The winner of the Solitaire Chess game is - 



Kelly, I'll be in touch to get your game to you.  Sorry I couldn't post before.  I drew the name yesterday, but Blogger was having a tantrum!  Thanks to everyone for your interest.  This is an awesome game.  Try it out on your iPhone - Android version is coming out soon! 



In honor of my new blog design, I am going to offer a giveaway.  



Solitaire Chess is a great game for kids or adults.  I actually bought it from Brookstone for my son for Christmas because I thought it was so unique and interesting.  I think I paid like $30 for it because Brookstone is a pricey place, but it is available for a lot less from ThinkFun.com.  

My son has always been fascinated with Chess and was actually in the Chess Club at his school, but I don't often have time to play with him and he doesn't really enjoy the on-line versions of it, so half the time, he ends up playing against himself - hey, at least he wins that way!


Solitaire Chess is a great game for kids like mine who don't always have someone to play against.  It's easy to play and is a great way to teach the basic moves of Chess.  Plus I love the fact that it is portable and self-contained.  The pieces all snap into a tray in the bottom of the game and the cards store under the board, so it isn't as likely to get scattered all around as the traditional board game.  Plus there are a lot fewer pieces.  


The way you play it is like this.  You choose a card and slide it under the game board.  Then you take out the pieces that are shown - usually 3 or 4 pieces.  Then you move each piece using traditional Chess moves.  Each move must result in a "capture" and you want to end up with only one piece left on the board.  There is an answer key included if you get stuck.  (I had to hide it because Blake gets "stuck" very easily if the answers are too easily available!)  I played it a few times myself and I found it to be a nice little brain teaser.  The patterns increase in difficulty, so you will want to start out with the easy ones for kids who are learning their chess moves and the more difficult ones for adults who want the challenge.  

Now, obviously you want to win the actual game from me, but even if you don't win it, you are still a winner because there are other options available.  Solitaire Chess is now available as an iPhone App.  The Droid version is in development and is expected to be available next month.  So you can have it on your phone where ever you go. 





Or, if you don't have a smartphone, you can play it online, along with several other popular games at ThinkFun.com.  Be sure and "Like" their Think Fun Facebook page as well. 

To win the board game version, please let me a comment telling me why you would like to win this game for your family.  For extra entries, tell me if you Liked their Facebook page (1 entry), tried the online or iPhone version (1 entry), or if you are a new or current Follower of my blog (1 entry).  I'll give you an extra entry if you share this giveaway on Facebook or Twitter.  

I'll leave this open for a while.  I think I'll draw the winner on May 10th.  US Entries only (sorry, but foreign postage is a bugger these days!)  Good luck. 




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Don't you just adore my new blog design?  I'm so pleased with it!  Laura Greene of Eight Days Design has been working with me to help get this new design together.  I think she has been so awesome!  Every wild thing I have asked came right together and look at what a fabulous job she has done! 

I am so pleased.  I have been putting this off for way too long, my last re-design was November of '08, so we were way past due for a change.  Ironically, this is my 777th post, can you believe that?  That's kind of an accomplishment, isn't it?

My main idea was to match my blog business card.  I LOVE my business cards, they express my kind of wild, flashy personality.  And I think this design is a perfect match for it. 


If you know me, I am a big fan of the *BLING*.  Here is my blinged-out phone, along with some of my wild & crazy fingernails.  I adore my phone and I get a lot of compliments on it.  I think it expresses my personality.  Life is short and you just have to have some fun with stuff like that. 

When I did my last redesign, I did a fun post called My Blog Matches my Purse, Does Yours? because I found this fabulous purse that matched my new design completely.  I didn't find a purse this time, but I did find a lunchbag at Old Navy that matches perfectly!  How random is that? 



We did have some other ideas we were going on.  I tried some original artwork, but didn't really come up with something that really fit my vision.  This one was from my very own cousin Zach who is a professional illustrator of more than 60 children's books.  Isn't that awesome?  But just not quite what I wanted.  But I do love the purse and the sparkles!  I'm always a huge fan of sparkles.  



This was an earlier attempt by one of the artists on Laura's team.  I love the hair on fire, but again, we just didn't quite hit the mark.  It's funny how your ideas kind of morph over the process. 

I'm just glad we went with what we did because I think it's just perfect.  If you'd like Laura to do some blog designs for you, she is not only awesome, she's very reasonably priced, and she is now branching out into Word Press and print design as well.  She was so patient and I counted more than 80 Emails going back and forth between the two of us, so I'm sure I wasn't the easiest client.  But it was SO worth all the work and the finished product is everything I could have hoped for. 







