Holiday Parties and BBQ in Downtown Rockwall

Holiday Parties

White Elephant

Scooching back to Thursday, I had a spate of holiday events at the end of last week. Thursday morning was a monthly networking event in Turtle Creek . In truth, I didn’t see a single gift which made me want to take it home. The gift I took got oohs and aahhs and was one of the few which was traded, but I confess it was a re-gift. Well, not exactly a re-gift. I’d won the tea mug in a raffle and the last thing I need is another dish or mug. My cupboards runneth over. So, I saved it for something like the gift exchange.

I opened the Binge-Watching Survival Kit – a White Elephant gift on steroids. Inside are 2 face-cleansing towelettes, 2 dental floss, breath drops, emergency socks, 2 stain removing towelettes, 2 coasters, snack clip, 2 hand cleaning towelettes, 2 folding sporks, facial tissues and a sofa yoga guide. Do you actually think there is any difference at all in the face cleansing and hand cleaning towelettes? The only thing I found remotely entertaining was the “Decision Coin.” One side says “One More,” while the other says, “Go to Bed.”

For now, I’m holding on to it, in case another gift exchange rears it’s ugly head. I’ll probably break it up after the holidays, putting some of it in the car for emergencies and the clip chip in the kitchen, but that spork is going into the trash. The metal box will be great for stickers!

HOA Party

That evening our HOA held a Christmas party for the neighborhood. I knew they’d have the same old fajita buffet they usually do and the same old people, too. When we moved here, I’d hoped we’d have neighborly neighbors and at first it seemed we did. Then things went left. One thing led to another and let’s just say the no drama llama wouldn’t be comfortable on my street.

In spite of the drama we’ve been through, we do have the very best next door neighbors in the world, but I knew they were traveling, so I would have stayed home. Since Bill wanted to go, we went. We got our plates of food and the only people we did know had already filled up a table, so we sat down with strangers. I want you to know they were very nice, but their endeavors to get to know us were so intense we felt like we were suffering an interrogation. We shoveled down our fajitas and high-tailed it back home.

Wine Glass Exchange

One of our very favorite clients has an annual wine glass exchange during the holidays. I was invited for the first time previous to the pandemic and I was all out of kilter. I’d bought a beautiful bejeweled wine glass to exchange, but discovered raunchy was the name of the game. The glasses most frequently traded were those with the naughtiest sayings. Everyone, but me, had brought in food, even though the invitation said nothing about it. The invitation did say BYOB, but most of the bottles were hard liquor and they were sharing cocktails. I took home my bottle of prosecco and the only portion missing was what I drank.

The pandemic caused a two year hiatus, but this holiday it was back on. While raunchy is not my style, I did manage to find a glass with some sass. I took a plate of desserts and a bottle of champagne. It was good champagne, but even though I only had one glass, the champagne was gone within five minutes. The fudge on the dessert plate seemed be a hit. I felt much more in the groove.

When we gathered around the tree, I discovered I had been a trend-setter two years ago. This year be-dazzled glasses were the trend and my sassy glass went to the dead pool. The gift I opened was not a wine glass at all, but a water goblet. I had seen it earlier in the day, on clearance at Hobby Lobby. My gift exchange luck was holding at bad.

Saturday Afternoon Fun

Downtown Rockwall

I woke up Saturday and hit my scrapbooking table. I had lunch planned with my bestie after her dance lesson, but I’m working on a huge sorting project and all the holiday folderol had kept me away from it. By the time I met her downtown, I’d made some headway on the project.

When we moved to Heath back in 2015, Downtown Rockwall was pretty sad. There was some renovation going on, but there were more vacancies than businesses in the storefronts around the square. That’s all in the past now. As I stood on a corner waiting for bestie to show up, I was pleased by the hustle and bustle around me. There are no more vacancies. It makes parking a hassle, but it’s a good hassle to have.

Though we have several favorites in Downtown now, we opted for something new, Community BBQ and Grill. Their website says they won Best of 2020 from C&S Media, but since they are still in their soft opening, there’s something fishy there. The site also says they are “traditional, not typical,” and that I can vouch for. We had the ribs (if there are ribs, we always have ribs) and they were eat-with-a-fork good. That’s how much meat they had on them.

The fried okra was served piping hot and delicious. The rolls were good, too. I can’t vouch for the mac & cheese. Not sure what’s going on there. The mac was spiral pasta and the cheese was a runny sauce. However, Deb had the cole slaw and she said it was both fresh and delicious. Wine was free, because they don’t have a license yet. It was a nice Pinot Grigio.

Hunger sated, I had one more Christmas gift to buy, so we went down to Bella’s House on the Square. There are several stores I enjoy visiting on the Square, but I know Bella’s has Brighton and that’s what I wanted. I managed to only leave with the gift, but several other things would have loved to come home with me. Deb bought a Christmas ornament, but I don’t have anymore limbs on my tree and I think Bill would have a conniption if I came home with any holiday decor.

Scrapbook Delivery

I had one more to-do on my list, but it wasn’t downtown and I couldn’t take my bestie. The scrapbooking project I did for the pageant queen had been completed since the end of November, but we were having trouble getting our calendars to mesh. Finally, we had a time that worked for us both.

