Posted by: Julie Swatek on October 1st, 2008
We’re about to have a big change in the Swatek household. My kids have always gone to after-school care. Even before they started school, they were in daycare until closing time. There was always a group of moms and dads that came screeching in the parking lot at 6:30…late again! We’d nervously joke with each other "I get the Mother of the Year award today!" "Not fair - you had it yesterday!" It’s the only life they’ve ever known, but they haven’t done a lot of the things other kids their age do. Lauren recently went to a friend’s for a play date and they were amazed that she had never been on a scooter. Getting to go outside and play after school is the exception for them, rather than the rule. So…we’re in the process of hiring a baby-sitter to pick them up from school and bring them home. She’s going to help them with their homework, so when we get home from work, we’ll be able to spend some enjoyable time with them instead of the "dreaded homework fight". It’s going to be a big change for them, because they are used to having lots of playmates in after-school care and now they’ll just have each other. I hope we’re doing the right thing. 
It’s clearance time! We’ve marked down over 800 items on 25% clearance. As usual, I’m sad to see products go. I know it sounds silly, but we get kind of attached to them. First we saw it at a show or catalog, we decided to order it, we keyed the info into our system, scanned the image, added it to the website and got to see it every time we processed an order. But, no room for new stuff if we have too much old, so out it goes! There is actually a "mini" tradeshow this weekend in Orlando and lots of our vendors are releasing their fall collections. I just love to go see brand new scrapbooking product! I managed a sneak peek at Creative Imaginations and they have two new licenses, Ripley’s Believe It or Not (World’s Most Talented Athlete, etc. and Sea World’s Discovery Cove). It’s great that the show is so close, but I don’t get to go to a city where there is a Portillo’s. Yum…chocolate cake
Click here to see all the items at 25% off: http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/clearance.html
As always, thanks for your business!
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
www.ScrapYourTrip.com
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
October 1st, 2008
Posted by: Julie Swatek on September 24th, 2008
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
Posted by: Julie Swatek on September 17th, 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
Posted by: Julie Swatek on September 10th, 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
Posted by: Julie Swatek on September 3rd, 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
Posted by: Julie Swatek on August 27th, 2008
Aahh…the sheer madness of trying to get kids ready for school in the morning. It’s like a finely choreographed dance. Each step has to happen on time and in sequence or it all falls apart. My kids started school on Monday and it’s been a tough adjustment getting up at 5:30 again (kids at 6:30). They keep asking why we’re waking them up when it’s still night time. Get dressed…brush your teeth…make breakfast…pack lunches…why haven’t you brushed your teeth yet? We started getting up an extra 15 minutes early this year so it’s not so chaotic, but this morning everyone (including me) was in slow motion and we could have used an extra hour! Our friends have a son who also started Kindergarten this year and yesterday he said to me, "Why didn’t you tell us it’s so HARD getting them to school in the mornings?!?" It’s like the pain of childbirth - we tend to block it out and you think "It won’t be that way for me!"
The kids are so excited to be back. Logan was so nervous on the first day he told us he thought we was going to throw up. We told him it was just his nerves, but he said "No, my tummy feels rumbly!". Lauren is thrilled and feeling like a "big kid" because starting this year (3rd grade), they switch classes throughout the day. It’s amazing that she’s starting that in 3rd grade. I didn’t start that until high school! She also was finally able to see Matthew, the love of her life that she has been pining away for all summer. And in true female fashion, she saw him, went "eh" and came home to declare Kevin is her new love. I’m sure Matthew will be crushed.
I am so excited to announce to debut of our very own line of paper! I came up with idea after seeing how some of my Utah pictures turned out (the dirt paper is a picture Lauren took). Just like our die cuts, there are lots of papers that you request that just aren’t available in the marketplace. So, just like our die cuts, if I can’t find it for you, we’ll just make it! If you have any additional paper ideas for us, please post them on our blog.
Along with our new papers, we have a great selection of over 290 new items this week. We have new travel albums, idea books, glitter paper and Just the Edge from Bazzill. We have the Passport collection from Making Memories, Russia, China and India collections from Dove of the East, felt ribbon from Queen & Co and 3 new Disney page kits. In honor of back-to-school, we also have 2 different back-to-school collections; one from Reminisce and one from Moxxie. They are two totally different looks, but both have papers for each year of school so you can make a complete album. The SYT Design Room even made a customized pencil border! Click here to see all the items:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/82708.html.
We’re having some trouble with the wishlist this morning, so if it doesn’t look right to you, that means I haven’t gotten it fixed yet. I have a call into the programmers and hopefully it will be fixed by this afternoon.
