A pad for all seasons

I’ve been having such a hard time getting into the idea of keeping my house clean.  Not that it’s ever easy for me to get there, but it’s been even harder lately.  I’m thinking it may be the fault of the weather, and the fact that our heat is out of commission and the house has been 60 degrees most days, and all I want to do is cozy up under a blanket in my favorite chair and keep warm.

So today, I actually felt the urge to clean up the kitchen in the late afternoon.  I was just about to do it, too.  Really, I was!  But the little guy wanted to play outside.  And there are so few afternoons left for playing outside before the really cold weather sweeps in.  Who was I to deny him this simple pleasure?

Not being one to sit outside and do nothing, I generally take my laptop with me or something, but I really was more in the mood to do something.  So I decided to try my hand at making notepads a la The Small Object.

I gathered my supplies:

• printed sheets for the pad content
• card stock for pad back
• binder clips
• padding compound
• paint brush
• old-school, heavy, dangerous paper cutter that used to be my grandfather’s

I lined up the paper, which was not as easy as it should have been, and sliced, which was also not as easy as it should have been.  (The cool factor of my paper cutter only slightly makes up for it’s inadequacy in the actual cutting of the paper…)

I lined up all of the pages and secured them with binder clips.

Then I painted on a thick layer of the compound and let it dry for about an hour.

Voila!  Custom-made pads for any occasion imaginable.  I’m thinking these have great gift-giving potential if I can work out my paper-cutter kinks.

Boring Office Guy loves his, as does Boring Buddy (who helped me with the wording and the design on his pad).  I plan to use mine to leave little notes in orders I’m shipping.  Sometimes I have things to say, and this is a bit nicer than a post-it note!

I’ve got all other kinds of ideas

• a check list for Aidan to bring to school with him and reference when he’s packing up to come home
• a mechanism for me to keep track of the points the boys are collecting as part of an incentive system we’ve come up with
• a countdown pad (days until Christmas, days left of school, etc.)

Fun stuff!  And this bottle of padding compound will most likely last me the rest of my life.  It’s insane.

[edit: if you're looking to buy the compound, I got it here at the same place that Sarah at The Small Object got hers.  She also mentions an eBay seller who has smaller quantities of it available.  And lastly, I saw a comment on her post this morning that indicated this place is also an option.]

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Categories: chit chat, general craftiness