Clean It, Make It, Fix It

I opened my Cricut, the Christmas present from my parents this past year, yesterday.  O_o  I swear, cool craft things are like crack cocaine for me.  I cannot stop fiddling with it.

At first, I was just going to "try it out," make sure I could use it so when the new school year rolled around, I'd be set to do some bulletin boards.  Then I made my first little cuts.  It was so neat that next I started looking for used cartridges.  That led to the discovery of online goodies.  Next thing I knew, I was foraging for an A/B USB cable and hooking it to my computer, downloading the free design software from ProvoCraft, and updating the firmware on my Cricut.    

While I was waiting for the firmware to do its thing, I got on Pinterest and looked up Cricut projects. This search led to lots of stuff people had done with their Cricuts, websites with information and tips, and A MILLION FREAKING PRINTABLE PROJECTS.  I kept going from pin to pin thinking, "Oh, this would be so cool for departmental 'happies'," or "Wow.  I can make a bulletin board with that.

THAT led to "cool crap to do to your house" pins.  I banked benches, storage, all kinds of things I can make with my own three hands.  I just need a small old shutter, and I'll be in business.  Oh, and some magnetic letters.  And a mason jar.  And...

Somebody once said that the best thing about things like HGTV and craft websites is the feeling of accomplishment you get after you've been watching/surfing them for awhile.  Somehow, by looking at all the cool projects and bookmarking or pinning them, one begins to have a feeling of satisfaction as though the project has actually been done instead of just added to a probably-overflowing file of things that were also interesting at the time.

We all have our "someday" files, I guess, those places, electronic or real, where we stuff all that type of thing.  I know I have binders in my craft room of things, stained glass patterns pinned to the bulletin board wall, e-files abounding.  What I want, though, is to start doing them instead of just collecting them and saying, "I'll get to that when I have the time."  That's the best way never to do any of it, probably.

Tomorrow, I will leave my dreams and e-crafting and work on the major overhaul of the back part of my house.  I have to clean out some crap so I have space for many other things, including perhaps some of the ideas I have recently seen.  It will be good to move from dreaming to doing.