The English Geek

Bacon Epiphany

A few days ago, someone forwarded me a text with an image that read "Twenty years ago, we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, and Steve Jobs. Now we have no cash, no hope, and no jobs. PLEASE don't let Kevin Bacon die."

Teeeeeee. Obviously, my family's penchant for bacon is well known to my texting friends!

I'm actually sort of neutral on bacon. I like it, but not enough to make it very often. My affection for bacon is outweighed by my dislike of cleaning up bacon grease. My kids, however, LOVE BACON. Especially Jake. And Nathan, Haley, and Kaleb, but especially Jake. And probably they have no problem making bacon because I still have to clean up the grease.

And while I do put bacon in my potato salad, I've never fully realized the impact that it can have on a dish until I made this cheddar corn chowder last night. Oh, my. The bacon added just the right richness and flavor and slip. To fully explain how delicious a soup recipe this is, I shall say this: it is worth the mess of bacon grease!

Cheddar Corn Chowder
(adapted fromThe Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten)

5 slices bacon, chopped
1 swirl EVOO
1 sweet onion, chopped fine
1 T butter
1/3 cup flour
salt
freshly ground pepper
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
3 14-ounce cans chicken broth
1 cup water (ish)
1 tsp chicken base
4 cups diced potatoes (about 2)
3 cups frozen corn
shredded chicken
1 cup milk
1 cup half & half
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Pour the milk and half & half into a measuring cup and let come to room temperature while you cook. In a large stockpot, heat the olive oil. Cut up the bacon (for speed, use scissors!) and drop into the oil. While it crisps (stir occasionally), dice the onion. Remove bacon. Add butter to the olive oil/bacon grease mixture, toss in the onions, and cook on medium low for about ten minutes, or until onions are soft. While they saute, peel and dice the potatoes. Stir in the flour, salt, petter, and turmeric. (The seasonings are to taste. I added about 1/2 tsp of salt—add more if you like things REALLY salty—and as much black pepper as you like. We like a lot.) Stir and cook for 3 minutes. Add the chicken stock, water, and chicken base and stir, then toss in the diced potatoes. Simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft-ish. Add extra water if necessary. Toss in the frozen corn (or, if you're fancy like Ina, cut it from the cob, parboil for 3 minutes, drain, and then toss in the corn) and the shredded chicken (I had two breasts' worth, minus what Kaleb snatched while helping me shred). Bring back to a simmer, then pour in the room-temperature milk/half & half mixture and re-simmer again. Stir in cheese to melt. Serve topped with the diced bacon and a little bit of extra cheese on top.

And have your own bacon epiphany!

Stocking the Shelves

Over the past week, I've had three startlingly personal comments said to me at work. The first was from a man who looks like a cross between Merida's father Angus from the movie Brave and Lisbeth's social worker from Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Maybe because I have helped him before (by recommending some lesser-read but still good fantasy and science fiction titles), he felt totally comfortable commenting on my new black-and-grey floral-print pants. "If you were trying to draw attention to your legs," he said, "you're doing a great job." 

Yes, a little more Dragon Tattoo-ish than I'd like.

Another patron admired my boots. Like...gushed for a couple of minutes. And then she said "My husband thinks that girls in Dr. Martens are hot."

Ummmm. I'm not sure I qualify for the "girl" department anymore, and I, well, I just don't know what to say to that.

Then there was the patron who approached me while I was putting out some books on the New Book display. "I think you should know that I think you are really pretty," she said, "but you also look sad." I wanted to think that was something nice and thoughtful—but it still felt awkward. Maybe because "pretty/sad" is totally not how I dressed that day. Or maybe because I was crouched down to access the very bottom shelf and I was worrying that my shirt might've slid up over the top of my jeans and I was possibly exposing that lovely stretch of back fat that's right over one's butt? I don't know.

Overly personal comments: not my favorite part of working with the public.

