DIY house staging

We are in the thick of it with staging our house and getting it ready to put on the market. I've watched enough HGTV (and my father is formally trained in these matters) to know that we need to remove our personal photos and neutralize anything too bold. Today I took on a DIY project involving personal photos. Below is a picture of the corner of our bedroom next to my dresser. On the wall I had a set of three frames, one with my first race medal (Chicago Distance Classic, '07), one with a picture of Mr. Joanna and me from when we were first married, and one of a painting my father did many years ago. They are all personal, and they all needed to be packed.

To replace them, I took an old frame The Bestie gave me (incidentally, the frame was also a DIY project--she made it using a flower press I gave her and an Ikea frame, I think) that had been hanging in our bathroom. The pictures in this are also deeply personal--a picture taken near our house here, a picture of my two best friends, and a picture of my native West Virginia. I removed the three pictures and put them in safe storage.

Using my Slice and the Wedding design card, I made three 4x6" cards that say "kiss," "love," and "dream" and inserted them into the frame. And just like that, my corner of the bedroom is staged! The whole project, including dismantling and reassembling the frame, removing the old pictures, and making the new cards, took about 40 minutes and probably cost about five cents. Not bad!

New Year

I've been thinking all day about what to write in observation of the new year. I don't have a very coherent set of ideas. Here's what I have.

It's been a year of huge things, preceding another year of huge, life-changing things. This year I accomplished one of my life goals--I finished a marathon. I also got my first post-PhD job, which starts in August and will require relocation to another Midwestern city. It also requires that I defend my dissertation and graduate for the LAST time this coming May. I've continued figuring out this motherhood bit, with incredible and growing joy and love for my little boy. In all of this I've learned that I can do incredible things, just not all at once. That might be the one thing I'll always remember about this year.

In the past year I have committed myself more fully to running. I tracked my mileage for the first time. I ran my third half-marathon and my first full marathon. I bought nice winter running gear. It was news to me when a coach observed that I'm slightly faster than average for my age and gender division in the half-marathon. Strangely, that small statistic gave me a little more confidence that I can do this, and I can keep improving. It's hard to describe to the non-runner (believe me, I've tried repeatedly with my brother), but running makes me really happy. I love knowing what I'm capable of, and knowing that I'm doing something good for myself and for others through the Team. Last year's final mileage tally came to 463.3 miles. It sounds like a lot until you break it down. It's actually less than 10 miles per week. Here and now, I'm committing to surpassing that in 2010. It isn't something I'm willing to give up when motherhood, work and life take over.

I've learned that even though you cross the finish line by yourself, your Team gets you there. My Team gave me a home away from home (so to speak) this year, coached me through injury and frustration, and celebrated with me when I finished the marathon. On the surface, we're sort of an odd collection of people. You wouldn't, for the most part, pick us out of a crowd to be friends with each other. But I don't know what I would have done without this group of people, especially our coaches and our resident Gangsta. Actually, I do. I would have slept in rather than toe the line that October morning in Detroit. You might argue that I could have said this at year end in 2007 or 2008, when I ran my first half and a postpartum half. But this is different. There is something about finishing that first marathon. It's our big fat secret, but almost everyone cries at that moment. This year with my Team was something different for me. I more fully appreciate my little group.

When I say I'm unwilling to give up running when motherhood, work, and life happen, I must admit it's largely a luxury my husband affords me. My bigger point here is that 2009 taught me, in spades, the fullness of my husband's heart. People often ask me how I combine being a mom and a student. The truth is, I couldn't do any of it without my husband. We work together to cram all the pieces of our lives into the under-sized jar it often seems like we are given, and I appreciate him so much for that.

On a related topic, I've continued to learn the complexities of motherhood, and I've thought a lot about what it means for me and for my son. I've talked about it at length with my husband. It's a matter of the heart that doesn't have an appropriate home here, so I'm not really going to discuss it in detail, except to say that I'm in a good place. One less personal but related observation from the year: paternalism is alive and well! I never have and I still will not have any part of it. Criticisms of me and my family on this topic are senseless and categorically unwelcome.

I feel like I should say something about scrapbooking, but I don't really know what. More than anything, I feel like I've become much more focused in my hobbies, in the sense that I now have fewer and spend much more time (relatively speaking) on the few that I've kept. I think I've grown as a scrapper, largely as a result of better tools (yeah Slice!) and countless hours of conversation on the topic with N. I'm really looking forward to finishing the album I'm working on now...uh-huh, of 2005. Ha! It's coming along.

In closing, this is where I am right now. I'm looking forward to our life in a new city. How long until we know where things are? Until we have friends there? Until our lives feel rooted there? I remember feeling like this when I moved to Illinois. It seems a lifetime ago. I'm afraid that moving will scar my little boy. He's so small. So routinized. So in love with his daycare. How will he be able to understand? Will we find another church we love? What kind of house will we buy? In short, what will life be like in a year? I don't know, but for now I am in a pretty good spot--surrounded by awesome friends and anticipating a future we've awaited for so long.

This has gotten long and perhaps too personal, so I'm gonna wrap things up with, oh yeah, you guessed it, a NEW mileage count, from a run that got cut short by impassable sidewalks:

2.2 miles

Slice

I've had several topics working their way into blog posts in my mind, but none more consistently than my Slice, so I'm devoting this entire posting to a review of it.

