The 25 Hour Day

Don't we all wish there were more than 24 hours in a day? Well, yesterday, there was! How did you spend that extra hour? Somehow, I got less sleep than usual!

Something I've often heard said to people wondering how you find the time to exercise, or to scrap with friends every week, or read books for fun, is that you can't "find" the time, you have to make the time to do the things that are important to you.

Now, confession time: I'm a stay at home mom of school age kids. My part time job takes up very little time, so I have plenty of time. Yet, I still find myself feeling crunched for time because I get involved in other stuff. I remember reading about a study a long time ago that said high school kids who worked up to 10 hours a week actually got better grades than those without a job because having less free time meant they had to learn better time management. And that's always stuck with me, perhaps now more than ever. I do have a little too much free time. Which I don't enjoy much, because there's always something else I "should" be doing, so I feel guilty. Yeah, I'm spoiled. I admit it.

So I'm getting re-acquainted with my planner, to better organize my time. I use it to keep track of the events that are, essentially, planned for me: parent-teacher conferences, parties, holidays, races, etc. But I don't think to plan the things that "should" happen, or that I'd like to have happen.

Yesterday I made the time to attend an all day crop, run by my friends over at Crop N Time. As always, we had a blast. I got 5 pages done, got some inspiration for my Christmas cards, did some organizing and took some orders. If you're somewhere in the vicinity, I highly recommend spending time with Crop N Time and having a great time with your friends! The next crop is February 25, 2012. 2012 already? Where does the time go?

And, as is always the case after a crop, I'm inspired to do what I can to scrap more often at home, even alone. Tomorrow I'll take the time to do the things I have to do in order to spend some quality scrappy time on Tuesday, guilt-free. And on my list: posting photos of the pages I did yesterday!