 



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I am continuing with my digital scrapbooking.  I don't get as much time as I would like to play with it, but I love the creativity of it.  I have just finished a 20 page all-digital scrapbook for my sister's birthday and I am really enjoying the ease and creativity of it. 

For me it is about 100% easier than traditional scrapbooking.  Once you get the basic software, it's a lot cheaper and takes up almost no space.  Making pages from scratch is very time-consuming for me because I have a hard time coming up with color schemes and ideas that I like, but when I am able to model off of other traditional or digital pages, I can generally whip through them pretty quickly.  





I think these are my favorite pages.  I love to do facing pages like this where you have right and left complimentary pages.  These are my beautiful nieces and their families.  I love this color scheme of Baja Blue and Crumb Cake with some touches of Chocolate Chip. 
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When we tend to think about our clutter issues, we mostly think in terms of how it affects us or our spouse.  We don't often think about how it might be affecting our children.  However, their home environment definitely has a clear affect on our children that can follow them throughout their lives.  

It's interesting.  My mother was a pretty big clutterbug but it affected my sister and I completely differently.  I am definitely my mother's daughter and I have struggled enormously with these issues for my whole adult life.  My older sister, however, went into a completely different mode.  Her house is always spotless 24 X 7 every day of the year.  On the other hand, my husband was raised by a perfectionist mother. He isn't any better off because she never had the patience to allow him to do anything for himself. 

How do you think a houseful of clutter could affect your children?  In order to evaluate that, you might want to think about what it would have been to grow up in a completely opposite household.  If a child grows up in a house that is kept clean and clutter free, has regular chores, can always depend on having an organized home where friends can come and play, how is that going to be different from the same child who grows up in the middle of clutter and constant chaos?

The clutter can also affect your child's mood and behavior.  I notice my son is much calmer and cooperative when he is on restriction.  All of a sudden, he doesn't have the distraction of TV, video games, and Facebook, and while he isn't too happy to be on restriction, after a while, he seems perfectly happy to read books, play with Legos or puzzles, and just generally chill out.

I removed all the toys from his room years ago.  All the toys and games strewn all over everywhere was just overwhelming with him, and sending him in there with orders to "clean up that pigpen" would just push him into a meltdown.  Now that he just has clothes and books in there, it's a much calmer situation for him. 

The other thing you have to consider is how you are preparing your children for their adult lives?  A child who doesn't have any regular chores is likely to be an adult who isn't able to do the day-to-day tasks to maintain their home in a liveable condition.  A child who is allowed to keep an excess of toys and clothes is likely to be a packrat or even a hoarder in their adult life because they don't see a problem with that behavior. 

So, maybe if you are struggling with the whole clutter issue, knowing that you could be impacting your children might give you some extra motivation to get this issue under control.  Why not try making some simple changes over the next couple of weeks and notice how your child reacts?  Here are some ideas:

- Remove about 50% of the toy clutter.  If you don't want to give it away, at least box it up and put it in the basement or garage where they can't see it.
-  Simplify wardrobe choices by removing any out of season or too-small clothes.  Consider laying out clothes for a week at a time.
-  Set up a homework station for school-aged kids to keep books and schoolwork orderly and organized for a stress-free morning.
- If your kitchen table is a clutter magnet, work on keeping it clean so you can have dinner at the table as a family.
-  Work on getting together a chore routine that works for once.  I've been using MyJobChart.com for the last couple of months. 



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Here's a news flash: men are different than women.  Shocking isn't it? But it's sort of a basic fact of biology.  So, the illogic of it is why do we expect men to act like women and vice versa?


I have this conversation with my husband all the time.  When he complains about my shoes, or the length of my showers, or my overly frequently bathroom breaks, I remind him yet again, that these are the realities of living with a woman.  If he wanted someone with 3 pairs of shoes who takes 5 minute showers, and only visits the powder room twice a day, he should have married a MAN! 


It's kind of silly, isn't it?  But we do the same thing when we expect a man to care about towels on the floor, or a few dishes in the sink, or whatever it is we're yelling at him about today.  It really isn't fair to expect him to take these things as seriously as we do.  They simply aren't designed for that - well, MOST of them aren't.  I've had two brother-in-laws (brothers-in-law??) who would make any woman feel like a downright slob, but men like that are relatively rare.  