One thing I do love about my job, though, is stocking the display shelves. Display shelves (or sometimes tables) hold books that librarians have picked out, the ones we think you'll really like. Usually there is a theme to the display shelves. In my library, for example, we have displays for historical fiction, speculative fiction, gentle reads, science, history, art, and the ever-popular "You Wrote a Book About What?" shelf. There are display shelves for new fiction and non fiction, and each of the librarians has his or her own display shelf.

Filling up the display shelves is one of my favorite parts of my job. Partly it's sort of an ego rush: I still, nearly five years later, get a little happy shiver when I see someone pick up a book from my display. It's an act of faith in a person, when you stop to think about it, trusting them enough to spend all that time with a book they recommend. I only put out books that I really, really liked on my display, and I try to remember the more obscure or slightly odd things I've loved. Like The Changeling of Finnistuath, a book I read when I was teaching—back when my awesome boots were brand new!—and have been haunted by ever since. (Kate Horsley, why haven't you written a new novel in so long? I'd read it, especially if it were set in ancient Celtic times.) Collections of essays. Strong, accessible poetry books. Even a few graphic novels. Of course, lots of Atwood and Hoffman and Kingsolver and LeGuin.

But I also like stocking the other shelves (except for the Gentle Reads one...as I'm not generally a reader of cozy novels nor highly concerned that my books be squeaky-clean, I have a persistent worry, finding Gentle books, that I'm unwittingly corrupting some poor old woman with swear words and naughty bits). Not all the books I put on these shelves are books I've read. Most often, they're books I want to read. (As my current "want to read" list is hovering at about 87 titles, this is a deep resource.) Spreading the books I want to read throughout the library is curiously pleasant. It stills that very old and persistent need to take home every book I find and love. I might not be able to read the books I put on the Social Sciences display shelf today, including The Ragged Edge of the World (about how society encroaches on wilderness), The Winter of our Disconnect (about a family who disconnected from almost everything requiring electricity for a year), The Good Daughter (about the writer Jasmin Darznik, who uncovers her mother's secrets after finding a wedding photograph of her—with a man not Jasmin's father), or The Other Wes Moore (about two men who are named Wes Moore and how different their lives are), but I want to, and it makes me feel like an itch has been scratched, knowing that at least someone else will read them.

"People say life is the thing, but I prefer reading." Someone named Logan Pearsall Smith said that, and sometimes I completely agree with him. I'm not always immersed in a book as in—I'm sitting down and reading something. But I'm always reading something, immersed in the story which I've paused by putting down the book while I live my life. And I do have other interests as well; as much as I love books, I think my life would be less rich without things like, you know, the people I love, and running and hiking and taking pictures and thinking and writing. Then again, that desire to be reading something is always there—and it's more bearable if I know that someone, somewhere in my town, is reading something I recommended. 

What have you read lately that I should recommend to someone else?

Back Yard

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time in our backyard. I'd be out there for hours practicing as much of my bars routine as I could on the swing set. I'd play with our dog Brittney or with one of the cats. Before Dad put the fence up, I'd wander around the corn field behind our property, watching morning glories to see if I could spot them opening or closing. (The farmer who owned the field did not like my wanderings, and I was afraid of him, but I liked that cool, dirty, peaceful wandering too much to let fear stop me.) Or I'd move my favorite chair (a rocking lawn chair with bright green floral canvas upholstery) into my favorite spot on our shady patio, the west corner by the peach tree, and read all afternoon.

Sometimes Becky would come outside with me, but in my clearest memories, I am alone—except I can hear the kids who live on the other side of the field. I was happy in my little backyard paradise, but I was also lonely. It's strange: I talked to Kendell just this weekend, when we went out to dinner, about that lonely kid, and how I can't really say she's just who I used to be since I feel like she's still here; then I found myself thinking about her again this Easter Sunday, when we sat on the patio together, eating dinner.

By "we" I mean a lot of people: my kids and husband, my sisters, my mom, my brothers-in-law, two of my nieces and one of their husbands. The little kids were playing in the grass, laughing and chasing and pushing the babies on the swing. While we ate dinner, I made sure to sit in my favorite spot on the patio, which I still love even though the peach tree and the chaise are gone. I especially love it on spring afternoons and evenings, when the sun hits the back of your head so you are both in shade and sunlight at the same time. It has long been a place of solace for me, that spot in the backyard. Perhaps even a holy place, sometimes.

