Travel Tuesday

So a little over a week ago, when we were planning our trip to the Memory Make Inn, we were determined to get 4 of us and ALL of our scrapbooking stuff in to my Jeep. 

Butch, who is the master packer said it couldn't be done. I totally agreed with him. Anybody who knows scrapbookers, knows they need  a lot of stuff! It took a real concerted effort and organization on everyone's part to trim it down to the bare necessities. 

I measured my space in the back of my Jeep and told the girls they each would have 20" x 18" of floor space. Now that's not much---especially if your main bag is bigger than that. 

I started with this:

This did not include my duffle, computer bag or purse. I keep thinking, there's just no way! Then Pam sent out an email saying that she was not bringing her tool bag, but only the necessities from it. That was a good idea, so I decided to do the same.

I pared down my tool kit to just a bag with these essentials: hand lotion (a must when I'm working with paper--it really dries out my hands), two sizes of glue dots, assorted adhesives and pop dots, scissors, foam pad and push pin (as my anywhere hole punch), extra tape runners, my Little X and a corner rounder. 

That reduced my scrapbook stuff to this. When Butch put all of his stuff in the car, he still say there was no way and I agreed with him. I picked up Pam and then said, "there's really no way." Then it was on to Karolyn's. We managed with very little space left or Nancy. Once we got to Nancy's I was like, "Okay, there's no way in HELL!" She had sooo much stuff! But in her defense, she was bringing her computer and printer for us to use for our journaling. Plus, since she doesn't scrapbook all that much, she brought her stitching and she had a batch of cookies. Luckily we only needed a small cooler. 

Well, lo and behold, we managed it!!

OMGosh! We did it! Of course, Karolyn and Nancy in the back seat were pretty crammed as there was two duffles between them. 

Still, it's fun to be able to travel together. And, considering the weather turned bad, I was glad to be the one driving. After all, my friends are southern belles---with no experience driving in sleet, ice or snow! My philosophy on that is just to go slow and take long! That's the only way that I'm not "white knuckling" it and all tense. Although, when those truckers are still traveling at 70+ miles and hour, that's makes me pretty nervous! Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes, I could see out the back. 

The bigger problem was that it was 7 degrees out and my windshield wiper fluid froze.I couldn't clean the windshield. It kept freezing up so we'd have to put the defroster on high at about 80 degrees to get it to thaw out. Then we were burning up so we had to open the windows to cool off. Over and over and over again! The fluid never did thaw out until about half way to Florida on Wednesday. 

The moral of this story is that we have found that it CAN be done. 4 women, ALL their scrapbooking stuff, secret scrapper surprises, food, assorted computers, duffles, a couple suitcases, stitching, cooler and ALL of our purses--we made it work!