Hope you’re having a wonderful week!
As always, thanks for your business.
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
August 27th, 2008
Posted by: Julie Swatek on August 20th, 2008
There are things I know and things I don’t know and never has that been more evident than this week. We are located in Orlando, Florida and we closed the office early yesterday to send everyone home to prepare for a wicked rainstorm from Tropical Storm Fay that never materialized (at least not here). Even though it’s "only" a Tropical Storm, it can still do quite a bit of damage. Fay was supposed to come ashore on the west side of Florida, dump a bunch of rain across the state, and head out to sea to fade away. Storms aren’t supposed to strengthen over land…Fay wasn’t supposed to get out into the Atlantic and then become a hurricane. There are hundreds of meteorologists working on computer models around the clock, and none of them predicted this. It’s just a reminder to me that nature is very unpredictable and no matter how many Weather Channel meteorologists say that they know what is going to happen, they don’t. As far as the weather is concerned, we only know after it’s over.
But this storm also reminded me of something I do know for sure…Given the opportunity, people are good. We were driving home from the beach on Monday and passed convoy of trucks from a power company in North Carolina. It immediately brought me back to 2004, after Florida was hit with 4 hurricanes in 6 weeks. Hundreds of trucks from power companies all over the Southeast came to help us get the electricity working again. They were here on their own time, away from their families, working 24/7 to help. The North Carolina power trucks on Monday didn’t know for sure where they were going, or even if we would need them, but they came anyway. I am grateful that they came to help and even more grateful of their reminder of the kindness of my fellow humans.
We have over 150 new items this week, plus the new Basic Grey collections. We have a bunch of new kits from Applegate Productions, including one for the Disney Cruise. We have some gorgeous new travel papers from one of my favorite vendors, Paper House, and Smoky Mountain die cuts from Paper Wizard. We have lots of sports, including soccer, volleyball, softball and even miniature golf! It’s Back-To-School time, so we have some great papers from Best Creations along with SYT exclusive designs. We even have a customized "Princess Ears Hat" that can be "embroidered" with your name. Click here to see them all:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/82008.html.
We also have the 3 just released new collections from Basic Grey; Ambrosia, Eva and Offbeat. They are available in a limited quantity. Unlike the last time, when we put them for sale on a pre-order basis, these are actually in the warehouse and we will not be re-ordering (it would take 6-8 weeks to get another order anyway!). To make it easier, we put the papers together in paper collections - one of each design. As usual, we also have the matching Bazzill packs. Don’t save them in your wishlist - I anticipate that they will be sold out in a few days - and I don’t want you to be disappointed. Click here to take a look:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/newbasicgrey.html.
As always, thanks for your business!
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
August 20th, 2008
Posted by: Julie Swatek on August 13th, 2008
Lately, I’ve been focusing on "living the square". I read a great quote by the chairman of Caterpillar, Inc. that really made me think. "One side of the square represents our work life, one our family life, one our spiritual life and one our community life. I believe we’re healthier, happier - and more productive - if we live on all sides of that square." My life wasn’t a square; it was one of those funky geometric shapes whose name I haven’t known since high school. Because I own my own business and spend 24/7 with my husband (since we work together), it is really easy to lose the boundaries between work life and home life. It kind of creeps up on you and before you know it, it has crowded out almost everything else. Everyone talks about wanting to achieve "balance" in their life…the image of "living the square" has been really helpful to me and I wanted to share. The other night, Lauren, my 8-year old daughter, said "Why are we eating dinner already? It’s not even 8 o’clock!" I’m getting there.
We have such a fun collection from Me and My Big Ideas this week! It’s the Sunshine Summer collection and it’s so bright and cheery - it makes me happy just looking at it. It even comes with a matching album. We’ve had a lot of requests to carry MAMBI, so we picked up lots of travel stickers and bling while we were at the CHA show. We have new travel and outdoor fun stickers from Stamping Station, including stickers for tubing, kayaking and wave running, all with coordinating papers. We have sports from Carolee’s Creations and Moxxie, new embellishments from James Button and lots of camping and beach die cuts from the SYT design room, including a customized beach pail and shovel (thanks to Marge for the suggestion!).
Lastly, we have a few unique items this week. First we have transparent plastic "paper" from Bazzill. It’s got a nice thickness to it and it’s perfect for using on cutters like the Cricut. We also have silver and gold foil paper from Bazzill, along with 3 new colors. We also have a limited quantity of Rhinestone Flowers from James Button. When we talked to them at the show, they were telling us how much people liked using them, so we thought we’d give them a try. We have six different colors and when they’re gone, they’re gone. Hope you like! Click here to see all 203 new items:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/81308.html and here for the rhinestone flowers:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/limitedquantity.html.
