After Christmas Sale!

This one is for you after Christmas shoppers who like to go out and snag those great deals. I'm having a sale in my Etsy shop this week. All my Christmas digital scrapbooking items are now 50% off. They are normally $6 each so you can now get them for $3. Once they're sold, though, they're gone and I won't be relisting them until next year. So that means you need to hurry and jump on this deal! Perfect if you have lots of Christmas pictures to scrapbook!

Check it out here.

A Fairy Tale

Here I am! I know that I said I wasn't going to post this week but my husband and I have been going through some of our storage recently and I found a little gem that I just can't help but share with you all.

It's a story book that I wrote, illustrated, and self-published when I was 11 years old. And let me tell you, it's so awesome. My husband read it to me as a bedtime story last night and I literally could not stop laughing.

I had an obsession with princesses as a kid. I am pretty sure I was a princess every Halloween clear up until the time I was about 20. All my favorite books were about princesses. I had a collection of princess stories that I read at least once a month until I was at least 16. So it just makes sense that I would have written a story about them.

This might take me a couple blog posts to cover, since apparently I was as long-winded as a kid as I am as an adult. I am preserving all spelling, grammar, punctuation, inhumane abuse of commas, and random capitalization as it is in the book.

Just a few notes so that you can get the full effect: I did my best to make this book look legit. It is bound in a cereal box covered by an old wallpaper sample with tulips all over it in super nasty '90's colors. All the text is hand-written in my 11-year-old handwriting which at the time I sincerely believed was better than my teacher's handwriting (I remember bragging to my mom about this - "Mom, look, my handwriting is better than Mrs. C's!"). On the front cover in big letters written in dark green marker, it says "A FAIRY TALE" and then in smaller letters, off to the side, it says:

A WICKED WITCH

An Enchanting Princess.

A Handsome Prince.

Prepare for an adventure you'll never forget.

Then on the inside cover,  it says 

The Jessica Roberts

PUBLISHING CO.

And then on the corner in tiny handwriting it says

copyright

like that was going to give me some sort of legal protection? I guess I thought that people would be clamoring to plagiarize my magnum opus? That this was the most original work of literature ever created? No, no, and no. In fact I'm pretty sure it rips off just about every fairy tale story ever written.

On the first page is an illustration of a sunset (?) and  on the opposite page is an illustration of a black-haired woman in a yellow dress, standing next to a rose and vase that are taller than she is. The writing says this:

Long ago and far away, there was, and still is, if I am not mistaken, a land so beautiful and so close to being perfect that whoever made it decided that it had to be secret (I loved princesses as a child but apparently commas were a close second). This land had but one fault (Nope. It has more. I checked). This fault was a young princess whose name was Briar Rose, named after her grandmother, Sleeping Beauty. Rose was very beautiful, but she was so nasty and mean and had such a bad dispossition that her father, the good King Calvin, finally had enough of her.

The princess was very beautiful, but nasty and mean (I really wanted to drive this point home).

The third page has an illustration of people at what is supposed to be a royal ball. Everyone has huge hair and huge skirts, and all the men are drawn with either pigtails or a pony tail. The opposite page has a drawing of a table full of food with Briar Rose's angry-looking legless torso rising out of a large stuffed turkey.

ONE DAY, AT a ball, the princess made her entrance, looking as beautiful as ever (you'll notice that throughout this book, basically Rose's only redeeming quality is that she's pretty). Then she found what the cooks had made for the banquet, and she stomped out of the room in a rage, all the while crushing the toes of the unfortunate people who were standing in her path.

The next page has an illustration of Rose slapping a very short, bald, flat-headed, beak-nosed, red-faced, fat man in breeches while a maid looks on in horror. Opposite that is an illustration of a well that looks a lot like the one in the Disney movie Snow White.

THE PRINCESS stomped her way to the kitchen and began slapping the fat old cook's face 'til it turned purple.

