Scrap Your Trip, Orlando, FL (2025)

11/15/2025

Mail carrier just picked up the last of the June orders! It took me a lot longer to get through June than I had hoped, based on the disaster that’s going on at my house and I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

In order to save SYT and get it turned around, I’ve worked ~100 hrs/week, six to seven days per week for the past 14 months and I can’t keep it up anymore. I’m tired…to the bone tired. And the disaster that is the house I live in is MUCH worse than what I shared last week.

Turns out the house I moved into a year ago to save money and be closer to the office has a foreign corporate owner, which I knew. What I did not know was that corporate owner is a NASDAQ company that just announced Q3 earnings of $93 million. The property management company is their subsidiary with over 400 active complaints with the Better Business Bureau.

I spent two months without a kitchen sink (which I finally just fixed myself a few days ago) and a dishwasher (which I still can’t get to work, despite replacing several parts). My roof has leaked for the entire time I’ve lived here and I told them two months ago about the water damage and mold in my master bathroom/bedroom and they haven’t done anything about it (which is why I pulled out all the moldy drywall in the kitchen myself). Based on what I’ve read about this company over the past few days, I’m going to have to fix everything myself and deduct it from my rent.

Yecy was hard at work in the cutting room on items needed for July orders while I was home tearing apart my kitchen and our inventory is in great shape to continue to process orders quickly. I’ll still be working a lot of hours to get your orders out to you…just not as many as I have been.

And as always, if you have a scrapbooking emergency, let us know and I’ll do my best to get your order to you as quickly as I can 😀

Thanks for being understanding and patient, but most of all, thanks for keeping us in business! 🥰

11/06/2025

How much time do you spend thinking about your refrigerator water line? You might want to think about it a little bit more. 😕

Two Sundays ago, I awoke to water all over the tile floor in my foyer. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the water line to the refrigerator had sprung a leak and was spraying water everywhere.

I shut off the water valve under the sink, cleaned up the mess, and ordered a new braided stainless steel water supply line.

The old 1/4” clear poly tubing was run underneath the cabinets and through a lazy Susan cabinet in the corner. I knew I was never going to be able to thread it through there, so I started running it through the cabinets.

And guess what I saw when I removed the drawers from the cabinet next to the sink? The back was puffy and swollen and clearly darker than normal.

Apparently the water line has been leaking for quite some time, but wasn’t noticeable until it got bad enough to flood the foyer.

So instead of finishing up June’s orders and getting started on July this weekend, I’ve spent the past five days cutting out cabinet bottoms and drywall to remove all the mold. Five lower cabinet bases and close to 100 ft.² of drywall needs to be replaced.
And I didn’t smell a thing until I pulled off the first baseboard.

Oh, and as soon as I got the new water line installed, the main valve under the sink started leaking (still dripping even though it’s shut off), so I still have no water or ice.

I have this incredibly unresponsive national property management company and I’ll be surprised if I get my kitchen back before the end of the year.

Good thing I’m always working and we have a full kitchen at the office!

10/22/2025

Add another month completed to the list. 🥳 Shipping notifications went out for the last of May’s orders last night and our mail carrier picked them up about an hour ago. Bring on June!

My plan of cutting everything we need before we start processing orders is starting to pay off. After we finished shipping last night, Sarily and I started counting items to see what we need to cut for June’s orders. I’m still counting kits, but there were only 48 die cuts we didn’t have enough inventory for to start June’s orders. And considering that we have almost 1,500 die cut SKU’s, I’d say that’s pretty good! 😊

When we started my “new plan”, whenever we cut a SKU, we cut everything we need for all the outstanding orders. So we’re getting to the point where processing orders only involves grabbing the items from their location and packing and shipping them (and not having to cut items on demand). You know…like how it’s supposed to be 😂

And on that note, something random but related…

The Luna moth is one of the largest moths in Florida. I’ve never seen one in my life. And this is the second one in a week (pretty sure they’re attracted to my black lights for my Halloween decorations).

Apparently, the luna moth symbolizes transformation and new beginnings. I think it’s a good sign 😁

10/01/2025

Shipping notification for the last April order just went out! 🥳

Remember when this whole mess started a year ago and we had virtually no inventory to work with? I just did a quick calculation and in addition to cutting everything that we’ve shipped out so far, we’ve also cut close to 20,000 items that are now in inventory.

My plan to wait to start processing April’s orders until we’d cut everything worked out about 75% of the time. We only counted anything we’d sold three or more of…and of course, if we sold two, chances are we only had one. I’m still “Mrs. Murphy”. 😂

So, everything we cut from this point forward, we’re cutting the number we need to fulfill all our outstanding orders. This will help speed things up as we move along.

Also in the spirit of speeding things up, I’ve started to print more of our paper in-house. Our printer doubled my leadtime and I don’t want to not be able to send an order out for 1-2 weeks because I’m missing a couple of sheets of paper.

