Happy New Year Resolutions

Have you made New Year's Resolutions? I did. Once again I'm trying to get myself organized. (Well my office that is--the rest of my house is okay.) I went so far as hiring a professional organizer last year, and we made good strides until I was put on partial bedrest.

Things sort of fell apart from there.

But I'm at it again and now you can see more of the floor in my office. The thing that buries me is the sheer amount of papers. I have all my crafting projects and their ensuing mess, the forest of paperwork that comes home from school, the home improvement/decorating swatches, pictures, sale advertisements that get thrown into a box, the scouting stuff, the catalogs and magazines I want to look at, and I have to go through all my old Stampin' Up! papers to sort out what needs to be kept (for tax purposes), and what is useful for this point in my life. The things I've been able to keep organized are family finances and my Walls of Wisdom papers and information.

I'm feeling positive though. I've been making good strides, and I'm more than halfway there. The kids and I have a new system for incoming papers, and we've been decluttering and finding lots of things to give away or to sell.

In this whole process, I've uncovered more old cards I had made. I thought I'd post a picture of one of the first Spectrum pad cards I ever made. This was almost 10 years ago, and before we started using decorative wire. (We were using decorative edge scissors still though--funny how things go around).

I had wanted my balloons to pop off the card, so I used some dimensionals and some thread I had knotted together and then taped behind the balloons to make it appear as if they had strings. I used my trimmer to cut out a window for the "Happy Birthday" to appear through. I sponged the edges to help the dimensions appear a bit better.

Isn't it funny how some things (like decorative edges) go around in cycles? Do you have a favorite trend that has come back? Do you have resolutions you'd like to share? I'd like to hear from you.

One of my other resolutions is to do a little more scrapbooking. I just checked out the new sneak peek designs at Lizzie Anne Designs, and I'm in love with the new princess set. I think it was made for my daughter. I'm definitely going to be getting this new set!