I ate last because I was avoiding the first rush at the food, and then I took some photos of Haley with her boyfriend Adam who came to the party but had to leave early. When I came back to my food, all the grown ups and the teenagers had gathered around the table, and as I ate we started talking. Random stuff at first, and then something hard my sister is experiencing, and then, somehow, to our teenage exploits. As we talked and laughed, I found myself sitting back. Not talking, almost not listening to the stories. Just settling myself; just letting that specific moment sink into my bones so I could keep it, somehow, forever. Between my sister and my daughter. All of us laughing. Sharing sorrow and wisdom.

I always love my family. But in that hour of talking, laughing, crying a little, eating a bit, I loved them so much. Enough that I didn't mind my old ghosts being brought up (Yes, I did sluff an entire semester of high school my junior year), which sometimes bothers me. I loved them and I wanted to keep that feeling. I thought of my dad, who one day—perhaps a spring afternoon like this one, lovely and warm with just a slight breeze to keep the edge off, and the mountains still snowy and the grass turning green—stopped pruning the honey locust in the backyard and left his saw in the crotch; it's still there, every year swallowed a little bit more by living tree. I thought about last year and how I thought it would be the last year we did this, and how I am glad we had one more, just so we could have that moment. I thought about our strangeness and our wrong choices and the paths we've taken. I thought about all the things I hoped for myself and the things I still hope my children obtain.

I thought about that lonely girl I used to be.

I cannot say the loneliness is cured. But in that moment—it was gone. I held the memory of my childhood self in the cup of my mind and wished I could tell her, somehow: not always. There will be people you can't imagine yet who will love you.

There were Easter eggs this year, colored by my kids who were all, even Kaleb, slightly disinterested. There was a lovely service at church. I made my favorite cake; we had Easter baskets and chocolate and even Peeps. The kids hunted for eggs. But that time on the patio: that was Easter to me, the best Easter thing, better even than my favorite caramel-filled chocolate eggs. The sense of time folding which can happen in the places we felt something intensely, as if the emotion left an echo you can still feel years later. That old loneliness whispered to me, but I could whisper back to it something more comforting.

the Past Ten Days

I'm still mired in work. Feeling a little bit overwhelmed, in fact, AND I missed a deadline because I wrote the date down wrong. But it's a good busy, and I am grateful.

But I also don't want to completely neglect my blog. So! A recap. During the past ten days I've:

• Eaten jelly beans until I gave myself a headache.
• Made M&M cookies with the spring colored M&Ms. Why do they taste better in pastel colors?
• Finished ten layouts.
• Almost finished the book The End of Your Life Book Club.
• Took the boys to see Jack the Giant Slayer. We liked it.
• Picked up dinner at Taco Bell twice. {hanging head in shame.}
• Visited two people in two different hospitals, each recuperating from surgeries.
• Shopped at Nordstrom! I miss having one close to me.
• Totally failed on my pi day goal of actually making a pie. The rasperries and blackberries are still in the fridge.
• Made green pancakes for St. Patrick's day. Except I didn't have anything but some very pale green food coloring, so they were sort of...well, vaguely green in an ugly sort of way.
• Realized I totally dropped the ball with one of my friends. I'm SO SORRY, Jamie!
• Made another pot of broccoli soup. (It's been my go-to meal lately even though only Jake and I really, really like it. But we both really, really like it.)
• Just about got all the stuff for Easter baskets. I still need to find a package of Army men, which are suprisingly difficult to come by.
• Made ten layouts.
• Ran outside a few times; suffered through some treadmill workouts; missed completely my sculpting class.
• Hated my lingering cough and thought about getting an antibiotic. We'll see if it's still around next week.
• Just about decided that I need to make another visit to the dentist; my stretch of capped tooth-filling-filling feels completely normal (FINALLY) but the teeth above them hurt.
• Had to run to the grocery store at the very last minute because I thought I still had a bunch of cans of coconut milk but I was out. Buying coconut milk at the last minute when you can't find it on sale is painful.
• Averted a puking crisis at church (not, surprisingly, one of my kids puking this time!)
• Listened to Imagine Dragons, The Lumineers, 10,00 Maniacs, Adele, Metric, Snow Patrol, The Black Keys, and  Alphaville.
• Had a good, long, ugly cry over THIS post Becky wrote.
• Squeezed in two episodes of The Walking Dead. I am not loving this season.
• Took care of Jake, who caught my cold.
• Slept not even close to enough.
• Wrote none of the blog posts knocking around in my head.
• Texted back & forth with Chris. I needed that!
• Under extreme duress, got rid of our home phone. I am NOT HAPPY about this choice; I hate being tied to a cell phone all the time. Plus, I loved our actual home phone number. So if you need me, call my cell. I might know where it is. (But probably not.)
• Did a little bit of family history research.

