Magazines.

I just LOVE magazines! I always have. I can remember having Seventeen and Glamour magazines on my bedroom shelf as a teenager when my father announced that we were moving to Connecticut. My dad told me that I couldn't take them with us because they would weigh too much.

Oh no. That was going to be hard. So I went through (all of) them and ripped out my favorite pages and put them into files. Then I put the files into a box and labeled it "Model Files." I still have it.

I haven't looked at them for quite some time, but one of my files is for Christy Brinkley. And what I do remember having in her file, is a layout of her and her husband when she was just breaking into modeling. And the interesting thing to me now is that no one ever mentions that husband. Hmmm?

After I got married, my magazine focus switched to home magazines. My favorites are House Beautiful and Traditional Home. I have subscribed to just about all of them at one time or another.

At one point several years ago, I found that I didn't even have enough time to look through them as they arrived so I cancelled all of my subscriptions ... but then I would come across the little pull out cards as they fell out in the check out line and they seemed to speak to me, "Only $12.00 a year - over 80% savings off the newstand price."

And that would get me thinking ... It's only a dollar a month. Even if I just glance through it quickly, it's like entertainment. And I really do enjoy them. I could use that kind of entertainment for a few minutes in a month.

So I would re-subscribe.

Here is what I have learned about magazines though ... they can REALLY pile up. So the next time I decided to rip up my magazines and keep my favorite pages, it was not because of my father's promptings. It was because I had my own home and they seemed to be over taking it!

I took a weekend to really dig into my sorting. I went to the store and bought white notebooks and clear page covers. I sat on the family room floor and had piles all around me.

One pile was for bedrooms. Another for pretty yards. One was for bathrooms, and kitchens, and windows. Another for paint ideas, and craft ideas, and pretty fabrics.

I have one notebook that I call "Whole Houses" ... where you just wish you could move in and stay. Every once in a while, I get that one down off of the shelf and look through it. It's like a big fat favorite magazine that I continue to love over and over and over.


(Side note: I love catalogs too. And I think a big reason for that is because I love photography so much. They can be so creative in catalogs. But do they really need to send you one every other week? Because my catalogs really are over taking my house, room by room.

I had to come to the conclusion - realization, actually - that if I am not going to pick up the phone right that minute and place an order from that catalog, I need to just throw it right in the trash can. I'll miss them.)