Do you know what "Ichthyology" is? I didn’t either, until my 3rd grade daughter, Lauren, had to study it for school this week. It’s a branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish. She can now identify all the parts of a fish, including parts I’ve never heard of before. It is amazing to me the things she is learning in school. Here’s just a few of her spelling words for the week: celebration, fascination, legislation, manufacture, possession, declaration…these are only 6 out of the 24! I don’t remember what spelling words I had in 3rd grade, but I’m pretty sure it was words like book, play, cat and dog.
I realize I’m showing I’m getting a little older by the whole "Well, when I was your age…" comparison, but the differences between what it was like when I was a kid and now are just mind-blowing. Every generation goes through this, I know, and I’m sure to each generation it seems like things have changed faster. My kids don’t know what a film camera is, they’ve never waited all week for the Wizard of Oz to come on TV and it’s never occurred to them that there was a time that you couldn’t "Google" an answer you trying to find. It’s kind of exciting and scary at the same time to think about how different life will be 10, 20, 30 years from now!
We have over 200 new items this week, including tons of travel! We also have the Finley’s Estate Collection from Cloud 9 available in limited quantities. Just like Dandlion Wishes last week, once an item is gone, it’s gone for good. Fall is in the air (even here in Orlando – it’s dropped all the way down to 80 degrees!), so we’ve got a Harvest collection from Best Creations. We have the Sports Reflections line from Scrappin’ Sports & More, along with lots and lots from Paper House. They are one of my faves, so we went through the catalog and picked out stuff we hadn’t ordered (including the above mentioned Wizard of Oz). We added more Just the Edge colors from Bazzill and the SYT designers have had a lot of fun this week between our die cuts and our papers. We have crew and white water papers for those of you who requested them. We even made a customized Disney name tag for you Disney enthusiasts out there! Click here to see them all:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/whatsnew.html.
As always, thanks for your business!
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
September 24th, 2008
I don’t know if anyone else feels like I do, but I feel like I have 36 hours of things to do in a 24-hour day. Exercise, kids to school, homework, baths, dinner, run a business, e-mails, magazines subscriptions piling up, mail, bills, clean the house, figure out 401K investments, journal and spend quality time with all members of the family, including myself.
How can you possibly get it all done? I’ve reached the conclusion that I can’t. I’ve been re-reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
and have realized that it’s more about what I choose not to do than what I choose to do. Since there are so many things coming from so many directions, and I can’t possibly do them all, I have to get a lot more choosy with my time. It’s also about getting all the million little things you have to do "out of your head". Think of each thing you have to do like a ping-pong ball. At any given time, there are hundreds of little ping-pong balls, bouncing around in your head, reminding you of all the things you’re supposed to be doing. How are you supposed to get any peace in your head with all that racket going on? How are you supposed to have a creative thought when it keeps getting interrupted by "Oh yeah! I have to "fill-in-the-blank."?
I’ve spent the last few weeks getting everything "out of my head". I have to tell you, it’s been one of the most freeing things I’ve ever done. People have recommended a couple of really cool new tech tools that have made a really big difference and I wanted to share.
The first one is
www.roboform.com. RoboForm is a password manager that remembers all your passwords. All you have to remember is the master password and it remembers all the other ones for you. I have 142 passwords just on my home computer. I can’t imagine trying to keep them all straight without RoboForm. I’ve also started using an online to-do list from
www.toodledo.com. Toodledo has been really helpful in getting everything together in one place. It even has "contexts" so you can keep your work to-do’s and your home to-do’s separate. But my favorite thing that I just started using is
www.jott.com. Basically, when something pops into your head, you "jott’ yourself. You call a number, leave a message, and they e-mail or text message it to you. Instead of having a gazillion little scraps of paper everywhere, it’s all in one place. I’ve "jotted" myself over 20 times so far this week! The best part about all these tools is that the basic ones are free. So, I hope any or all of them can be as helpful to you as they’ve been to me. Because we all know why we really need more time…for scrapbooking!
We have over 200 new items this week, including a limited quantity release of "Dandelion Wishes" from Best Creation. Lots of you have been asking us to start carrying baby products, so we’ve added a baby boy and baby girl collection from SandyLion this week and an adoption line from Karen Foster. I think the Sandylion is the cutest of all the collections out there right now. The albums even come with a kit so that you can put there little hand or foot prints in the there. We also have created a customizable "onesie" with a capital letter monogram and baby’s name. We have birthday and wedding, Soldier Boy from Creative Imaginations, firefighter, hunting and fishing, dog and cat, grandma and grandpa. From the SYT Design Team, we have die cuts for Hawaii, camping, Greece, France, back-to-school and more. Wait until you see the customized Disney frame Jill made! We also have 40 new papers in the SYT collection, including school, construction/remodeling, Purple Heart, the rainforest, Egypt and more. Click here to see them all:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/whatsnew.html.
As always, thanks for your business!