How have YOU been?

Scarce.

This week I had an unexpected {scrapbooking } opportunity pop up, but it's a tight turn around. So if I'm scarce around here, you'll know why. As is my wont, without much time for blogging I have a ton of blogging topics tossing around in my head:

1. My father's faith.
2. A rant about feminism and my religion.
3. One about parenting older teenagers.
4. February in review (yes, I know: we're halfway through March.)
5. Three book notes: the two Anna books by Kendare Blake, Refuge, and Into Thin Air.
6. The Terry Tempest Williams writing workshop I attended in February (again, I know: sigh)

But I've got to get this other stuff done as well! So I just wanted to note a couple of things about my life right now:

• I've had a little bit of writing success! I can't share the details yet...but it's rewarding to hear a "yes." (Also hard to write a bio note when you haven't really published much. It looks ok if you're 20 or 25 or maybe even 30. But 40? I feel lame.)
• This week Nathan decided that the pantry was bugging him. So he cleaned, reorganized, and wiped down shelves. I'm fairly certain that this proves who his Daddy is! :)
• Both Nathan and Jake are in track right now. It's been fun to see how their track personalities differ. Nathan likes the shorter distances, Jake goes a little bit longer. They both like the high jump! This year they have a jumping coach (last year they didn't), which has made a huge difference for Jake's confidence.
• Speaking of Jake. We had a conflict (via texting!) this week that was resolved so smoothly. He gave me a key to his psyche that I think will help me continue to understand him and to know how to respond without causing sparks (but still get my point across).
• Haley has become my kid I hardly ever see. Between track (she runs the mile and the 800 and HATES the jumping events), school, work (she is doing her pharm tech internship), and boyfriend, she's gone a lot. I think this is the reverse of how, when you're into the very end of your pregnancy it's hard to sleep---your body acclimatizing you for what's to come. Maybe the busy schedule is preparing me for when she'll be off to college in the fall? This is such a strange phase of life for me.
• I am feeling how Kaleb is turning from little kid to kid kid. He took a bath last night and it had been so long I had to show him how to push the plug up! (It sticks.) (And this isn't because he hasn't washed for years but because he usually showers.) It reminded me of how the bathtub was one of his happiest places as a baby; when he was grumpy (which was often!), I'd put him in the tub with some bubbles and his collection of rubber ducks and the grumpies would wash away. I am at peace with being on the babyless side of life, mostly. As at peace with it as I will ever be. But it is this strange sadness, knowing that my baby isn't anything like a baby anymore.
• Kendell spoke in church on Sunday. His talk was on the ten commandments. I'm as glad that it's done as he is, as yes: I did help him figure out what to say. It's interesting to me how differently people react over speaking in church. It's not a big deal for me (in fact, I actually enjoy it), I think because of my years of teaching. Kendell doesn't really get nervous during the talking part, he just doesn't like the preparation. And his sister told us that she absolutely refuses to speak in church at all, ever. I'm not judging. It's just interesting to see how people deal with it.
• I am finally feeling mostly-better after a fierce cold this week. Other than going to church to listen to Kendell's talk, I didn't do much other than lie in bed, reading and sleeping, for three days. I'm hoping today might just be the day I put my running shoes back on, as I can now take a deep breath without coughing!

