Certified!

 Well, yesterday was another milestone for me.  I passed my PTCB certification to become a Certified Pharmacy Tech.  I can honestly say I have no idea how I passed.  I feel like I guessed about 40% of the time.  Unlike the A+ certification when I worked in tech support, or my NY State Board Licensing exams for Nail Tech or Esthetics, I went in feeling wholly unprepared and went thru the whole exam thinking I had no idea what I was doing.  I don't have a good feeling about it for my co-workers who have only been working in the pharmacy for a few months.  They are younger and college students, so more in the mindset of studying and memorizing, so that might save them.  Clearly the class they had us take thru work was useless.  If I hadn't crammed with 2 study guides for the past couple weeks, there is no way I would have passed.  I will find out my actual score in a couple weeks when it posts online, but for now I'm just relieved that I've passed and can put that behind me for the next 22 months until I have to renew my certification.  

Now that studying is done, I'm looking forward to getting back to cleaning my room and office and getting some sewing projects done.  I bought the H2O 2GO pattern and I'm just waiting for my waterproof canvas to come in so that I can either find something coordinating in my stash or go shopping for something that matches.  My online orders seem to be getting lost in oblivion lately.  I still haven't gotten my glasses or my Cirkul orders from 2 weeks ago.  I want to do some other bags/pouches for my planner supplies as well.  I might look up which patterns I want to use tonight.  They have to come with youtube tutorials or I'm gonna struggle.  

Cue the Confetti!

 Today I went to Lenscrafters and got my eyes checked.  Unsurprisingly, my eye sight has gotten worse in both eyes in the past 2 years.  I thought I was going to need bifocals this time around, but I actually am fine with better distance lenses.  The doctor couldn't figure out what the last eye doctor was trying to do with my prescription.  But I opted to order contact lenses from them, and then I came home and ordered some glasses from Pair Eyewear that I've been seeing non-stop in my FB feed lately.  Yes, I am a sucker for Sesame Street, so I got The Sesame Family frames, as well as Confetti, white hearts, stone grey and teal toppers and a pair of Black Larkin frames to wear with all of them.  I hope I like them, but if I don't they have a 30 day money back guarantee that I will definitely be taking advantage of for the price.  

After the eye doctor, Jo & I went to the casino and played the slots for a while.  She won some and I broke even, which I consider a win given my track record of losing every time in the past year. Now I need to pre-Monday and prepare for another long week since Ashley will be on vacation this week.  

My exam is scheduled for a week from Monday, so I've got to study viciously all week to try to get at least a 75 on the exam.  My practice tests have been coming in around 70 percent so I'm really starting to freak out about it.  

My Stalogy notebook is working beautifully.  I can't wait to update it each day.  And my stickers from Planner Kate came in.  

Well, back to studying. 

Proud of myself

 Tonight I was getting ready to spend a ridiculous sum of money on stickers for my planner because they came in a handwritten font of someone I follow on Instagram and love her neat printing.  I decided to try to make the stickers myself using my Silhouette Studio software, but I was struggling.  I looked up and watched a 15 minute video and not only did it teach me the quickest way to make script stickers for my planner, it showed me that the woman's font was readily available for purchase online.  So for $8 and a couple hours of time, I saved myself potentially hundreds of dollars.  I looked at the store I was planning to buy from and jotted down ideas of the stickers I might have purchased as well as ideas of things I always write down in my planner, like my work schedule and To Do List.  I made 3 pages of stickers  that have about 2 months of daily headers and to do list headers, a couple months of work schedule stickers, and a week of other random stickers I use maybe once or twice a week.  I still placed a decent sized order because there were other items that I wanted from that shop.  But like I've said before, printable stickers are the way to go for me because I'm afraid to use up stickers I pay for physical product.  I went back thru my etsy orders and I think I paid $80 or $90 for an order from Once More with Love and I couldn't tell you what happened to that batch of stickers, except that I know for sure I didn't use them.  They are somewhere safe, and I'll probably come across them in the next couple weeks as I clean up my planning areas of my bedroom and craft room.  One of the things I did buy was a reusable sticker book with the silicone sheets to stick your leftover or unused stickers in.  I think that will help me plan out what I want to do before I actually start sticking permanent stickers into my planner and then regretting it.  I can't wait to set up next week with my new stickers and the Tab Tapes from Lauren Phelps Designs on Sunday.  I need to find some images to print onto acetate and vellum to decorate too.  Daksina is a bad influence.  