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
September 17th, 2008
At some point in time, children begin to put two and two together and start to realize where the food we eat comes from. This happened with Logan the other night at dinner. He was goofing off at the table instead of eating (big surprise there!), so I said "Logan, eat some of your chicken". He looked at me and said "Chicken? Like the thing with feathers?" I knew exactly where this conversation was going. Logan is practically a vegetarian anyway and I thought this was going to be the end of his meat eating days. "Yes, honey, like the thing with feathers." I went back to eating and hoped if I didn’t make a big deal out of it, the moment would pass. After a few seconds of being ignored, Logan said "Uh, hello! I’m eating a bird here!" It was one of those moments that took all I had not to bust out laughing. "Yes, honey, you’re eating a bird." Amazingly, he wasn’t fazed by it and went back to eating.
We’re in the third week of school and Lauren came home with her reading test scores yesterday. Please indulge me for a moment and let me be a braggy mom. Even though she’s only a third grader, she tested at an eighth grade reading level! Our web designer, Nicole, got her hooked on Harry Potter over the summer and she has been obsessed ever since. She’s had her nose buried in a Harry Potter book for months and she’s about halfway done with the fourth book. It obviously helped her reading ability. I’m so proud
I’m also really happy, because I have managed to pass down my love of reading. Being a reader has really enriched my life and I’m so happy that it looks like she will follow in my footsteps down this path.
We have 243 new products this week in a variety of themes:
- *Buckaroo, Cowgirl Up, Retro Boy, Heiress Girl. Safari, Police and EMT from Creative Imaginations
- *33 new styles of eyelets and brads from Eyelet Outlet (including some fun owls)
- *Grade School, High School and Alphabet Stacks from Die Cuts with a View
- *Mickey All-In -One 12 x 12 Album kit
- *Beautiful Japanese papers from a brand new supplier we found at the tradeshow
- *50 new SYT die cuts, including a customizable tropical scene border – we’ll make it say any destination you want!
- *38 new SYT exclusive papers – we looked for a lot of your requests – trees, trains, and asphalt, along with lots of destinations and general travel. Keep the ideas coming!
- *Click here to see them all: www.scrapyourtrip.com/91008.html
Thank you for all your kind words about our anniversary! It makes me so proud to have helped so many of you with your scrapbooks. My story even inspired one female business owner not to give up yet on her business (it’s only been a year). It has been my pleasure to provide you with the very best selection of travel and theme-specific scrapbook supplies on the planet and I look forward to doing it for another six years.
As always, thanks for your business!
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
September 10th, 2008
Six years ago this week, Scrap Your Trip received our very first order. Not even just one order on the first day, but two! My first customers had a whopping 522 items to choose from, but their orders were packed with love and appreciation. I hadn’t really planned on opening a scrapbook store. I had a corporate job that I loved and was happily living my life. However, life had other plans for me. My company went through a merger and all of a sudden I was out of job. I know it’s such a cliche to say that losing my job was the best thing that ever happened to me, but it was. I don’t know that I would have had the courage to start Scrap Your Trip without such a big push. I read a quote the other day that said “Leap and the net will appear”. That’s certainly what happened in my case!
Growing Scrap Your Trip has been the hardest, most exciting, scariest, most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. If you had told me six years ago that we would be where we are today, I would have never believed you. We have over 10,000 items to choose from, including our own line of die cuts and scrapbook paper. I’ve created a company that now supports my entire family (my husband joined me last year). I have created jobs for 25 people (including my mother-in-law and my stepson). Since I am a working mother, I know what it’s like to try to balance the demands of work and family and I’m probably one of the most flexible employers around. We have college students, grandmothers and a mother-to-be. We’ve been together through marriages and births. Every day, we are excited to get up and come to work. We process over 200 orders every day and we try our best to do it with the same love and appreciation as when we got two orders.
I am a third generation enterprenuer, so it’s obviously in my blood. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t have my doubts. I actually gave up about two years into it and put it up for sale. Thankfully, no one wanted it! I’m so glad I stuck it out, even when I was scared and people told me it wasn’t going to work. Like me, many people have a dream, but let their fears stand in the way. Let me tell you, you have no idea what you are capable of! One day at a time…one dollar at a time…and the results can be phenomonal.
To many of you, Scrap Your Trip is just a place to buy scrapbook supplies. I just wanted to take a few minutes to tell you a little of the story behind the company, so that you know that you are not just another customer to us. You are part of our family, one that helps to make our lives worthwhile and meaningful. Every day, I am thankful to each and every one of you for making my life so rich and so full of rewards. Six years ago, when Scrap Your Trip was born, I never imagined any of this, but I have learned that anything is possible if you just believe in yourself.
To show my appreciation and gratitude, I am offering a 20% coupon on your entire order through Friday, September 5th. Just type coupon code “Anniv6″ at checkout. Thank you for believing in my company and helping us help you “Scrap Your Trip” through life.
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
www.ScrapYourTrip.com
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
Comments? Post them on the blog at http://blog.scrapyourtrip.com/
September 3rd, 2008