My amazing “die cut fairies” Yaros Hedges, Joyce Ciesla and Hardval Sullivan have been hard at work late into many, many nights bagging up the remaining die cut pieces for “Mystery Box Take 2.” I actually think we have more die cuts and samples than last time! Twenty-three file cabinets that were supposed to just be full of “parts“, but turned out to be over half full of “all the parts needed.” At least all that $$ that was just sitting in file cabinets can help pay rent and make payroll now. 😬

I wish I could say I was still surprised at all of this, but in the past year, I’ve only had to buy Black, White and Brown cardstock. I still have 850 sheets of Red cardstock sitting on a shelf, along with 1,125 sheets of Chiffon and Buttercream. Who on earth needs that much pale yellow cardstock?!?

Actually, below is a list of all our Bazzill overstock - $10 per 25 pack - if you want any, let me know and we’ll add it to your order.

Acqua - 13 (9 left)
Arroyo - 10 (4 left)
Berry Sensation - 6
Bouquet - 5
Buttercream - 14 (12 left)
Candy Buttons - 10 (6 left)
Chiffon - 31 (23 left)
Grenadine - 8 (7 left)
Guacamole - 9 (none left)
Heather - 8
Lily Pond - 5 (4 left)
Ocean Breeze - 8 (3 left)
Petalsoft - 6 (5 left)
Pool (AC Crafts) - 10 (6 left)
Purple Pizzazz - 10
Safari - 3 (none left)
Whirlpool - 9 (4 left)

Okay…back to work on May’s orders!

And as always, thank you for your support! (I just had a flashback to a Bartles & James commercial) 😂

09/09/2025

Okay…NOW all the March shipping notifications have gone out! I even double-checked to make sure we didn’t miss anybody.

Hopefully this “back-to-school-ick” has run its course. Both Yecy and Alex have two daughters and they were only here at the same time three days over the last two weeks.

On to April!

08/30/2025

I know I said earlier in the week that we’d get all the remaining March orders out by the weekend, but the bin below is what we have left. Both Yecy and Alex were out some this week with the “my-kids-went-back-to-school-but-I’m-the-one-who’s-sick” ick, so we didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped. It’s mostly orders with custom die cuts that we have left.

Sarily just left, our system just finished sending out shipping notifications, and the mail carrier is just going to love me tomorrow. 😁

I went through all the remaining March orders earlier in the week to make sure we weren’t missing any, so if you didn’t get a shipping notification yet, don’t worry…it’s on its way. :-)

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday “official-end-of-summer” weekend. I know how I’ll be laboring! 😂

08/26/2025

The gals are rocking it in the cutting room to finish up March’s orders (and I do mean rocking it…Yecy cut over 200 SKU’s yesterday)!

I can’t do anything else with the remaining March orders until Yecy and Alex are done, so I’m on to April.

And in an effort to be more efficient and hopefully get orders out faster, I’m going to try something different for April’s orders and see if I can’t get better at the “touch it once” philosophy instead of bins and bins of partially completed orders sitting around. Hopefully it makes a difference 🤞🏻

We are also changing the way we pack up our orders so that it’s much quicker (and helps with postage costs).

All that to say that we’re plowing away and making progress :-)

Everyone with a March order should receive their shipping notification by Friday (Saturday at the latest).

Get ready April’s!

08/19/2025

We’ve been ordering so much paper that our supplier has been having a hard time keeping up with us! Two weeks in a row, I only got half of the paper I was expecting (those pesky “other clients” lol).

That has led to bins of partially filled orders sitting all over the place, waiting for the missing paper to come in. Not exactly the efficient “touch it once” philosophy I’ve been going for, but what’s a gal to do?

We were missing so much paper last week that I told two of our amazing customer volunteers not to even come in to help. The unintended consequences of that were that I spent a glorious Friday night, Saturday and Sunday not working and actually unpacking the house I moved into last November and finally finished fixing my washing machine which hasn’t worked in three weeks. FYI…if you put something in there that was outside and really dirty…you can clog and ruin the drain pump. 😠

We just had 1,874 sheets of paper delivered and I ordered another 682 to be delivered on Thursday 🤞🏻.

I’m hoping we can finish up the rest of the March orders by the end of next week (maybe faster, but I’m giving us a little leeway).

As always, please know that we’re diligently working hard to get caught up (as evidenced by my house over the past seven months) and every single one of us truly appreciates your support and your patience.

08/06/2025

For the most part, February orders are finished! Still a few die cuts to make and a few papers being delivered tomorrow and by Friday at the latest, everyone with a February order should have received their shipping confirmation. 🥳

So now it’s back to “not in chronological order” and hopefully the picture below explains why.

See all of those pink pieces of paper? Those are all items that we took the last one of for a February order. There’s 300+ items that we need to replenish.

So, I’m going to be pulling orders that are paper only while I give the cutting room gals some time to catch up. 😀

I’ve spent hours analyzing and sorting our outstanding orders so that we can consistently process and ship, whereas if it was in strict chronological order, there’d be a lag while we replenish our inventory.

So while we’re not going in day-by-day chronological order, rest assured that the priority is always to get the oldest orders out as quickly as possible.

Now…back to shipping before the mail carrier gets here!

07/31/2025

HUGE paper delivery to help us get the rest of February orders out the door :-) We’ve also finished all the custom die cuts for February.

