I have an account with http://cropchocolate.com … have since September 2010. I just placed my 5th order with them today. It’s a neat site. One deal at a time, when you are logged in, you can buy the thing or put it in your “la carte” for the future. Most items have a 45 day la carte ability. Some are special deals with quicker times attached to them.

Until recently US orders over $60.00 shipped free, but they made some changes on February 15, and now most orders under $60.00 are 7.99 to ship and over that amount are 4.99 to ship, with additional $ applied to oversize orders (12×12 albums, cutters, etc.)

I like getting things there because since it’s one-at-a-time I can add it to my la carte without full commitment, decide later whether to keep it there or not. There are also “swap” items available, you can swap something in your la carte for something in someone elses. There is a message board to aide with swaps (so you can list things you want, or see what someone else wants and what is available for swapping, often someone is willing to give up something to you for nothing, which is nice. I haven’t ever had to swap, but have gotten a handfuls of things given to me (not “given” just given to my la carte, then I have to purchase it later. Every ‘swap’ item has a time of days left in la carte, your la carte, or their la carte, when it’s swapped, the time stays with it. For instance, I wanted a certain pack of paper, had missed it when it was offered, so I looked in the swap threads and finally found someone with it listed as swappable for something, I PM’d them saying I’d love that pack of paper but didn’t have anything to swap, and they gladly sent the item to me. In a PM all I have to do is click ‘accept’ to have the item transferred to my la carte. Giving stuff to someone else is the same, create a PM to them and add the item easy click and select, then send. The person will either accept or reject the item. If they accept, it’s magically out of your la carte. You also can delete things from your la carte, but it’s nice to make them available to other people if you can.

I have stuff sitting around that I got from cropchocolate the last two times. I need to get it into my stash, but things are such a mess down there (in the basement area where my scrapbooking stuff is.) During the Winter that space is cold, and things get dumped there, children move stuff around, throw toys hither and everywhere, so my scrapspace is needing fixed up, their stuff picked up and moved out of there, etc. I’m not there during the Winter usually. Spring is early this year. It’s too warm in the house, very nice and cool down there. But the mess is too much for INTP me to want to deal with, and I have piles of stuff waiting to be introduced into my stash, and now more on the way soon.

I want to get things scrapbooked, actually complete PAGES, get PHOTOS printed and scrapped. I’ve done lots of things, just hardly any pages. I’m still hung up on what books to use, what format, ecelctic, chronological, theme, or what. I just don’t know. I do know I want to make baby books for my 4 children. I have had things for that, but 3 of them are matching albums from CM and I hate their pages now. I never did anything with the baby books. I want full 12×12, not the CM pages. Anyhow, I have 3 of them, but 4 children. Might as well just buy other albums or make them myself, individual for each.