My Reignited Passion

You might think that I am referring to Honey after that great date night we had and all. This entry is about something entirely different.  While I talk about most areas of my life here on this site, there are some things that will not be discussed by me in a public forum.  I am sure that my kids will read these entries someday.  While I am all for embarrassing my children in almost any way possible (dancing in the car, kissing them in public, etc.), posts about Mommy and Daddy and the word "passion" just might cause irreversable damage.

Ahem.

This post is about my passion for stamping.  Karen introduced me to the cult joy of stamping last spring.  I was a woman possessed and bought many supplies and made many cards.  Then Emily came, and with her, lack of sleep and the energy to stay up and do any stamping.

I somehow managed to make her baby announcement and our Christmas card. I do have to say, though, that mass-producing the same card is a lot easier than trying to decide on new layouts.  You then need to decide what colours/stamps/themes you want to go with, and that takes time.  It’s nice when you can sit, uninterrupted, for a couple of hours at a time.

Now that Emily goes down at a normal hour and sleeps for longer than the one-hour stints she was doing in those first few weeks, I have been getting back into my craft room.  I was up there three evenings last week.  I loved every single minute of it.

Karen and I had planned on getting together Saturday night.  She was going to come over and we would lock ourselves away while my great hubby put the kids to bed.  Come Saturday afternoon, however, it started to SNOW.  Hard.  And it was sticking.  We decided that we’d cancel our stamping date.  I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again.  I HATE WINTER.

While Karen and I were on the phone lamenting the loss of our stamping date, Matthew suggested a solution.  Sunday afternoon was Superbowl and Karen’s hubby was going to a party.  Would she like to head over here after church with her kids?  And he would watch her two, as well as our three?  And we could stamp?

I know few men who would offer such a thing.  Reason #522 why I am married to this man.  I would tell you reason#523, but please see my first paragraph.  Just so you know, my list of reasons why I love him isn’t ranked.  It just gets added to daily.  Sometimes even hourly.

So stamp we did, and I uploaded those cards to Flickr.  You don’t have to be a Flickr "friend" to see them.  If someone finds my cards "hot", than they have bigger issues than most people and my making the cards private isn’t going to solve anything.

Recently, my passion for stamping combined with my acquisition of some Dutchness (The Dutch are known to be cheap frugal.  Hence the term "going dutch" on a date.).  I signed up to be a Demonstrator.  In doing so, I basically got a whole swack of stamping supplies at half price.  In addition to the demonstrator package, I added on the scrapbooking package.  Either I’m a sucker for an up sell, or I’ll really start scrapbooking.  Hopefully it’s the latter.  They shipped yesterday. Yippee!

In order to stay a demonstrator, you need to make a certain amount of quarterly sales.  I have talked to a few of my other girlfriends here to see if they wanted to meet once a month, but they are either just not interested or don’t have extra money to spend.  Which is fair.  Everyone has to find what they love to do and just go with it.  If I have to give up the perks that come with being a demonstrator, I can still buy my supplies through Karen or another cult member demonstrator, should Karen cease to be one.

I’m just really enjoying this creative outlet.  While blogging and photography are other creative outlets of mine, stamping is something tangible that I can give to people in my life for special occasions.  Or just because.

I think it’s part of that whole "It’s better to give than to receive" mantra.  It rings true for me.  I really do enjoy giving much more than I enjoy receiving.  Unless it’s chocolate.  Then the receiving part ranks right up there with the giving part.