Hope you’re having a good week. Think "square"!
As always, thanks for your business,
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
August 13th, 2008
Posted by: Julie Swatek on August 6th, 2008
When your children are babies, life with them is a series of milestones. Their first smile…first time they ate baby food…first word…first steps…It’s all about the "firsts". As they get older, we don’t realize it right away, but it becomes about the "lasts". The "lasts" are so different than the "firsts", because you don’t know that the last time is going to be the last time, so you don’t savor the moment as much as you should. The last time they ran to give you a hug when you picked them up at school…the last time they let you give them a kiss in public… the last time they called you "Mommy" instead of "Mom". My kids are getting ready to enter 3rd grade and Kindergarten and I know that the "lasts" have only just begun.
What has me so nostalgic about their childhood, you ask? They packed their own suitcases. We went on our second summer weekend last weekend and they each packed their own suitcase. I gave them a list and even my 5-year old Logan, read it, pulled the proper number of items from the closet, folded them neatly (for a 5-year old) and packed them in his suitcase. I don’t think he could have been any prouder of himself! It’s so weird to realize that my kids have become self-sufficient. My daughter Lauren makes her own breakfast, including putting it in the microwave and she doesn’t even need a stool anymore! Sigh…I guess there are still a lot of "firsts" and "lasts" in my future.
Speaking of firsts, we have the first new idea book we’ve had in a while this week. It’s the "
Scrapbook Trends: Vacations - Scrapbooking Life’s Adventures Book" and it has some really cute ideas. It’s one of over 200 new items we have available this week. We have lots of new travel papers from Sugartree, two new collections from Teresa Collins: Boardwalk and Recipe Collection, sports from Carolee’s Creations and Karen Foster, Spring and Summer from Scrappin’ Sports and More, camping, birthday, ancestry, DIY, even State Fair! The SYT design room made a customized life preserver for your pool. They worked on several requests this week, so if you were asking for "Learning to Tie Your Shoes", "Deputy Sheriff" or "Lamda Chi Alpha", you’re in luck! The last request they made was for me. When we were in Chicago for CHA, we missed our plane coming home (complete with the mad dash through the airport - of course we were at the VERY last gate). I’m pretty sure as you look through all the new products we have this week, you’ll see which one I had them make for me!
Click here to see them all:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/80608.html.
As always, thanks for all your business!
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip ®
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
August 6th, 2008
Posted by: Julie Swatek on July 29th, 2008
Do you have a place you’ve visited in the past…one that holds special memories for you? If so, don’t go back! This past weekend, my husband Tony & I went away for the weekend to a bed and breakfast in St. Augustine, Florida, to celebrate our 12-year anniversary. We used to go to St. Augustine quite often before we got married, and this B&B was where he proposed to me. I planned a surprise weekend and even booked the "Romance Package", complete with champagne, chocolate covered strawberries and a horse-drawn carriage ride. We haven’t been there since we got engaged, and obviously, the place holds very special memories for both of us. Well…a lot has changed during the past 13 years, especially us! The "quaint" B&B in my memory isn’t so quaint anymore. The bed is only a queen… there is no counter space in the bathroom… the champagne was cheap and eating breakfast sitting in very close proximity to complete strangers isn’t as appealing as it used to be. We still had a good time, but as we were packing to leave, I said that if I had known, I would have rather gone somewhere else and kept our memories of "our place" intact.
Brand new products from the CHA show are starting to arrive! This week we have papers and stickers from Stamping Station for all 50 states. The paper we added a couple of weeks ago from Jennan (the really brilliantly colored ones) were so popular, we added more. We have a new Seashore line from Creative Imaginations and lots of new "Finished in a Flash" page kits from Hot Off The Press. My absolute favorite items this week, however, are our very own SYT designed scrapbook scissors and paper trimmer die cuts. Wait ’til you see them! There are 58 other fantastic SYT exclusive cuts, but those are by far my favorite. Our custom die cut this week is a movie clapboard, that you can customize with a date, place and "scene". Click here to see them all:
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/73008.html. There are also lots of good items left on clearance and overstock -
http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/clearance.html.
Happy Wednesday!
As always, thanks for your business
Julie Swatek, President
Scrap Your Trip®
‘cuz life is a trip worth scrappin’®
July 29th, 2008
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