The cook began to beg, "Princess, stop, oh, stop!" but that made her even ANGRIER! She dipped his head into a pot of boiling water (Obviously Rose is a lunatic) and then brought it up. Then she let go of the poor man altogether. He began to stagger about the kitchen and out the door to get some cool water from the well. 

HER FATHER, the king, was, of course, very angry with Rose and so he decided to punish her (not by pressing criminal charges, though). He would send her to a friend, a King, who lived on the other side of the earth in another secret kingdom. She would stay there until she could learn to control her temper.

THE WISE old King Calvin devised a plan to get her to  his friend's kingdom. He talked to a magic carpet, and the magic carpet agreed to carry her there when she stepped on it.

EVERYTHING went as planned. The princess stepped inside her bedroom door and the king watched as the carpet wisked her out of the palace and into the night air. The King had also fastened a message to the carpet. It said:

(The next part is written in very curly letters) 

MY FRIEND, King Frank,

I regret to inform you that my daughter has been so horribly behaved that I have come to my wity (I meant "wit's") end. I wish you better luck with her than I have had. 

MANY SHANKS to YOU,

KING CALVIN 

I've got to stop it there because, wow. It really reveals a lot about my 11-year-old self. I remember that I meant for King Calvin to be a wise old father character who knew exactly how to help spoiled (spoiled in this case = immature, and dangerously violent criminal) daughter like Rose. I don't know how I could have been so confused because KC is obviously just super lazy, sending his problem daughter off for someone else to fix. And Rose needs to just be locked up in the dungeon because she is a psychopath. At 11,  I thought that someone stuffing a person's head into a pot of boiling water qualified as merely mildly spoiled behavior. With this philosophy, it is a miracle that I did not get into a lot more trouble as a kid.

Also, why is KC wishing Frank "many shanks?" Psychopathy runs in the family, maybe.

This week I'm going to slack off posting both in the blog and in Perfect Printables. The reason for this is that I need a semi-vacation. Occasionally I might give in to my compulsion and put a new scrapbook pack in the shop but I'm hoping that the other 1, 394, 532 things I have to do will keep me distracted from the fact that my hand and fingers are not permanently fused to my mouse and the CRTL+F key.

Last night was a particularly hard night in our house. My son traded one virus for another this week and so I've been up at all hours with him, wiping up his various bodily fluids and feeding him diluted fruit juice. Last night, thankfully, there was no vomit, a welcome relief from the past month or so, but there was a whole lot of diarrhea, which is also no fun. Giving a tired, screaming 2-year-old a bath at 4:30 am to wash off his dry, crusty bottom is not an experience that I would like to repeat, although I'm sure I probably will. The only person I pity more than myself right now, is my little guy. As a mom I would basically do anything to see him feeling better.

On an unrelated note: I've heard that my last post about driving has offended basically everyone I know, to the point where I've been victim of bricks thrown through my window and flaming bags of something unidentifiable left on my doorstep... so some people might be worried whether I'm coming back to write more insulting things on the blog. Don't worry. I am. You can't get me down!

MERRY CHRISTMAS! I hope everyone takes a break from what can sometimes be a crazy-making holiday, to enjoy it and to take a minute out of our busy schedules to give thanks for the one who makes this holiday possible in the first place.

1-F-er's vs. U-tards: Driving in Logan

Today I took a trip by myself to Logan for some holiday shopping. My diligent husband stayed home with my 2-year-old while I went out and spent our entire fortune on gifts.

It is a 30-minute drive to Logan from where I live. I am not a big fan of driving. It is a frightening experience for me. Usually I spend half my time avoiding cops, looking for a red car in the parking lot (which I did today for 15 minutes before I remembered that my car is blue) or sit in my car wondering what I did with my keys before I realize that I've already put them in the ignition.
 
