Sunday, July 24, 2005

Shopping binge

Q: How do you know you've been on a shopping binge?
A: When you wake up the next morning with a price tag stuck in your hair.

Yep, that's what Todd fished out of my hair this morning. I guess that's the scrapper's equivalent of a hangover.

We went down to Virginia Beach yesterday and stopped at Stamp It! on Laskin Road. I haven't done much stamping in the past four or five months, but there are one or two magazine calls that I want to make some stuff for, so I stocked up on a few stamps, some neat papers, and a few other things. The owner did a mini-demo for me of the Ranger alcohol inks and I went right over to the stand and picked up a bunch. She was telling me about all the new stuff she saw and ordered at CHA, showing me catalogs...the fact that I was throwing things in a basket like a refugee one step ahead of an advancing army may have had something to do with her attentiveness.

Then we went on to Sandbridge beach and stayed there all afternoon. It was great--there was a lovely breeze blowing off the ocean, and we played in the water for hours. And I came to the belated realization that I need to go out and buy like 150 SPF sunblock for my shoulders and chest. I applied sunblock twice to those areas, because they always get burnt to a crisp, but it wasn't enough. I think I need something REALLY strong! I know wearing a bra today is going to be pure agony.

After the beach, we stopped at Scrapbook Creations on Virginia Beach Boulevard, and I dropped another, albeit much smaller, pile of dough. I got a craft tote to carry stuff back and forth to work, some rub-ons, a few sheets of patterned paper because I can't not buy patterned paper. And had a nice chat with the girls who work there about the joys of working in a scrapbook store.

I do like working in a scrapbook store, honest. And I seem to get a much smaller number of loonies than my boss does. 95% of the people who walk through the door are super nice people, and I appreciate that so much.

Work is going to get hectic from here on out...we are going to start implementing a schedule of make-and-takes and classes in August, and I'm going to coordinate it and teach roughly half of it. My friend Cheryl is taking the other half, for which I am endlessly grateful and excited. Her enthusiasm is going to perk me up, I can tell.

So between the magazine work, which is important to me, and the teaching work, which is important to the store, the next few months are going to be really interesting.