Multi Tasking with Scrapbook Papers & IKEA

So tonight I sit here clearing scrapbook papers that I decided I don't want from my shopping cart at The Scrappy Gourmet. Who the heck broke in and put over 60 papers in there? I did that? Naaaahhh. And for some of these, what was I thinkin'? Though some of the Pink Paislee papers, I'm lovin':

Must break up the tediousness of zooming in on, uh, about 50 papers where I question my sanity when I previously hit "Add to Cart," once I get a closer look. Do you get the positive rushy-glowy effects of binge shopping by adding to cart? That's the only way I can explain this. This is why buying online is good. You can impose a cooling off period. Don't get me wrong, The Scrappy Gourmet has some fantastic papers, and in my short 2-month addiction to scrapbooking, I've already placed several orders. But selectively clearing a shopping cart, when the obsessive side of me doesn't want to let an eye candy opportunity go without another, closer look, is truly tedious.

To break it up, I surf some blogs. And find something really intriguing, right here in the Blogs of Note feature in Blogger Dashboard: ikea hacker. This blog shows how people take IKEA stuff and dramatically modify it, or use it in innovative ways. Our home office is lined with seven beech color IKEA Billy bookshelves with solid doors on the bottom and glass doors on the top. They make nice impact in such multiples, especially with the doors. But they will always feel temporary -- now that I've been in real mahogany-lined home offices, Billy will always reek of those early adult post-college years:

But what if you surrounded Billy shelves with molding below and above so they look like floor-to-ceiling built-ins? You can upgrade the hardware too, as I already have. I may just do the molding trick someday if we want a more permanent installation. No use chucking Billy to the curb, or Salvation Army, or even Freecycle when we really should learn to make the best of some things we got.

Speaking of such, check out this bathroom re-do featured on ikea hacker using IKEA products:

Before:

After:

Amazing, huh? So if you've hacked any IKEA furniture, accessories, anything, the guy at ikea hacker asks you to send him some material to post about!

Now, I go back to scoring some cool Pink Paislee papers ...