Aside from my own stupidity, there are 3 main reasons that I dont like to drive:

1. I get very anxious scanning the road for cop cars who are lying in wait to pull me over. Several of my nervous breakdowns have been triggered by the sight of a patrol car.

2. I know without a doubt that every jerk or shudder or strange noise means that my car's engine is about to blow up and scatter all over the road.

3. Utah drivers scare me. So do Idaho drivers. For different reasons; but I'll get to that a little later.

Before you think that I am being unreasonable on the first two counts, you should know that both numbers one and two have actually happened to me before. Getting pulled over and ticketed by a sneaky cop is a story for another day. So is the time when my husband and I were driving down the road and our engine exploded and metal chunks went flying all over the road and I walked along, sobbing and gathering up the bits of engine in my shirt, hoping that maybe I could just glue it all back together and everything would be fine.

To explain the number three a little more, you should know that Logan typically has 2 types of drivers, which are storied rivals: The U-tards and the 1F-ers. Both of them think that the other is the worst driver in the entire world. I think they are both the worst for different reasons.

Most of the Idaho drivers are from Franklin County, which you can tell because the Great State of Idaho codes all their license plates by county. So you can look at an Idaho car and know what county it is from. Franklin county's code is 1F. The Franklin county drivers are affectionately called "1F-er's" by some (me).

My brothers always call Utah drivers "U-tards" which is not quite as an affectionate a name as "1F-er." I'm not sure where they got that name. I suspect they might have made it up by themselves. So there we have it. Logan roads are driven by "U-tards" and "1F-ers."

You might wonder why make such a big deal out of this, but let me tell you, there is a HUGE difference between a 1F-er and a U-tard. Their driving styles are totally opposite but equally dangerous. To illustrate:

A U-tard will typically do one or more of the following things while driving:

1. Cut you off
2. Pull out in front of you so close that you have to slam on your breaks to avoid an accident
3. Tailgate you no matter how fast you are going
4. Drive fast in the slow lane
5. Go at least 10 mph over the speed limit
6. Run a red light
7. Refuse to use their low-beam headlights.
8. Not know how to drive in the snow.

In contrast, you can usually tell a 1F-er the following ways:
1. They never under any circumstances use their turn signal.
2. They sit at an intersection for about 30 minutes, waiting for the road to be clear of oncoming traffic before they even think about turning.
3. They stop their cars in the middle of the road, blocking both lanes, to have a conversation. If you drive up behind them, you have to wait for them to finish chatting before you can be on your way.
4. They drive slow in the fast lane.
5. 1F-er's will always drive at least 10 mph below the speed limit.
6. 1F-er's will sit at a stoplight for 10 minutes before they realize it's switched from red to green.
7. Their cars are usually held together with duct tape, bailing twine, fencing wire, or a combination of the three.
8. They refuse to drive any vehicle in the snow unless it is a tractor.


Being an Idaho girl and a Utah resident, I'm still on the fence about which type of driver I would like to be. I believe I possess some of the characteristics of both. And some of my own special driving habits that are unique to me. I also worry about which type is most likely to kill me on the road. Then I look down at the sandwich I'm eating and wonder if I will get into a wreck with a 1F-er or a U-tard before I've finished it. I worry that I might look stupid in front of the paramedics who come to the scene of the accident if I have food all over myself. Also I am afraid that such a delicious sandwich might go to waste and wonder if the paramedics would just gather the bacon off the road and save it for me to snack on from my hospital bed.

Maybe I'm not a 1F-er or a U-tard, but a special breed of driver all my own.

A nose is a nose, as everybody knows. Also, Yellow and Gray.

There is a snazzy new paper collection in the shop! It may be the most popular color combination right now. I sell more yellow and gray stuff out of my shop than any other color. So it only made sense for me to put in a yellow and gray scrapbook collection. It's only $6 and that's for 24 papers. A lot of other sellers only give you 12 papers for that price, but I am more awesome than the average seller. Also my mind is full of endless ideas for patterns. When I made this collection, I literally could have put about 50 more patterns in there without even breaking a sweat. But that would just be showing off, so I keep it to 24. Anyway, you can grab it right here.

