Three Things I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me

I'm going to make you wait until the end to read about the three things, since they are not stamping related (and because I'm a blog tease).  First the card for today:

I set a goal to try and finish all 5 Viva La Verve challenges for this month.  I love sketch challenges and I'm starting to really get into inspiration and color challenges, and the VLV challenges are a great combination.  This is for the 3rd week.  I was inspired by the second bedroom; I think I would have keeled over if I had this fabulous room as a kid (or as an adult).  I used the color combination, of course, as well as trying to keep the whole card feeling as glamorous as the room.

I saw Becky's flower today and thought that it was maybe a distressed flower I could handle.  I have not had much luck in making my own look as wonderful as all the million tutorials.  Like Becky, I cut out my blossoms using Nestabilities, then stamped PTI Polka Dot Basics II and PTI Text Styles in Hibiscus ink, crumpled, and cut the petals of the two middle layers.  The green layer is 3 blossoms the same size as the largest pink, then I cut them in half and overlapped them in order to get the green layer just slightly larger than the flower.  I cut the ends of the rhinestone brad off and glue dotted it to a black button.  The tag is stamped with PTI Mixed Messages.

The pink layer is embossed with a Cuttlebug embossing folder, the ribbon is from PTI and the brads are from Hobby Lobby.  I stamped the spring moss layer with leaves from an old SU set using Versamark.  Now I just need to figure out which one of my friends is glamorous enough to full appreciate this card! 

Ok, now the moment you've all been waiting for.

Three Things I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me

1) The Curly Girl Method/Hair Plopping I stumbled upon this when looking for a new flat iron. I actually use a low-sulfate shampoo instead of no-sulfate (Tresemme which was on sale at Target for $3.99 for a huge bottle), but my favorite part is the hair plopping.  My hair, which is usually bleh and wavy and frizzy and meh, ends up with fabulous curls with little-to-no effort except waiting for it to dry.  I can't believe I've been going to hairdressers for 30+ years and not one has told me about this.

2) Next-day Bread Bags.  We eat sandwiches for lunch quite often and love fresh bread from the grocery, but hate how we end up throwing away half the loaf the next day because you could use it to drive nails into steel.  A few weeks back we were at Publix looking for bread and the baker asked if we were eating it today or tomorrow.  We answered "tomorrow" and she handed us a bag from a pile near the bread. --it's a "tomorrow" bag instead of the "crispy" bag they normally use.  The bread is fresh and soft.  I mean, there are no signs around saying "Hey, if you're going to eat this tomorrow, put it in one of these bags!" and when I told my friends, they had no idea about it, either.  Maybe it's just a Publix thing?

3) Eye-fi is awesome. This was my anniversary gift.  It's an SD card that uses your wireless network to upload the photos automatically to your computer.  So by the time I'm done taking my 10 card photos, they are already in Picasa, ready for me to edit!  No hooking up the camera, no taking the SD card out to put in a reader.  I've been using it for the past few days and love it.

What are some things you wish someone would have told you about earlier?