About that eBay thing --
On Saturday, Shannon graciously agreed to come with me to Archiver's, aka Mecca of Scrappers, to see demos of some die-cut machines. This was after an exercise class that left my biceps so sore that for the next three days I walked around with my arms bent like a Barbie. The pain when I tried to straighten my arms was too much, too much, I tell you. (It also didn't help that I took a nap on Sunday afternoon and when I woke up I had a sore throat and a runny nose, and about 5 hours later, a fever joined the party, and I spent the next two days in bed moaning. I feel better now, and have taken my moaning to the office.)
(This is a long one... continued after the jump.)
So Shannon -- who doesn't scrap and was being an awesome sport by agreeing to go -- and I went and looked at adorable sticker sets and pretty patterned paper and by the time we left (after dark cherry mochas OMG you must go get one of these right now, AND a trip to Costco where we had too much fun laughing at kids' books and looking at teeny onesies) I had decided I wanted -- nay, NEEDED -- a die-cut machine.
If you're not familiar with these little wonders, let me briefly explain: you decide that you would like to cut a butterfly shape out of some paper. But your tracing skills are crap and your cutting skills are worse. Enter the die-cut machine. Load a cartridge, press a button, insert the paper, and a little paper crafting fairy flies out of the machine with the tiniest scissors you've ever seen and cuts a perfect butterfly out of your paper.
Okay, not really. But for the price of one of these, I EXPECT a fairy.
Let's back up a step:
About a month or so ago, I came home and asked Fred if I could quit my job. I know, I see you rolling your eyes. "Oh, this AGAIN?" Yes, this again. And we sat down and talked honestly and frankly about our expenses and our income and we saw that we could in fact manage on Fred's pay alone. And then he said, "But you'd have to give up your phone," and I said, "Never mind."
But that discussion led to further discussions about how unhappy we've been with how we spend, and stuff, and excess, and let's see if we can cut back. Fred calls it that, I call it living simply, because that makes my brain hurt less and I can pretend it's fun and full of calming colors and a Martha Stewart voiceover. We budgeted (and budgeted) and began our new simple lives. We would examine each purchase carefully.
So... fast forward -- er, or rewind, I'm not really sure where we are anymore -- to this past weekend, when I decided that my life would not be complete without a die-cut machine. But this purchase did not fit into our new simple plan. At least, not at the retail price point. Enter... eBay!
Somehow, in the span of two short hours, I bid on three separate auctions, each time getting outbid faster than I could type the numbers. It was... addictive. Ahem. Fred was getting antsy (the last time I participated in any sort of auction we ended up spending a gazillion dollars for a tour of a garden, so, uh, yeah). I figured out the whole automatic bidding deal, set my top amount for an auction set to expire an hour in the future, and went to watch Mad Men and drink martinis. Out of our Man Men glasses, of course.
During a break between episodes, I casually wandered upstairs to check on the auction. And I had lost. Been outbid. BY A DOLLAR. It was a Price is Right episode gone bad. And just like that, I was on a mission. Which is funny, since these things are typically sold by Mormons. Get it? Mission? Ha ha?
Fred, however, was not amused. Because now his wife was trolling eBay auctions trying to score a fairy-powered machine that typically costs roughly a fifth of our mortgage payment. So he talked me into only bidding on one more auction, one that would expire early in the morning. And implored me to please, walk away from the computer.
And that explains why, in the middle of baking those cinnamon roll things (which, by the way, I would suggest using TWO cans of crescent rolls and cut each spiral roll into four), I was frantically checking on the status of that auction. That I WON. SUCKERS.
Which allowed me purchase a die-cut machine for nearly half the price. (I went with the smaller, cheaper model that wasn't such a significant portion of our monthly budget. Even with the discount, that one was still obscenely expensive.)
I don't know when it's going to arrive, but when it does, prepare yourself for an onslaught of butterfly-shaped paper cut outs. Courtesy of my very own paper fairy.
