I have a secret side...

... that I don't talk about here, and I'm not sure why. I've mentioned it before, but I scrapbook.

What I didn't delve into was just how much of a fanatic I am.

I'm back in full swing. We got our basement re-carpetted and now I have my scrapbooking room back together. I have enough 'crap' (as hubby puts it) to rival alot of scrapbooking stores. Prior to skydiving and having a baby I was a super spend-a-holic when it came to scrapbooking supplies - you name I have it, probably two of them. Need a rubber stamp? Oh god... don't even go there. I have almost an entire wall dedicated to it. I have two huge paper racks and receive more every month thanks to a paper club I belong to... I don't have to buy paper ever again (you think I'm lying?!)

Baby came along, along with some serious depression related to that, and I didn't scrap A THING for almost two years (yet I continued my monthly scrapbook related clubs so I had stuff pouring in!). In that time I had bought a blue wishblade machine. Well earlier this year I finally got back into it and pulled out the wishblade again. Well, thats been it - the bug bit hard.

I'm now the most downloaded member at www.mydiecuts.com. I spend WAY too much time in front of the comptuer (yes, a dedicated one ONLY for scrapbooking) designing files for computerized cutting machines. I've been offered jobs on design teams to design files for them but I've turned them down because I don't want to turn my hobby into a job - I like giving away my files for free, despite spending SO much time on them.

Since March I have scrapbooked over 200 pages and done 3 'topic' albums. I got to crops once a month and usually do an entire album worth of pages - I'm a obsessive planner so when I get to the crop I basicly just put together all the pages I've already planned out a month ahead of time.

Add to that the fact that I just got a Klic n Kut Element die cutting machine and I'm hooked (and before you think I'm out of control, I got ALOT of money for selling my skydiving equipment... yes we still have $16k in debt to pay off but we're not as 'gazelle' about it anymore, its just our cars). I'm selling my wishblade on eBay this week and will be buying a Canon Rebel XTi digital camera... Shawn better be scared, heck the cats and Arianna better be scared too! I won't go ANYWHERE without big bulky, totally awesome, digital camera in tow!

So... what am I doing this week while Arianna and Shawn are gone? I'm doing a scrapbooking marathon. I have 35 projects planned. I do my projects in 2 steps:

• Step 1: Plan pages, sketch, colors etc.
• Step 2: Create cutting files for all my pages, cut them, journal (usually on computer) and put all together.

5 pages more tonight. It would have been more but my parents invited me to their place for dinner and well... I don't cook when its only me and I wasn't going to turn down homemade baked macaroni and cheese! I drove over there after work and my parents were in the middle of discovering that their 30 year old stove has died... so we ordered pizza. Thats what I had the night before when it was just me!

So far I have Step 1 done for 10 projects. I gotta get crankin'

Yes, I'm odd...