OK, work calls. I wouldn't be sad if I were distracted here & there by comments. What is good in your world right now?

Use Your Stuff #8: New Stuff

One of the things I do to keep me motivated to use my stuff is my New Stuff box. When I get something new, instead of putting it away in its appropriate color drawer, I put it in the New Stuff box (which currently is pretty stuffed with new stuff, as all the new CHA stuff has recently hit the stores here), and when I'm ready to make a layout, I start picking out supplies from the New Stuff box first.

The main reason I do this is because a lot of my scrapping energy seems to be caught up in the new stuff. I wouldn't have bought the new stuff if I didn't have an idea for how to use it, so if I follow through and try that idea on a layout, I use the stuff and I don't forget the idea.

It also helps to remove that "this new stuff is SOOOOO GOOD that I need the perfect photos to use it with" feeling. If you use it instead of waiting for something perfect, you lose that sense of "I need this to be perfect" which is, I think, a major downward spiral on creativity. Instead it becomes just one more useful supply (instead of the most perfect scrapbooking thing you've ever come across). Cut into that piece of patterned paper, tear off some washi from the roll, peel off a few alpha stickers and there you go: you're using the new stuff instead of idolizing it for its newness.

Once I've used some part of something new, then I file it into a color drawer. Often I cut things apart, so for example, a sheet of alpha stickers with red, yellow, and blue alphas would be cut apart and put into the red, yellow, and blue drawers. This used to stress me out, as it felt like I wouldn't be able to coordinate the individual things with other stuff. But that hasn't been the case; for me, it makes my stash much more usable because I have an assortment of, say, yellow shades to pick from when I want something yellow.

Here's this week's challenge:

Find the last three new things you bought. (NOTE! "New" doesn't always necessarily mean "brand new, hot off the press, never before seen by anyone else." Lots of my "new" stuff is older supplies I've bought on clearance. It's still new to me.)

Use all or just a portion of those three things.

Mix in something old as well.

Here's what I made:

(Lately one of my favorite techniques is using random strips of patterned paper to build up layers of color and texture.) (Also, I've been using some older photos. That coat that Jake is wearing in the photo? I just took it to D.I. last month because it was too small for Kaleb, to which he said "good riddance" as he hated the puffy coat.) (He didn't really say "good riddance" but if he knew what those words meant he would've!)

I used a lot of new stuff on this layout. I'm in love with the new Teresa Collins Stationery Noted line (The red stripes, the quote, and the ticket with the date on it). In fact, I broke my rule for this line: after I used some of it, I put it back in the New Stuff box because I want to use more of it ASAP! I've used it on several recent layouts. The red polka dot is new, and the red and grey alphas. The light blue alphas were from one (or maybe two) of the new Fancy Pants lines. The red ampersand came from my red embellishment drawer (I think it is from Basic Grey) and the "Life is So Good" strip came from my Words drawer. The multicolor polka dot was in my "make cards" scrap box.

How do you incorporate new supplies into your scrapping process?

"Shared Sorrow is Halved"

"Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow" is supposed to be a Swedish proverb. I'm not sure about the authenticity of the source, but it is an idea I have been thinking about lately.

Recently, my sister Becky has been experiencing something that, while the specifics aren't identical, is eerily similar to a trial I also went through a few years ago. "Went through," I write, as if it is finished; it isn't. In a sense it won't ever be. I'm being vague on the details because her story isn't mine to share, but the experience relates to grief. It is about the loss of possibility. About how hope can sometimes be a chain that holds you to something that is impossible to obtain through hope. About looking at things as they really are instead of how you so desperately want them to be. Accepting what is and letting go of the future you imagined: Hallmark doesn't make a card for that. 