As girls, we were bombarded with information about the importance of keeping a neat house, and nurturing our families.  Little girls play wedding, and play house in their little Barbie dreamhouse, or whatever, but boys, not so much.  Their role models are completely different and have a different focus.  If they do make an effort to clean, it's typically either to keep the peace with us, or because their Mothers somehow managed to drill a few simple routines in them.  But then when they slip up, and they invariably will, and we start shrieking like a banshee, it just freaks them out, and makes them not want to be around us.  


I guess the question is, does the hissy fit really work?  Sure, you may get temporary compliance from him.  At that point, he would probably do just about anything to just get you to calm down and leave him alone.  But in the long run, it doesn't get him to care about whether or not things get clean or stay clean because it simply isn't on his radar.  


So, what to do about it?  I think part of it is just awareness.  He isn't doing these things to make you crazy or because he doesn't care about you, he's doing it just because he's a guy.  The other thing to do is to explain to him why it's important to you.  He still probably isn't going to care about whether the dishes get put away, or the towels get folded a certain way, but if he feels appreciated and sees that it makes you happy, that's going to go a long ways towards insuring a little compliance from him.  Give it a try - it's likely to make you happier as well.  All that yelling is hard on your nerves also!  


Come back every Monday for a fresh dose of Clutterbugs.  If you'd like to see past posts on the subject, click on the label at the bottom of this post for a complete list. 

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My poor blog, I've been neglecting you terribly lately.  I don't know why I let myself get so over-scheduled that I can't see straight.  I knew I was in trouble when I realized I was working on seven different fundraisers at once.  Methinks I have a tiny little problem with saying no.  It's hard though, because I have such a passion for helping with charities, especially ones that my son is involved in like Scouts and church Youth Groups.  

Fortunately, I've wrapped up a lot of the fundraising work now, although thanks to the layoff at work, I'm going to be a busy bunny there too!  My workload has essentially doubled and I am cleaning up huge messes from the guy who handed off the work to me - ugh. 


I haven't had time to blog, read other people's blogs, haven't been on Twitter or Facebook, or even fold a load of laundry.  Amazingly, I managed to find time to work too much, sleep very little, and eat lots of unhealthy stuff and skip any form of exercise.  Hmmmm.  Seems like I always fall back into that pattern when I get into my crazy mode.  


However I do have a few surprises up my sleeve.  I've been working on a blog re-design that I've had in the works for several months.  It's no one's fault, but we've been waiting for artists to come up with designs that didn't quite work out and fine tuning various other design elements. But we're really close and hopefully we'll be doing my blog design debut really soon! 


I'm also giving some thought to the direction of my blog.  I'll admit it, I've been kind of lazy about it lately and I think my posts are a little lacking in my personality.  I do love the posts I do on decluttering and finances, but I'm starting to struggle to find new topics to address and new ways to present my ideas.  

I've also missed sharing a lot of the things I've been up to lately.  I run around with all these post ideas in my head, but they never make it onto my screen because I feel like I have to spend what little blogging time I have keeping up with my decluttering and finance gig.  So, here's what I think.  I'll do a little less of the regular weekly posts, and a bit more of the more personal and fun posts.  I think we'll both enjoy things a bit more that way.  


Here's some of the things I want to talk about in upcoming posts - I've got some good books I've read lately that I want to review, I've had some fun times with my kids lately, I've got some giveaways to do, and just all sorts of stuff to talk about. 





 
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Last week I guest posted over on Memories by Christine Scrapbooking, so this week, she is returning the favor by providing a guest post for your enjoyment.


Hello! I'm Christine from Memories by Christine Scrapbooking. I blog about fun ways to gather memories and turn them into beautiful albums, whether they be paper or digital. I like to scrapbook my family's memories in yearly albums, and I'm playing "catch up" this week as I document our 2009 year.

Here's a peek into my very first digital album- I want it to have somewhat of a retro feel, so I picked out these colors and lined up a pattern of squares and rectangles. This will be the cover page.



To keep the color palate the same throughout the album, I cut and pasted the 5 colors in the sidebar as I worked, and used the eyedropper tool as I edited. (*For almost any imaging software, just click on "more colors" when selecting a color, and place your cursor on the image's color you'd like duplicated....I hope that makes sense;)

Here are two more pages in the works! I'll add pictures on top of the blue squares, the month on the bottom red tag, and some text in the middle on the yellow and pink tag.



Here's a premade template from my software, and I just edited the colors to match my theme. I'm thinking of including black and white photos? Maybe sepia?


Here are the completed layouts, minus my photos and journalling.



