Happy 2009 everyone. At lot has happened since I've last posted. We've actually had a bit of snow here in NY, too bad it didn't stick, but it sure was pretty while it lasted.
It's been a crazy couple of weeks, and I must admit, as much as I love the holidays, I'm glad that they are over. As wonderful as they are, they are always over way too quickly, and I am left exhausted and wondering where the last month of my life went and how did Christmas disappear in a blink of an eye. Good thing I managed to snap off a few photos so I have some proof that holiday actually happened.
I'm glad I had some extra time off this week to spend at home with my son, my goddaughter and her sister. We spent a day in the city, and while nothing we planned turned out the way we wanted it to, we still had a great time. We went to three different ice rinks, and never skated. We went to buy tickets to see The Little Mermaid on Broadway, and wound up at the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. We wanted to see all of the windows decorated for Christmas, and only made it to Bergdorf Goodman's. We went to FAO Schwartz and the NBA store and I managed to make it out of there without spending a dime (not an easy feat). We roamed around Central Park and had dinner at Planet Hollywood. I came home freezing, utterly exhausted, and so glad we had that day together.
Along with ringing in the new year, I have decided to recommit myself to taking a photo a day for the next 365 days. In doing so, I thought I would purchase the now sold out Project 365 kit designed by Becky Higgins and sold by Creative Keepsakes.
I have to admit, the experience was a nightmare. The kit went on sale yesterday at 9 o'clock MST. The much hyped project was heavily advertised, blogged about, and apparently highly coveted. I logged on to CK's website at precisely 9am, along with a gazillion other people, and the site was just slammed. It simply could not handle the traffic: pages wouldn't load, everything timed out, it took more than a half an hour for me to check out only to receive a message that my credit card was declined. I thought, "That's impossible." So I started over with a different credit card. Now the website didn't recognize my login information and I had to re-register. This was of course in addition to a repetition of all of the original problems. Well, the second time around I managed to check out successfully, and I thought the whole annoying situation was over, well I was wrong. Then I checked my e-mail. I had two in my inbox from CK, both confirming my order - one for each credit card transaction. Then I kept reading. My original credit card was charged twice (and apparently, according to my credit card company, CK attempted to charge my card 5 times and they rejected the subsequent attempts, which resulted in the denial message), and the second credit card had not been charged at all - in fact, the email confirmation showed that the kit cost $0. What?!?!??? So I called the customer service number at the bottom of my e-mail. Busy. Called back. Busy. This went on for a half an hour. When I finally got through I was was sent directly to the holding queue. After an hour on hold I was disconnected and never called back. Beck Higgins has a post on her blog acknowledging the fiasco, and claims that I should have a zero charge receipt since this item was a pre-order, but I know I was charged not once, but twice, on at least one credit card. It is clear that there was actually no one manning the phones (which is tragic for the international customers as they were instructed that the only way they could order this kit was by phone - if you actually read the posts, some of them waited on hold for as long as 4 hours, racking up a long distance bill, and ultimately not speaking to anyone or ordering the kit), and customer service is completely unhelpful today as well. For some reason they are incapable of telling me how many kits I will be charged for, and on top of that, I have been informed that if I am charged for/sent more than one kit, I will not be able to return the extras - even though it is their fault that I would be receiving the extra kits. This is not the way a responsible company works. Through reading the posts and other blogs, I have come to learn that this is not the first time CK has mishandled their sales. Considering this item is a pre-order, for a project that we are supposed to begin on January 1st, I am not sure why orders could not have been placed last month - or even in November - so that CK would really know how many kits to have manufactured, so that their website would not have been overrun and ultimately crash, so that they would not have so many dissatisfied customers, and ultimately, so that they would have made more of a profit. It really is a shame, this kit was a matter of convenience for me. I have a more than adequate stash and could have created my own Project 365 kit, but laziness drove me to want this product, and it wound up costing me in both time and money. The sad thing to me is that I don't believe that CK has learned anything from this mess, and history will only serve to repeat itself once the next must have kit is released.
What I should have done was instantly exit out of the CK website, and head over to Cathy Zielske's website and went with her idea of pictures and journaling in handmade mini books, one month at a time. She calls her project the "Month of Super Short Stories" tag book. A complete tutorial, including step by step instructions, a list of supplies that she used, and a downloadable template so you can make your own tags, can be found here. Her initial post only had printable tags for the few months of the project, there is another post here that includes a downloadable tag for every month. And here are a couple of pics taken from her website of her completed project.
Other good New Year project ideas come by the way of Valerie and Janna of Got Sketch fame. These two inspirational ladies have embarked on a new adventure with their Got Crafts website. Some of the projects that you will find there are Valerie Salmon's Desktop Calendar, and Janna Wilson's Dates to Remember perpetual calendar book.
I think Bittersweet is an appropriate name for this line as I usually anxiously await new product from Basic Grey, but I have to admit, I'm a little tired of pink and brown and am less than inspired by these papers. Sadly, I can also safely predict that I will soon own tons of this paper because I belong to several kit clubs and I'm fairly certain that this will be the new "it" line that everyone will include in their monthly offerings. So I suppose that I had better learn to love it, or at the very least, start planning on LOs I can use it on. I know Valentine's Day is coming, but we are not so much the lovey dovey Cupid fan club type of couple. After 16 years together, if I had questions about my BF's feelings for me, a box of chocolates and a not-so-cheap date would not be so convincing. And since my son is definitely not a girl, and doesn't appreciate his picture on feminine LOs, not so useful to me for scrapbooking the boy. Oh well, c'est la vie, I'm sure this neither the first nor the last line of product that I am not totally in love with. Too bad the industry does not cater to me.
Speaking of the industry not catering to me, the new Prima line designed by Adrienne Looman, was definitely not created with me in mind. It's called the Rebellious Collection, and I have posted only a few examples of the line, to see all of the new products that will be available after winter CHA, and for her LO examples using this line, click here.
Finally, if you need some inspiration to jump start your scrapbooking this year, Page Maps has posted their January sketches and sample LOs. I am off to a crop, so hopefully the next post will have some finished LOs. All the best in 2009!
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