For a few months, Becky didn't tell me what was happening, I think to spare me the resurfacing of my own heartache. (She has been properly chastised.) What she didn't know is that for me, revisiting the experience with the intent of helping her actually helped me. Being able to share someone else's sorrow because it so closely mirrors your own is a unique blessing of that sorrow. It gave something that was entirely about loss a sort of redemption, because at least I could share my process of mourning. At least I could tell her how I arrived at my hard-earned and sharp-edged peace. I could tell her honestly: this doesn't stop hurting, really, but your relationship to the hurt changes. You come to understand it; it becomes a presence in your life, hovering over your right shoulder until you wouldn't be yourself without it. What lingers continues to tie you to what you lost and become a sort of solace.

I want to give her what I know so that she doesn't have to travel the long pain of it—but I know I can't suffer for her. And I want her to learn different things, to let it make her more resilient and forgiving whereas it made me a little darker around the edges; more jaded and less trusting. I hope she can arrive at a place where she feels more dedicated to faith instead of slightly abandoned by it. And while I can't turn on the light or find a short cut through the darkness, I can give her the map I used. She will find her own trails and destinations, but perhaps knowing someone else has also walked in that strange country will strengthen her endurance.

I cannot fix it. I cannot give her what she wanted. All I can do is tell her yes. I felt that too. Here is what I understand now. In sharing grief, the sorrow isn't halved for anyone. But it is made easier to bear.

1,000

When I wrote the first one, Kaleb wasn't even four months old yet. Haley was only ten—ten! Jake was almost seven and Nathan was in kindergarten. We still had all four of our parents with us, although my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's very shortly after.

I was a stay-at-home mom completely enjoying my last baby and I had no idea I would one day become a librarian. I weighed twenty pounds more than I do now, I loved ice cream, and I drank at least one 44-ounce Pepsi every day. I hadn't yet run a marathon or hiked timp.

I thought that by the time I was 40 I would have surely written my novel.

I haven't, but I have managed to write 999 blog posts. This is my one thousandth. And I also had the idea that my blog would become a wildly popular purveyor of intelligent thought. The popularity? Not so much. The intelligent thought? I hope so, but not always.

There was the post where I made fun of an author and then the author left me a comment.

The one where I explained what is like to be partly Mormon.

And this one about Mormon Mommy Blogs which I am extremely fond of. Even if it's snarky. Especially because it's snarky.

The post with my reading philosophy.

Several about people dying.

I wrote a 100 things list (which I've been thinking about doing again) and a 50 gratitudes list.

I did a Christmas Writing Challenge and a Use Your Stuff Challenge.

I've written about a lot of different things.

And while I'm still working on that novel (and some essays and some short stories and even a few poems) and while I have a tiny blog readership (translation: I appreciate every. single. reader!) I will continue to blog as well. Putting my thoughts out into the world helps me organize them, express them, understand them, and value them more than I would have otherwise. Here's to 1,000 more posts!

And tell me: how long have you blogged and would you ever stop?

tonight the moon

made me cry.

I left to take an envelope that needed to be postmarked tomorrow to the post office, just to make sure. When I got out of our cul-de-sac and onto the street that pulls onto a larger and busier street, I looked left—which is east. I looked west, and the very end of the sunset was lingering on the mountains across the lake, but I looked left again because: the moon. It had just barely made it over Cascade mountain and was a wedge of just-barely-light behind the thinning clouds. I turned left and, as I drove east, the clouds disappated and there was the moon, full, and enormous the way it is when it first rises.

I have been heartsore lately. Perhaps this story explains why. Last week I was at the scrapbook store, waiting for some layouts to be scanned, and a woman in her late fifties struck up a conversation with me. She asked how old my kids were, and when I said I had three teenagers, she literally touched me. She put her hand on my shoulder and she said, with the greatest compassion I've felt from a complete stranger in perhaps ever, "Oh my. Three teenagers all at once. That is tough on your self esteem and on your soul."

Don't get me wrong. I love my kids with all my heart. I am blessed beyond measure that they are really great kids. I've always held the opinion that so long as they make it through high school without completely melting down like I did, we'll call that successful teenageness and move on, and I think we will achieve that. (Knocking on wood, crossing fingers, watching out for black cats and being wary of ladders.)