Thank you for having me, Adrian! I hope you all come join me as I scrapbook a "year in review" over at MBC! Link up your monthly or yearly pages with me all month long- I'll feature my favorites at the end of the month.
Have a wonderful day.
Love,
C:)

Stop by every Tuesday for a fresh dose of Stamped Stuff.  If you'd like to see past posts on the subject, just click the label at the bottom of this post. 
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Today we have another guest poster.  I figured it was about time to refresh on the basics of decluttering, so  my fellow blogger George Baker offered to provide a post on some simple decluttering techniques. 

Many people have clutter in their home that they want to clear out. It’s hard to find the time or motivation to sort through papers and boxes and stacks of junk that seems to pile up from out of nowhere. In severe cases, some people known as hoarders collect things they don’t need for so many years, that the clutter takes over the home and can become overwhelming. Life can become difficult when the clutter gets out of control. Keys become lost, bills get misplaced and not paid and that favorite sweater gets lost under a huge pile of old clothes.

Have a Game Plan

Getting motivated to start a de-cluttering project can be hard to do in light of what seems a daunting task. The best way to tackle clutter is to have a plan and start with some general rules. For example, if you find an item of clothing that you have not worn in over a year, make the rule that it must be given away or thrown out. Having a game plan and simple rules makes the process easier. Following a few tips can get the job completed for you in no time.

Plan Where Your Unwanted Items Will Go

Begin by setting aside bins for the items you no longer need. One bin can be for donations, one can be for trash, and another can be for items you wish to give to someone in particular. If you plan on having a garage sale, which is a great way to get rid of things you don’t need, set a bin aside for that as well. This way, you know exactly where all your stuff is going. Do you have old electronics lying around, such as an outdated cell phone? Put these in a bin labeled recycling. Electronics and other household items can be recycled, look for a place locally that accepts drop offs. Finally, have a bin set aside for items you absolutely must keep, and have a plan as to how you will store the stuff you keep.

Enlist the Help of a Friend

Chores like this are much easier when you have help. A friend will give you an honest opinion as to whether or not you should keep something. A friend will be honest about the bright orange hat you have kept since the 1970’s and will talk you into throwing out your old boyfriends t-shirt!

Work on One Room at a Time

This will keep you from feeling completely overwhelmed when clearing out clutter. Start with the smallest room in the house. Once everything has been cleared out and you see the space that is gained, you will be energized to move on and tackle other rooms in the house.

What if You’re Not Sure?

After clearing out all that stuff, you’re left with a pile of items you’re not sure if you should keep or toss out, so what do you do with it? If you’re left with boxes of photos, plan a time to sort through those, pick out the best and add them to a scrapbook and get rid of the rest. For clothing, put them in a bag with a date one year ahead. If you get to the end of the year and didn’t wear the items, throw them out! You can do the same for other items in the house such as linens and towels.

George Baker has many hobbies, but his life is mainly consumed with vacuum cleaner bags, as he deals with Bosch hoover bags and other vacuum paraphernalia for his job.

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I never talk about my job much, which is kind of funny because it takes up such a large chunk of my life.  I think part of it is that my one nod to Internet privacy is that I never mention my employer's name.  It is a large company and I don't particularly want to be on their radar. And also, I never know if one of my co-workers might stumble across my blog, so I'm a bit careful about what I share.  

I can give you a few tidbits about it.  I've been with the company for just shy of twenty  years, which kind of amazes me every time I say it.  I never thought I was the kind of person to stay in one job for that long, but one year melts into another and they keep giving you a paycheck and you keep truckin' along.  Even more amazing, I've also been in the same Dept with the same boss and virtually the same group of people for almost the last decade.  That is incredibly rare, almost astronomically so.  Out of a group of roughly ten people, seven of them were there when I started in this group.  Obviously, we've got a pretty good group. 


Other than vacations and incredibly rare sick days, I've worked 8 hours or more every day of those 20 years.  The only significant time off I had was my 3 month maternity leave almost 13 years ago when my son was born.  That's about NINE HUNDRED 40 hour weeks!  Wow, makes me tired just thinking about it.  


Our function is an Accounting one, of sorts.  We handle nearly all the Telecom bills for the company, millions and millions of dollars worth of bills per month, thousands and thousands of phone lines, data circuits, conferencing accounts, etc.  The whole enchilada, except for cell phones, which thankfully are handled by another group.  My responsibility is for our 3rd largest vendor, so my piece of the puzzle is worth about $3-4 million a month and probably 200,000 lines and circuits across all the western states.  Fortunately, it's all large bills and databases, most everything is electronic these days, or I'd be hating life!  I can't imagine if I had to handle that many little separate bills! 