Now I am off to enjoy my Saturday, hopefully not giving in to my compulsive need to always be making something in Illustrator. My husband says that I need to cure myself of my workaholic ways and relax once in a while, plus I am pretty sure my 2-year-old broke my nose yesterday, so I will need some time to nurse myself back to health. The possible break happened when I was trying to give my son a very poorly received hug. It turns out that his skull is harder than diamonds. I was worried at first that the bridge of my nose had been knocked into my parietal lobe. Then I feared that my nose would go crooked and I'd be disfigured for life, but that appears not to be the case. My history of low tolerance for pain is very well documented, so it could be that I have just some slight bruising of the cartilage (why is the word "cartilage" so hard to spell? Spell checker corrected me about 20 times before I finally had to Google it. Obviously I can't spell cartilage correctly without help but I am proud of myself for being creative enough to come up with that many different spellings). Or something.

Anyway. I'm sure in time I will be whole again. In the meantime I'm going to make a much-needed herbal tea and take the maximum allowed dosage of Tylenol while my nose heals.

Texas Roadhouse Baby

A few months ago Etsy, on which I am a seller, started an email campaign to their shop owners, encouraging them to share their story. Apparently this is supposed to be good for business, although I have spent a few weeks in head-scratching bewilderment, wondering how I can "share my story" with the world without people becoming horrified, disgusted, or starting an email forward petition to have me committed. Also there are about 10 million other things I could be doing other than sharing my story which include cooking, being a mother, sewing hats, and picking hairs out of the bathtub drain. I still don't know how to accomplish the effective telling of "my story," so I'm just going to dive in and hope that my brain can filter out the more terrifying aspects of my personality.

 Last night I left my 2-year-old with my long-suffering husband and went out to dinner with a bunch of ladies from my town. We are all members of the city's Arts Council, a committee which plans all the city's various cultural events, of which there are an astounding number when you take into consideration that our town only has a population of about 23 people. Our town is so small and isolated that we had to drive 2 cities away to go to a real restaurant.

I feel like I have to give a little bit more explanation about the Arts Council. There is a 3 year term to serve on the arts council and a new president is elected every year. The reason that presidents only serve for 1 year is that most of them have collapsed from a combination of exhaustion and major panic attacks by the time 12 months is over. The way that people become committee members is that the president of the committee calls every single woman within city limits who is over 18 and who does not have dementia, and begs them to be a member on the Arts Council. 95% of them either avoid the phone call or tell the president that they'll have to talk to their husbands and call back. In my part of the world, when you ask someone to do something and their response is, "I'll talk to my husband and get back to you," it's code for NO. You can be 100% sure that they will never call back. This is a physical law of the universe which can never be broken. Nobody ever accepts anything after having said those fatal words. Ever, ever, ever.

So basically the Arts council is made of the remaining 5% who had no idea what the Arts Council was when we accepted and didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. Now we find ourselves meeting every month to have collective nervous breakdowns as we plan and carry out various city events, which include dances, dinners, fairs, concerts, and making sure that nobody tapes or tacks anything to any city-owned wall, for any reason, ever. I'm not sure how this became the responsibility of the Arts Council. I suppose someone had to do it because it has become the major problem facing the city right now. Several people have based their political campaigns off this issue. The big problem is that whenever anything is attached to the walls in our town, all the paint on that wall immediately commences to crack, peel, and fall off. This necessitates a new paint job which is a whole other process by itself, so it's easier just to not let anyone tape anything on the walls. We all take turns doing overnight guard duty in the city ballroom where this type of travesty is most likely to happen.