I love everything about my little cottage industry, from the moment I meet a potential client to the delivery of their project, as well as every photo, item of memorabilia and sticker in-between. This delivery was albums two and three for this particular client. I was eager for her to see them, so the waiting had been difficult.

The delivery of a traditional scrapbook is my favorite thing. Memory keeping is an important tradition and I’m glad it translates into our digital world, but for me, digitized photos or a printed photobooks just don’t have the emotional impact of a scrapbook. (Hubby disagrees, by the way. He’s all about video and photo books.) Most of my clients look through their album with tears in their eyes. Not all of them and my pageant queen is not a crier, but her absolute glee was apparent.

She also started hauling out my next jobs for her. She wants albums of her kids. The kicker is, someone somewhere along the way made albums of her kids for her, “but we like what you do,” she said. She also said, “Has Meagan called you yet? I’ve got another referral for you, too, and be ready, because everyone who sees what you do will want you to do the same thing for them.” From her mouth to the ear of God!

So, that was the weekend, Sunday was church, memory keeping and a walk around the neighborhood. Not terribly exciting perhaps, but a good time. Come back next week, for more Vegas, more memory keeping and another Weekend Report.

DFW Metroplex, Photo Organization, Photo Organization Coach, Photography, Scrapbooking

Building a Page

Jane Sadek

MEMORY KEEPING 101 – IT ALL STARTS WITH YOUR STUFF

Gather the Photos and Memorabilia

Before I ever get to building a page, I’ve already done a lot of sorting. When possible I try to do things in chronological order, but that’s me doing personal albums. Your albums may have a completely different organizational system and that’s just fine. After you do this a while, you start to get a feel for how much will fit into an album, but even I can get surprised about how much will fit on a page.

I try to do two page spreads whenever possible. I tie the side-by-side pages together with matching or coordinating papers, but I start with the photos and memorabilia. I gather what I have for a particular day, event or subject and I spread them across the two pages to begin visualizing what the page will look like. Do I have enough to cover two pages or am I trying to cram too much on there? Is there a good balance between photos and memorabilia? Does the memorabilia tell the story or will I need to add captions, titles and journaling? Do I need all the photos or are some repetitive?

Then I begin to trim the photos I am going to use and as I do I start to think about what I’ve got in the way of papers and embellishments which will fit the theme and complement the photos. I place the trimmed photos on the page in the configurations I think work best without actually adhering them to the page. This sometimes hints at the papers and embellishments which will work best.

The hunt begins. Sometimes I know exactly what I want. Sometimes I spend a significant amount of time searching for the right pieces. It is a bit of a balancing game. Usually there’s either a paper or an embellishment that comes to mind when I am placing the photos on the page. I get that and then I start looking for what will go with it, but there is no rule about what piece to start with, because other times I have bought a particular set of stickers for a certain occasion and they are my starting point.

Let’s say it is the wallpaper which comes to mind first. I will find it and scoot it under the trimmed photos. Perhaps the next thing is a journaling box that needs to fit into a particular space. Each step I take I put it in place without adhering it, because as long as it’s not attached to the page I can continue to play with it until I get it right. The bottom layer is the wallpaper. Next is the mat or mats. The photos go on top of the mats. Then you have to work in the journaling boxes, stickers and other embellishments. When it’s all in place, then you stick it down with the appropriate adhesives.

There are variations on each item based on your unique style. I’m a speed demon, so usually one mat is all I will use, but I have seen beautiful pages where the photos have 2-3 mats layered behind them. I’m likely to slap the sticker right on the decorative paper, but some people gather multiple stickers together to make a collage. Crafty people use something called Peekaboo Pockets to create layers of photos which must be flipped over to see all of the images and decoration or they create messages which slide out of a pocket with a tab. You can use all of these or none of these. It’s fun to try things out and see what you enjoy doing, as well as which results you like best.

Simple Pages – Completed Albums

What you have to remember as you decide how heavily you will decorate the page is this: The more complex the pages are, the longer it is going to take you to finish your album. This is why the more creative among us sometimes have a hard time finishing a page, much less an album.

The final touches on any page are the embellishments. Hear me when I say you can be a very successful and creative scrapbooker without ever using an embellishment, especially if you have budget and time constraints. If your primary concern is to have completed albums to share with your family and friends, then the fewer embellishments you have the better.

At the same time, for many of us, the embellishments are the icing on the cake. Yes, the mission will always be the main thing, but we want our Punches and Border Makers, too. We love hanging out at the craft store looking for the perfect stickers. Even the boxes which we journal in can be an embellishment.

Don’t come back next week if you’re not interested in decorating tools and supplies. I’ve already walked you through the basics. You’ll invested about $300 and whenever you start a new album you’ll spend about another $75. The embellishments are the budget breakers. They are also the reason I buy so much paper. The embellishments help set the tone and the theme of the page without anyone reading a word of your captions or journaling.

If you’re at all like me, you will barely be able to wait to learn about all the tools and supplies available for scrapbookers. I hope you’ll join me next week.