However, I did say something about changes.  Change has been in the air for the last few months.  They've been promising us a new boss for at least the last six months, and we are supposedly going to merge with a similar unit from one of our large acquisitions.  That part hasn't happened for some puzzling reason, but they did treat us to a layoff last week.  It wasn't totally unexpected, we knew there was some minor pruning going on and it was going to be our turn eventually, but usually you hear a little something-something in the grapevine.  Not so this time, it hit us completely flat-footed.  It didn't get me, but I was close enough to feel the bullet whoosh by me.  

I guess I should have mentioned that most of my group is based in another state.  There's only two of us here in Salt Lake, but at the end of the month, there will be only one of us.  The other gal had almost as much seniority as me and was a recent widow to boot, so that one was a bit of a shocker for me.  I feel really bad for her, but we have kind of an oil and vinegar thing going on, so I can't say it will be all that sad for me.  

I'll be all alone in my area, but that kind of has it's ups and downs.  It's a good group, but in some cases, absence does make the heart grow fonder, and I don't have to put up with the day to day annoyances of having my co-workers right there in my face.  I talk to my Team Lead a few times a week, usually on IM, and I talk to my actual Manager maybe once or twice a quarter, so I mostly do my own thing 90% of the time.  It's kind of lonely sometimes, but it's also kind of nice.  I'm definitely a self-starter and I like to just dig into whatever floats my boat each day. 


As a result of the layoff, we are having a big shakeup of our vendor assignments and that was sweet news for me.  Don't get me wrong, my vendor is terrific.  They have a fantastic support team, and great systems in place to work with, but I've worked with them for so many years, I was starting to get a LOT burnt-out, so in this case, a change is what I needed and have been begging for.  I'm a fiend for efficiency, and over the years, I have streamlined these accounts down to the point where I no longer had enough work to do most days.  From what I'm hearing, that will no longer be the case.  

My new vendor is our 2nd largest vendor, so big that one person couldn't handle the whole account.  My piece of it is about half the dollar amount, but probably ten times the amount of invoices.  Last month, the guy that had this piece of it had over 900 individual bills - wow!  That oughta keep me busy for a bit.  I'm nervous, but excited for the change and looking forward to digging into this mess and seeing what I can do to streamline it like my other vendor.  Yeah, I'm a nerd, 'cuz that's fun stuff for me.  


Anyway, sorry for the too-long post, but it's a challenge to fit twenty years of your life into a short post!  Anyway, I'd better go, I'm late for work (again!) and it sounds like I've got a LOT to do, so I'm gonna go get on with it!  



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Remember when I shared the info about the huge sale at my church.  Well, the pre-sale was tonight, so of course, I had to go and check it out.  When I pulled into the incredibly crowded parking lot and about 50 ladies standing out in the rain with their laundry baskets in hand, I knew it was going to be something unusual.  



No one told me about the laundry baskets. I was the ONLY one in line without a basket, a Rubbermaid tub, or a LARGE bag. Once I got inside, I could see why. Everyone lines up their baskets in the halls and every possible space, and then they FILL those babies up!  Some of them had two or three baskets full. So much easier than trying to lug all your stuff around!


The thing I like about this sale is that they have been doing this for 17 years, so it is the most organized event you've ever seen.  Everything is SO organized.  Here are the clothes - girls on the left, boys on the right, and everything hanging on the racks clearly labeled by size.


It's nice when everything is tagged with the same sized tags, all placed in the same location.  Takes one second to find the price for anything.  That's the way I like to shop.  I hate to dig around for the prices on things. No bargaining though.  The marked price is what you pay, but the prices are darn low. 


This is the furniture room.  There was also a whole room of just shoes, rooms for little kids toys, larger play equipment, older kids toys, and a whole section for electronic games and books. 


This is a shot of the bedding room.  I couldn't even get half of it in the shot!  That's a lotta stuff. 



Then when you are ready to check out, we have a whole table full of friendly volunteers with cash registers to help you.  Even with the big crowds, we got checked out in about 10 minutes total.  Cash and checks only, no credit cards. 


If you're in the Salt Lake area, c'mon down and see us on Fri or Sat.  Lots of great bargains for you and your kids!  








Friday, April 8, 9 am- 8 pm - No strollers before noon due to crowds

Saturday, April 9, 8 am – 2 pm - Clothes & shoes an extra 25% off on Sat.



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