I am getting distracted from my main point, which is the annual dinner that we all treat ourselves to, as reward for enduring another year on the Arts Council. This dinner was at Texas Roadhouse, otherwise known as The World's Loudest Restaurant. It is also the restaurant with probably the best food for about 100 miles. I called for Call Ahead Seating before we got there. Texas Roadhouse makes sure that you know when you call that you are NOT making a reservation. I'm still not sure what they have against reservations. When everyone arrived (our committee consists of 9 women and one man), I waded through the peanut shells to the 3 hostesses at the hostess stand to tell them that we were ready to be seated, where they discovered that we had one extra person in our party that TR was not expecting. The 3 hostesses, two of which had formerly been focused on a handsome young man who came inquiring about job openings, started panicking and the young man was summarily tossed out the door as it required the brain power of all 3 hostesses and another 10 minute wait to figure out how to add 1 extra chair to our table. I wondered if the hostesses might go into a coma from the effort of extra brain function that it took to add that one chair, but ultimately it appears they will survive to hostess another day.

I ordered salad, because I figured that is what ladies get when they go out to eat together. I later found this to be the biggest mistake of my life. I'd never had the TR salad, but the description involved the word "bacon," so I figured I couldn't go wrong, but when it arrived, I discovered it consisted of California's entire bumper crop of lettuce, exactly 4 shreds of cheddar cheese, 2 chicken nuggets, and 5 pea-sized bits of bacon. It was a good thing I had already impregnated myself with a large Texas Roadhouse baby consisting of Rattlesnake bites, Bloomin' Onion, dinner rolls, and lemon water. I ate about 3 bites of the salad and stuffed the rest into a to-go box. I have yet to determine what to do with the remaining lettuce. I will need to devise some sort of strategy to deal with all the salad that will be going rotten in my fridge this week. Somehow I will need to fit both our normal household trash and 75% of the iceberg lettuce in the entire state of Utah into my 100-gallon trash can. I have faith that it can be done.

As a reward for all of our service on the Arts Council, every member was given a generous gift certificate to Theurer's Custom Meats, our only local business. I told my husband that I plan to spend it all on bacon but he may eventually convince me to use some of it to buy some beef steak also. I don't know. Time will tell. Regular bacon at the grocery store is prohibitively expensive and not that good, but Theurer's bacon has that magical combination of being both affordable and delicious.

And now, although at this point you are begging for more of my stories, I must leave you because my son has left me a lovely gift in his diaper and I need to go take care of it.

The past couple of days have found me doing quite a bit of tweaking and cleanup in the shop. I think the changes I made really helped round out my shop and make it easier to navigate. I cut out a lot of digi-blubber and now my products are more focused and cohesive. Basically I will have 3 types of item: 1)My beautiful digital scrapbook paper collections 2)Coordinating embellishments to match the collections, which I am still rolling out. 3)The wildly popular state and country maps and other various digital posters. I figured this would be the perfect time to start a new sale in my shop! This is by far the best deal in the shop right now. I'm basically offering about 50% off four items. Perfect way to stock up on Christmas gifts and digital papers!

As part of this new organization, I've also been introducing a new "basics" line of scrapbook papers to the shop. Everyone who loves digital scrapbooking should really have a couple of the basics packs in their collection. There are enough colors to coordinate with almost everything, and the papers are carefully designed in a range of values to serve a variety of aesthetic needs. The colors really are rich and gorgeous:

Run! The 4/$12 deal won't be around forever! Enjoy, Jessica

More Christmas Papers!

Hey there! I just wanted to share the new Christmas digital scrapbook papers that are in my shop! This is actually a spin-off from my "Retro Christmas" collection, but this one features a green and cranberry color scheme. Perfection!

I thought I'd start the week off by sharing my best-selling Digital Scrapbook paper pack- Retro Christmas. This pack is super cute, has a vintage feel, and you could use it for tons of projects, from the family Christmas card to scrapbooking your Christmas photos. It is a must-add to your digital paper library and it's a perfect gift for that digital scrapbooker in your life! Get it HERE.