Confessions of a paper junkie

Stationery has much in common with fabric. Yummy colors. Yummy textures. Fun to mix and match. Fun to shop for. Easy to amass because it's simple to store and organize.

I have long been a stationery junkie. From Florence I brought home many kinds of hand-made stationery, some stamped, some swirled. In Bangkok I bought jade-colored notecards made of mulberry with golden images of the Grand Palace embossed on them.

At work, many people use composition books for note taking. I have done this since hanging my own shingle ten years ago. But I buy my comp books by the dozen overseas so they look like no one else's. The ones from Italy have Florentine paper or maps on them; the ones from France have French landmarks and fleur de lys. In Tokyo I bought ones with Hello Kitty covers. They make me happy!

This past year I have begun to buy cards for Bar or Bat Mitzvah's. I can't find ones to my taste and I don't do ugly cards. And then I remembered Denise. Crafty, creative Denise.

I just love Denise. We met in the unlikeliest of places: in the hallway outside radiology at the John Muir Medical Center, where we were both antepartum patients. She had been hospitalized a long time before me, and we became fast friends in spite of the fact we were both plied heavily with meds to deter pre-term labor. After Things 1 and 2 were born and in the NICU, I'd visit with her and she'd convince her nurses to let her come into the NICU with me. Her son and our twin daughters became fast friends after birth, and we saw them from time to time until they moved to Arizona.

Denise makes beautiful cards and she solved my uglies problem!