Background

The Slice is a cordless design cutter made by the scrapbooking supply company Making Memories. It uses designs stored on SD cards to cut shapes in paper in any size between 1" and 4" in half inch increments. In function, it is similar to the older, popular Cricut. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I'll show you some examples of where I've used the Slice on my layouts. I used it to make the fence, tombstones, house, tree, witch, picture frames, and "Moo" letters on this page; all of the white scrolls here; the lettering on this page; and the flowers and lettering on this page from my niece's album. Without a machine like the Cricut or Slice, the only way to get lettering or images like these is to a) cut them by hand using a scrapbooking scalpel from a computer-printed template (arduous and time-intensive), or b) buy pre-made embellishments (if you can find the color/size/image you want). I honestly don't know what I ever did without such a machine.

At the crops I've gone to over the last few months, I've gotten some questions about the Slice. How does it work? Do I like it? How much are the SD cards? I decided to address the pros and cons of the machine and give it a sort of review here on my blog.

How does it work?

It is mechanically straightforward to use, which I like about it. You:

1. apply Slice adhesive to the glass cutting mat and let it dry, about 2 minutes

2. press your paper to the glass mat so it sticks

3. turn on the Slice and insert the SD card that contains the design you'd like to cut

4. navigate through the on-screen (Slice screen) menu to select the design and size you'd like to cut

5. press the start button and hold the machine in place until it indicates that the cut is complete

6. remove the paper and design cut from the glass mat

7. turn off the Slice

The adhesive needs to be washed off of the mat and reapplied every so often. The instructions indicate that it should be replaced after every 4 cuts (I think), but I always do many more cuts than that. You can do the cuts while the Slice is plugged in, but it can also be used as a cordless device if you wish.

Do I like it?

I can't say it enough: I love it. Although I love the album I made just before getting the Slice, I still can't imagine scrapping without it. That older album that I love, some of it I love because I spent literally hours cutting out scroll work and lettering by hand and buying stickers and embellishments. It is so much easier to be creative and to create nice looking pages when I press a few buttons and the Slice cuts everything for me. Like I said, I love it. But, nothing's perfect. So what's the nitty gritty? What is great and not so great about it?

Pros

The biggest selling points of the Slice, for me (and this is not a complete list of pros), were the size, cordless-ness, availability/price of SD cards, and coordination with Making Memories collections. The whole machine is 3 pounds and is about 5x5" and 4" tall (or so). Making its size even better is the fact that it can operate without being plugged in. Why do these features make it so nice? At crops, Cricuts take up an enormous amount of counter space and space can become tight. Not only does the Slice not take up a lot of space, but if need be it can be moved so that you can work on it at your personal work space or in a place where more space is available. It also then does not take up a lot of storage space at home, and let's face it, everyone wants more space to do paper crafts.

Availability and pricing of the SD cards is also nice. New, retail price ranges from about $40-$50, and the cards rarely go on sale in big box crafting stores like Michaels. New, retail Cricut cartridges are around $70. Additionally, you can usually find Slice cards discounted somewhere online, and available new at drastically reduced prices on Ebay (usually $20 or less). There are over 30 Slice cards now available, with themes ranging from holidays to babies to travel, most with a different font.

The final bonus that I want to highlight is that Slice cards coordinate with Making Memories collections. For instance, I had bought some Making Memories metal Halloween embellishments a while ago just because they were cute. When I got the Slice Spook Alley design card, I saw that the embellishments coordinated with the designs on the card. I really like the potential this creates for making coordinated layouts. While I don't want to make this a Slice v. Cricut rivalry, I will point out that Cricut is made by Provo Craft, which does make some other scrapbooking products, but has decreased production in those areas as the Cricut has taken off.

Cons

There are three primary drawbacks to the Slice: its size limitations, its adhesive, and its margin of error.

The primary drawback of the Slice is also one of its strengths: its size. As I mentioned, it cuts shapes anywhere from 1 inch to 4 inches, with sizes available in half-inch increments. Some of the whole words available are cut on the diagonal and consequently can be cut to be as much as 5.5" long, but that's the absolute limit. You cannot use the Slice to make die cuts like this gorgeous 12x12 paper. It will cut beautiful shapes like this in up to a 4x4 inch size. It also will not cut letters more than 4 inches tall.

Adhesive, I think, for any design cutting machine, is an issue. The problems with Slice adhesive are that a) it's expensive (though much less so on Ebay), b) it smells truly awful, and c) using too much or too little can mess up your cut. As to the smell, cover your nose or go outside to apply it. I cover my nose and mouth with a sleeve and it's just fine. Using too much adhesive makes it difficult to remove cuts from the glass mat, while using too little (or not changing it frequently enough) often allows the paper to move as its being cut, causing irregularities in the cut. (Side note: irregularities also appear when the machine needs to be recharged). All of these things are avoidable once you learn the machine and how much adhesive works best for you.

The margin of error was something I'd read about before buying the Slice. When you indicate that you want a 2 inch "a" to be cut, the letter that's produced will not be 2 inches tall. It will be scaled so that the tallest capital letter of the font would cut at a 2 inch height. This rule of thumb gets a little bit squishier when cutting shapes rather than letters. Expect to have some trial and error when settling on a size to cut, especially when you are just starting with the machine.

Conclusion

All told, I strongly believe that the pros outweigh the cons, and other than the size limitations (which are also part of why I love this system), the cons can all be more or less prevented as you get to the know the machine. I love this machine and would buy it again in a heartbeat (ok, ask for it as an anniversary present again in a heartbeat). Owning one will also encourage you to get addicted to the Making Memories blog, as I now am. No complaints about that!