All I want is to sleep thru the night!

 I can't remember the last time I actually slept thru the night.  I wake up every night around 1-3am and can't get back to sleep for a couple hours, then sleep right until the last minute before I'm late for work.  And of course I don't want to wake up my family, so I try not to get up and do anything productive that will make a lot of noise, like anything on my to-do list that I didn't have time or energy to do after work yesterday.  Like cutting stickers (the Cameo 4 is LOUD), printing post-it notes (me moving around in the craft room is never quiet), hanging up my clean laundry, etc.  I could go down and work on my puzzle in the dining room but it's at a point that there are no easy sections to put together, and I don't feel up to being frustrated.  So I'll probably just put on an episode of something true-crime from YouTube and try to go back to sleep.  Wish me luck!

Paper Addict

 In case you weren't already aware, I am a paper addict and hoarder.  I have countless notebooks, reams of different weights and sizes of paper, post-its to last well into the next decade.  I'm also addicted to other forms of stationery, but that's a subject for another day.  This morning I wasn't able to stay asleep, so I got up early and proceeded to use my brand new printer for the first time, printing stickers I bought on Etsy a couple years ago for relatively inexpensive.  13 different files cost me a whopping $14 and change.  Each file is 4 "sheets" of stickers on a letter or A4 page of sticker paper.  Now the artist prints and sells the physical sticker sheets for about $3 each, or $12 a page!  I wanted to get some other designs but there's no way I'm paying those prices.  I don't know how people afford to buy stickers on 3.5 x 5" sheets for $2-4 each.  When I was the only one of my friends who had a Silhouette machine, I felt guilty charging my friends $1 per page for stickers to be print & cut.  And I would be afraid to use the stickers because then the money would be wasted, even though I could always see them in my planner, my hoarder psyche wouldn't be able to get beyond the fact that the stickers were gone from their sheet and therefore "wasted."   For that reason, I prefer to buy sticker files that I can print and cut myself, so I feel free to use them up because I have an infinite supply.  So, I guess I will have to make do or do without, huh?

While I was bored and awake, I also shopped on Amazon, which is dangerous to my wallet.  I picked out some vellum paper I can print on with my printer, 5x7 and 8.5x11 photo paper, 5x8 blank index cards, and a construction paper organizer that will fit my 12x12 cardstock and scrapbook paper pads.  I also splurged on a Hydroflask water bottle, promising myself that I will start drinking water instead of coke starting next weekend on the 13th (4 weeks after my birthday, just an easy target date to remember.) I will save in soda what I spent on the ridiculously priced water bottle in about 3-4 weeks.  The main thing is that I will have saved my teeth and midsection a lot of acid and sugar.  I picked a 32 ounce one with a straw top so that I can sip at work.  At home I only drink Lipton Diet Citrus Green Tea, and I don't plan to change that.  

So, once I was awake and had spent a good chunk of change.  I printed & cut about 20 pages of stickers and some sticky notes I downloaded from free websites.  Peanuts Planner Co approved me for their facebook group, so I printed some of their calendar and list post-it notes.  My post-its are quite old.  I am expecting white post-its in todays shipment from Amazon which will let me print some other floral notes I have downloaded from PrintableKate.com.  I just love that my planner is looking somewhat like Daksina's at this point, with only the first daily page filled in so far.  She has a great system that I envy because it's so beautiful and functional.  I don't follow any other B6 Stalogy creators because I want to stick to one format that will work for me.  If I give this a go and it's not right, I might look at other content creators to see what they are doing differently.  The one exception is that I've briefly looked at Brandy Michelle Plans because Daksina has done collabs with her, but I'm not turned on by her style. 

