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Monday, November 1, 2010

New Toy

Last Friday I sold my Cricut Expression and all the goodies that I had to go with it.  The Jukebox, the Design Studio software, the cartridges, the extra cutting mats, etc.  Why, you ask, would a scrapbooker do such a thing?  (I can hear you gasping in surprise).  :)


Well, I was excited when I got the Cricut about 1 1/2 years ago.  I got the Design Studio software to go with it thinking I could create things on the computer and use the Cricut to cut them out.  Only to find out that wasn't the case.  You can "design" things on the computer with the specific Cricut cartridges, but if you don't own the cartridge, you can't do anything else.  You can't use fonts already on your computer.  You can't do anything unless you have the stupid cartridges.


So let's just say the excitement wore off pretty quickly.  This was not the die cutting machine I wanted.


Now don't get me wrong ... it was pretty cool ... and I did use it.  I helped cut out leaves for last year's Vacation Bible School when I heard the woman in charge was going to hand-cut out about 400 leaves.  Then she called on me again this year to cut out badges and fire trucks.  The Cricut was pretty handy for those things.  Made those jobs go much quicker than hand-cutting them.  Although I had to borrow cartridges from a friend both times.  She didn't mind though.


And I used it a few times to cut out letters for a scrapbook page title or two.  But most of the time, it sat in the box.  Tucked neatly into one of the cabinets my sweet husband installed for me in my scrapbook room.


So I mentioned that I might be interested in selling it and I had someone interested.  She stopped by on Friday to check it out and wrote me a check.  Yay!  I helped her carry the stuff to her car and wasn't at all sad about saying goodbye to my "much-needed" Cricut machine.


Afterwards my thoughts were ... do I buy another cutting machine?  One that I want ... like a Silhouette?  One that can do the things I want it to do?  Or do I use the money to buy a new lens for my camera?  My 18-55mm lens did just break recently which leaves me with only the 55-200mm.  It is a great lens, mind you, but I always have to back up to get some things in the picture.


For instance, at Keira's track meet a few weeks ago, the group of runners from her school got together for a group shot.  I had my 55-200mm zoom on so I could get pics of her running far away and I didn't bring my 18-55mm lens with me.  (It wasn't broken yet).  So all the other moms are snapping away and I'm backing up so I can fit everyone in the picture.  However I never got to take the picture because all the other moms were in my way taking their pictures.  And once they were done, so were the kids.  Ugh!  Although one of the moms told me should would email me a picture.  I'll have to ask her about that when I see her next.


I decided the lens would get used more.  Right now anyway, since I haven't done much scrapbooking.  At all.  I've been making photo books through Artscow and I like them A LOT.


So after my 18-55mm lens broke, I started researching to see what lens I would want to get to replace it.   And I came up with this one ...


It is an AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR (5.8x).

Yeah, baby!

An 18-105, I think, will be a great lens to have!  Great for wide angle shots and great when you need to zoom in some.

So I talked to Doug about it.  Just in case "Santa" was planning to buy me a new lens for Christmas.  I did have the whole name on a post-it note on my board in my room.  Just in case.  :)  He didn't care if I bought it.  I guess that wasn't on his list.  :)  

So I bought one!   It should be here Wednesday!  

I can't wait to play!

2 comments:

Laura said...

You will LOVE the range of this lens! Especially with the kids always on the move.

Life is 5 Minutes Long said...

VERY NICE TOY!!!!