Walgreens nightmare.....again

This is the second time I have ordered a huge number of photos (400+)and had Walgreens print them because I didn't think far enough ahead to order from CM. And for the second time I have had terrible printing, mixed photos of glossy and matte, heads cut off (and yes, I did send them in with heads). The colors were so muted. I knew there was lime green and bright reds, but they all looked like they were washed out. I had a 5x7 and a 4x6 of the same photo and they were completely different in colors. So this morning I returned them and the manager was super nice. They agreed that the pictures were terrible and they needed to be redone. So they knocked $5 off and are reprinting. They told me they would call me in a couple of hours when they are done.

Well, 2 hours went by and I called to see where they stood. Of course there had been a shift change. The machine has stopped working and someone was coming in the morning to fix it. 108 out of 467 are done. So still no pictures. Retreat is this coming weekend and I need pictures. I am determined to be organized this time to actually get some projects caught up. That would be both scout albums, both school albums and our Christmas album. If I get done early, I will work on the digital albums I have to complete to have by Christmas.

Upcoming retreats

I have a retreat coming up Nov 13-15. This one is going to be a full house. But if you would like to join me in Dec (18-20), let me know. I still have some openings. Cost is $75 for 2 nights and 3 days. Meals are $15 for 2 dinners and 2 lunches or you can do your own thing for meals. This is the weekend before Christmas, but last year we found this to be a great date. I was able to finish up some things and wrap all of my Christmas presents without having to sneak around to make sure no one could see. It was great.

Here's the stash

I spent all day yesterday and last night working on getting the fabrics folded and organized. I kept bringing up fabric that was on a shelf and then kept finding bags and bags. I didn't think it would ever end. The good part was that the bags actually had a lot of coordinating fabrics which meant there was a purpose behind them. At any rate they needed to be folded and "filed". Below is one of the last stacks I brought up to finish. The bad part was that I was starting to run low on the plastic fabric folders. Which by the way I love those things. Yes, I could use cardboard, but I have issues with "acid free". And considering that I have no clue how long this fabric will be on the folders, I would be taking a huge risk at the acid eating up my fabric. Chances are some of this won't be used until I am long gone and Sydnee is rooting through my stuff.

Now here is the finished result of nearly everything folded. Some of it was also in chairs. So this certainly isn't all of it. I also took little squares of paper and wrote the yardage on it. Pinned it to the flap and now I know how much I have.

Now to decide on how to organize it in the drawers. I was getting tired so I didn't get to put it in the light/medium/dark order yet. Hey, but it's all there. I decided to place in color family. But if I had a bunch that was from the same series and I wanted to use it in the same project, I went ahead and bundled them together. And then I also did that with the Chrismas fabrics.

This drawer is the Christmas, series and whimsical kid prints.

So in the end the stash is done. Now on with the closet. Mike finally moved nearly 12 boxes of trains from the closet that I was in to begin with. But slowly he had moved my stuff out one box at a time. Of course I wasn't sure how to do it since I didn't have any more shelves that would fit in there. So I pulled out my wire cubicles and put them together to see what would work. Yep, it worked. I had some fabric to make clothes out of, interfacings, temptex, some quilt projects already bagged up and ready to start, etc. Well a perfect fit. Those plastic bins we keep projects in a lot fit perfect in a cubicle. Actually you can stack 4 of them just right.

My problem will be that I have a ton more of these at the office. Mike has decided that he wants me to close my office in Jtown. So remember this, I have 6 - 5 ft tables, 6 highback office chairs on wheels, more quilt projects, a huge desk, a storage cabinet, set of shelves, file cabinet, a folding cutting table, and 2 book cases there. So where is all of that going to go? And the lighting is terrible in this room at home, so he has more work to do before I can use it full time. But for now, at least this part is recognized. Now on to getting other junk out of the floor. I have managed to throw out one large black garbage bag and donate 2 boxes full. So that is a start.

I will try to catch up some here. In September I was at 2 retreats and then on another one in October at Butler State Park. I have another one coming on Nov 13. My groups have grown a lot this year. More on that later. In September I managed to work on 2 quilts and nearly finish them. As of today I did finish adding borders to a Christmas design.

I had found a large house that would have worked perfectly for a retreat house. But after a few weeks the sold sign went up on it and it wasn't me. Simon keeps telling me that I need to wait until after Christmas because he wrote a letter to Santa telling him how bad I wanted the house. So he firmly believes that Santa is the one who bought it. So onward with new plans. I have been talking to some builders to see about building what we want from scratch.