HP Envy

 Today I bought a new printer after being frustrated for the last time because I needed to get up and load sticker paper in the printer before I could print from my bedroom.  At one point I had 2 Canon Pixma printers so that I wouldn't have to stop to load 4x6 photo paper and that feeling of freedom called to me.  I looked into more HP printers online and went to Walmart which didn't have any in stock, and ended up choosing an HP ENVY Pro 6455 at Target.  I got 4 months of free printing with HP Instant Ink, and then plan to put it on a $0.99 or $2.99 plan per month so that I can just print my stickers on it.  My existing printer will still be my workhorse for documents on regular paper.  That sucker is holding up well and I hope it stays that way.  It's an OfficeJet Pro 8620 that I've had for about 6 years now and love.  With the exception of sometimes not wanting to link up via wifi, it's been a great product.  I intended to downgrade my plan on that machine, since they hiked the prices when they added more printing tiers, but when I look at how much I've been printing the past few months, I'm better off keeping the higher plan for the time being.  After I get a few months of usage out of the new printer, we'll see how I feel about the original plan.  

I came home and ate dinner and then got started cutting my stickers that I'd printed last night.  Some of the new printable stickers I bought on Etsy are misbehaving when I go to register the pages on my Cameo so I got frustrated and gave up for the night.  I did sit down and start setting up my b6 Stalogy using my printable calendars that I got from a few websites like printablekate.com, and Maddie at Lovely Planner.  After buying some printables that didn't work (one file was corrupted, several others have registration marks too close to the edge to work), I'm hesitating before buying more on Etsy.  I could still cut them with scissors or an exacto knife, but I didn't get a $250 machine to use scissors, ya know?   My order of Vellum and Acetate should arrive tomorrow, so I'll be able to print some files and tip in some stuff if I have the time and energy.  Tomorrow is a NASCAR race day, so I usually spend the afternoon in bed watching that.  I have so many other things I should be doing tomorrow, but a part of me wants to look thru a basket of yarn projects I bought many moons ago from Craftsy and start something fresh, like a shawl.  My swift and ball winder are put away for now to make room for my Cameo 4, so it would take some effort.  We'll see how tomorrow goes. 

The Cozy Killer Strikes Again

 The Cozy Killer is what we call Johanna when she wakes us up unnecessarily early in the morning, either on the weekend, or even sometimes strikes on the weekdays I don't have to be to work early in the morning.  She comes in my room and shakes my foot until I acknowledge her, usually with whisper shouting to leave me alone.  She always wants to do something, but never the stuff that needs to be done.  Laundry, cleaning up the pop cans littering her desk, etc.  That's not the "something" she wants to do.  Never mind that it needs to be done.  And this wasn't how I wanted to start my Saturday morning.  Especially after a god awful week.  My goal for this weekend was to clean up my craft room and reorganize my clothes closet.  Now I will settle for doing one of them.  I'm not sure which one at this point.  I have bushels of clean clothes that need to be sorted and hung up on the new 2nd rod extension I bought from Amazon this week.  In order to hang that, I need to get rid of 2 plastic drawer units that are current on the floor of my closet that I haven't used in 5+ years.  I'm hoping they fit under my sewing table so I can use them for that purpose, otherwise I have no idea where they will go.  I want to get my Stalogy started this weekend, although I think I'm going to set it up starting in April.  We'll see how I feel when I get the craft room cleaned and I can sit at my desk to think. 

Down the Stalogy Rabbithole

 After watching a bunch of Daksina's videos on youtube, I decided to give her planning method another try.  I just love the idea of having all sorts of artistic elements blended into a planner system.  I ordered a new B6 Stalogy and several types of adhesive tabs from Amazon before I could think too hard about it.  Then I went to Lauren Phelps Designs and bought a cover for the notebook and some of the tab tapes that Daksina uses in her planner.  Now I have to wait for everything to get here so I can get started with it.  I'm not sure what I'll use my Chic Sparrow traveler's notebook for if I'm using the Stalogy.  I'm sure I can find something else to do with it.  I have all the pocket notebooks to fill it for years.  I want to use up my stickers and papers that I've bought.  This weekend I want to get my office cleaned up so that I can have a space to work on the creative aspect of planning.  

I can't believe it's March already.  The decision to start planning in the Stalogy for this month or waiting until the tab tapes come in and starting next month.  Tough choice.  Gonna see how I feel once it arrives from Amazon.