But adolescence is hard. It's hard on everyone, as what happens to one person in a family really happens to the entire family. I love them and I want them to be happy but I also desperately want to form a relationship with them that will last longer than the time they leave for college. I want them to want to have me in their lives but where I am, standing outside that wall that teenagers are so adept at building, it feels like they won't. That I will let each one of them fly away, but they won't fly back.

So: heartsore. And that moon, somehow, the way it grabbed the very last light from the sunset and seemed to melt the clouds with it, even though it was that cold, distant light the moon has—I don't know. I can't say how, or even why, exactly, but it made everything in me that was tight and quivering, dry and desperate, liquefy. It was that beauty is impartial; it exists in the face of misery or joy. It was that it was so far away. It was that it was light. 

It gashed me open and everything melted out and all I could do was pull over and look at the moon and have a good cry.

Use Your Stuff #7: Really, Just Use It!

My friend Amy is hosting a use-your-stash week at WCS, so I've been thinking about the topic even more than usual, so bear with me for a ranty little post.

Yesterday I needed to fit something in my drawer of brown embellishments. I dug around a bit, found what I needed, and then started paying attention. Because, you know: holy cow. There's a lot of brown stuff in that drawer. And there's a lot of stuff in my pink drawer, too. And the yellow one. Even the red (my least-favorite color) drawer has, yes, lots of stuff.

I found myself staring at my color drawers and imagining what it would be like if I used up all my stuff. How many layouts could I make? I daresay that, barring adhesive purchases, I could scrap well into the next decade of my life without buying anything.

When we were growing up, my mom had her sewing room. It was a basement bedroom that had a whole wall lined with built-in cabinets that held bottles of food. (She was a domestic goddess who could preserve nearly every food item you can imagine.) Food, and also fabric. Yards and yards and yards of fabric.

Some of it, I believe, is still down in the sewing room. Most of it, I'd dare say.

Because just like when you clean out your fridge and find a whole bunch of good intentions moldering away in the produce bin, crafty supplies are all about what we intend to do. We have every intention of using the ___________ we just bought (adorable flannel, perfect wool yarn that was 50% off, or, in my case, probably a sheet of alphas). We know just what we'll do. But life, alas, doesn't allow for unlimited crafting time. And good intentions, no matter how certain, just don't always get fulfilled, and then you forget why you bought that ___________, or you fall out of love with it or think it is embarrasingly dated, and your stash either builds and builds monumentally or drains your creative energy.

I don't want to leave this world with a teetering tower of unused scrapbook supplies.

I do want to leave this world with a good representation of my family's memories put down on paper combined with photographs.

So I reminded myself: the whole point of scrapping supplies is, you know, scrapbooking. Using the stuff! And then I used some of the things I found in my brown drawer. One of them (the alphas that spell "thanks") are from 2005. Like...way back when I was pregnant with Kaleb! I remember buying them for a layout I made with photos of Haley riding a horse at my friend Sophia's house, but when I made the layout I did something completely different.

 

(I have no idea why the K looks faded. It isn't in real life.)

Maybe here is a good place to point out that one way to use your older supplies is to combine them with something newer. (Eight-year-old alphas + those new-ish little Studio Calico hexagons, for example.) But really, the main point is that while I was sticking those old Scrapworks letters down I was asking myself Is it embarrassing to use a product that is eight years old?  And then I also answered: Gah, who cares? I keep thinking of something Stacy Julian said in a Paperclipping podcast a few weeks ago: something about how it doesn't matter at all, really, when you've made layouts and layouts and layouts for years, what the layout looks like. It doesn't matter. And she is exactly right: it doesn't. Because while the cute stuff is fun to use and to look at, all that matters is the basics: the photo, the story. Why do I make it so complicated?

So here's my challenge to you this week: use your stuff. Use some of it. It might not be the perfect stuff for that layout. Who cares? What matters is that you got it out of your drawer. What matters is that you use the stuff to tell the story.

(Also it matters that you don't go out as the crazy lady who hoarded paper and stickers, but probably that is a different post altogether.)

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Use Your Stuff Challenge #6: Product as Inspiration

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Welcome to "use your stash" week