I’ve been trying to make it so that everything we need for all the orders is in the place it’s supposed to be, so that pulling an order is a seamless, one-step process instead of “pull what we have and set it to the side until we have the rest of it”, which was happening multiple times for some orders. I’ve always been a huge proponent of the “touch it once” philosophy and we’re way closer to that than we were :-)

The gals in the cutting room have been been sweating their patooties off (we’ve been under heat advisories all week and it is 94° in there during the day) working on getting as much cut as possible as Yecy will be out all next week.

Her high school daughter’s Fine Arts team made Nationals and although it means losing half my cutting team for the week, the opportunity for her to spend this time with her daughter is WAY too important for her to miss.

As always, thank you for your support and your patience as we head down the final stretch of turning SYT around. Know that we are all working tirelessly to get your products to you so that can continue to Scrap Your Trip through life 😀

07/13/2025

Based on what’s going on in the comments of my last post, let me try to explain my strategy so that you all can stop speculating :-)

First off, those 209 orders are packed and ready to go, but haven’t been shipped yet. I’m not ready for that much mouse activity yet! The gals will ship them tomorrow. Shipping notifications are emailed after the shipping label is printed, so if you get a shipping notification tomorrow, you’ll know that you were one of the 209 :-)

I added pictures of packing slips for four different February orders. It lists everything in location order so that we know where to find the products for that order.

Locations are as follows:
01 - paper
02 - die cuts
05 - die cut kits

Picture #1 - See the locations that just say 02 and 05? There are a total of 10 items on this order that we have zero quantity on hand and have not cut for the first time yet since the great “location relocation“ project at the end of 2024.

Picture #2 - There are only two items on this order that have zero QOH.

Picture #3 - Just like fabric, carpeting and tile, our paper has dye lots. Sometimes it’s barely noticeable and sometimes you wouldn’t even think you were looking at the same thing. In order to ensure that the paper you order matches dye lots, any quantities of four or more I order specifically from my printer for each order.

Picture #4 - During the great “location relocation“ project, I moved all of our best selling papers to the first 10 paper racks so that I could keep a larger quantity in stock. Chances are high that the first two items in this order are sitting in the paper racks.

Yesterday we pulled orders that needed a quantity of one of items that we have in stock regardless of the date the order was placed.

Next we’re going to work on orders that we have all the items for that I don’t need to specifically order more paper for to ensure the dye lots match.

We’re also going to batch together all the custom die cut orders so that we can be more efficient. For example, the custom baby girl die cut has all the same pieces for each one and only the name is different. So instead of cutting them one by one as we get to each order, we’re going to cut all the custom baby girl die cuts for all of the outstanding orders at once.

As I said when I first explained that we were not going to be going in chronological order, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to balance out older orders with newer orders…smaller orders with larger orders…orders that we have everything for with orders that we have to cut almost everything for…orders that I have all of the paper for with orders that I need to order from the printer, etc.

I know many of you think we should just be going in order so that I can say “We’re on February X and then we’ll move onto February Y” so that you would know your exact place in the “queue”.

But that is not what is best for SYT as a whole and I’m not doing that.

“Why not” you ask?

Because I am in a race to get caught up before I run out of money. A race that was made exponentially worse by having to pick up and move out of our location of 22 years with only 30 days notice, which took every dime I had left to accomplish.

If you look at the comments from all of my posts, there are one after the other of customers saying “I can’t wait until you get caught up so I can place my order!” Our revenue has dropped close to 70% since this debacle began. That is not sustainable in order for us to stay in business.

My two remote employees have seen an almost 75% decrease in their pay for the past 60+ days. It is only because of their loyalty to SYT based on a combined 31 years of employment that their spouses are picking up extra shifts so that they can make their house payments instead of finding another job. Personally, I have only been able to take one paycheck since April (thanks honey for paying my rent 😘)

We would have been caught up by now if we hadn’t had to move. I refuse to believe that the plan of the universe or God or whoever is in charge is to let me/us work this hard and get this far and then fail.

We are working as hard as we can to get through the outstanding orders as quickly and efficiently as we can. And when someone has a “scrapbooking crisis/emergency” we’re doing the best we can to accommodate them. Being nice about it helps :-)

Ever since I discovered the extent of the damage done to my company in my absence, I’ve worked my 🫏 off to fix everything. The last thing I want to do is get all caught up and then end up even further behind then when this started because “Oh! You’re all caught up! Here’s the order I’ve been holding onto for months!“

As long as you know that it might take a little bit, spreading it out over smaller orders would be a lot more helpful to us :-)

The support we’ve received during all of this has been nothing short of phenomenal and I am so grateful to each and every one of you for being such inspirational cheerleaders.

We were taught growing up “If you can’t say something, nice, don’t say anything at all.” If you’ve forgotten how to human and can’t do that, please shop for your scrapbooking supplies at Hobby Lobby.

Oh…wait…🙂

07/13/2025

Total for today? 209 😁

Scrap Your Trip

11/15/2025

11/06/2025

10/22/2025

10/01/2025

09/09/2025

08/30/2025

08/26/2025

08/19/2025

08/06/2025

07/31/2025

07/13/2025

07/13/2025

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