Gift tag swap!

I received my gift tag swap package in the mail yesterday. What fun to open it up and discover one by one what each person had created! All of them are so unique and lovely.


You can see the ones I made here. Thanks Tammie for putting this together. Since you're retiring from swaps, you can be proud that you went out with a bang!

California, here I come!

Right back where I started from. No, I'm not moving back. I'm going to a wedding. My friend Erin is getting married in July and I'm taking two days off work to make a long weekend and flying out to Los Angeles. Apparently Delta now offers non-stop service from Raleigh to LAX, which is good news. I try to avoid flying anything but non-stop (read: spoiled travel brat). The justification is that it's actually the cheapest flight. I bought my ticket today. Woo hoo! I wonder if it will be weird to be there. Probably.

I joined a gym! It is the most fancy-schmancy gym I've ever seen in my life. The cardio room must have at least two dozen treadmills, the same number of ellipticals, as well as steppers and bikes. There are six huge plasma TV's mounted on the wall, with the sound broadcast on FM frequencies. The room itself is at least three stories tall, so it feels very expansive. Upstairs there are more treadmills, ellipticals, and bikes, but each with their own individual TV that you can plug your headphones into and change the channel on. There's even a cinema room, which is dark, with ellipticals and bikes and a huge projection screen with a different movie daily playing on a constant loop (yesterday was Ghostbusters). There's the usual complement of weight equipment too, but I don't use much of it. They have a "women only" room, but I feel comfortable enough in the main gym not to need that. They offer tons of classes, including yoga and pilates. There's even an indoor pool. I don't see myself using it, but you never know. The locker rooms are very well appointed. Free shampoo, conditioner, lotion, even q-tips. Private showers. The works. It's the kind of place where you actually want to go work out. So I'm a member now and hopefully some of these pounds I've packed on since moving here will start to melt away, just in time for summer. I worked out today and discovered just how out of shape one can become in seven short months.

We had another bad thunderstorm last night, around 10 pm. I was just going to get into bed when the lightning picked up. It was ridiculous! I saw more lightning in five minutes last night than I did all my years in California. The thunder wasn't as bad as last time but it was still enough to keep me up. I didn't even bother trying to sleep through it. I sat on my screened porch in my comfy Adirondack chair listening to the rain fall, the thunder clap, and the trees blow in the wind. I got my cat carrier ready just in case. All it takes is one well-placed bolt of lightning, and the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!

Being an American Idol fan, I figured I'd give our local version a try. I've watched "Fox 50's Gimme the Mike" the past two weeks. Oh my. It looks like a glorified cable-access show. The talent would not even make it past Idol's first round, and the judges are broken records. "You need some vocal work, but good job."

Speaking of American Idol, what were the judges thinking last night dissing Katherine's performance? I thought it was awesome. It gave me goosebumps! And then Paula crying during Elliott's? Dude, that is messed up. I listened back to both his and Katherine's and his did absolutely nothing for me at all. I think he will be in the bottom three, along with Paris.

Found out at work today that we will in fact get Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day off as paid holidays. Yes, these are a given at most offices--especially ones where 95% of the customers are schools, for Pete's sake--but they are not official holidays for my company. Thankfully, though, we will get them off and we will be paid. Happy news.

I'm attempting craftiness again, with my friend Tammie's gift tag swap. It's like my postcard swap, but with gift tags (duh). I have high hopes that it will be easier for me than the postcards, though, because there is no theme and the creation does not have to go through the postal system naked.

Delayed response photos. Here are some pictures that I should have put up in my last post, but didn't. First, some Galloway cows from Fearington


and second, the Apple Chill festival.


Lastly, some unique flowers. All the young girls (high school age) were walking around with these, and I thought they were cute. Only when I saw this container of them at the Planned Parenthood booth did I realize what they were made out of. Yeah, I'm a little sheltered.

Big Kitties

This afternoon my parents and I visited Carnivore Preservation Trust (CPT) for a tour of the compound. It's out in Pittsboro, about a 20 minute drive from where I live. CPT is a sanctuary mostly for large cats but they have binturongs and kinkajous as well. Naturally I took a zillion photos, which you can see at my Flickr site. I'll post just a few of them here.

I must admit I did not find our tour guide to be particularly knowledgeable or engaging, however most would probably say I'm being too hard on her. She said that baby tigers are 2-3 ounces at birth, when it's actually 2-3 pounds, and she kept saying that the tigers were "chuffling," when the correct term is "chuffing." Granted, I used to volunteer at the Wildlife Waystation in Southern California, which could explain some of my superciliousness. I will say that overall I was satisfied, because of course the main attraction was the cats and they did not disappoint. We saw servals, ocelots, caracals, leopards, and tigers. The snow leopard was hiding up on a platform in his enclosure and the binturong was in his little house, so we didn't get a good view of them. Also, the white tiger was not in the mood for visitors so we only saw him from afar. But with the others we got to be pretty close.




Great new restaurant. For dinner tonight we went to Carrabas here in Apex and I was thorougly impressed. Both the food and the service were excellent. I had the Chicken Bryan, which came with goat cheese, sundried tomatoes, and a lemon basil sauce. To. Die. For. I was literally giddy after my first bite, it tasted so good. The garlic mashed potatoes were also deelish, and the bread was perfection. Two thumbs way, way up. To top it all off, on our way out, an elderly gentleman shook each of our hands and bid us "Arrivederci!"

Postcard swap update. So my postcard swap is pretty much complete. I sent my cards out Thursday, and I've received cards from four of the six other participants. None of them arrived on the same day so it's been fun to check the mail and have my treats spread out. Most people forgot to take pictures before they mailed the cards, so I decided to just post photos of the ones I receive and the ones I sent. Mine were all slightly different but using the same materials and motif.

Sent

Received

Thank you to all the kind and crafty souls who participated. It is amazing to me how differently the theme of "Transitions" or "Spring" was manifested in everyone's creations. If you enjoyed yourself, I hope you'll consider participating in my next postcard swap, which will come around in July. The theme will probably something like "Old Glory." (Thanks for the suggestion, Nicole!) I'm also considering doing a store-bought postcard swap, for the non-crafty folks, which could be seen as a travel-by-mail and/or geography project. Any interest out there?

Last day

Today is the last day to sign up for my inaugural Postcard Swap. I've got seven participants so far, including myself. I only need four more to meet my goal! Please sign up by sending an email to blogpostcards[at]yahoo[dot]com. I will be sending out the snail mail addresses to all the participants on Monday at noon Eastern time so you have until then to get in on the fun!

Here's a sneak peek at what I've been working on:

Announcing my Postcard Swap!

Sign-up info is toward the end of this post...

Do you like to get mail? Do you shuffle through the bills, circulars, credit card offers, and magazines in hopes of finding something with a handwritten address and a real stamp? I know I do. And these days, due to the speed and convenience of email, personal correspondence is at an all-time low. Now imagine if you got 10 pieces of personal mail in one week! Then--and don't let your head explode here--imagine those 10 pieces of mail were miniature pieces of art, sent straight from one kind, crafty soul to another. If you are still with me, you're probably thinking, "Where do I sign up?!" (Call now! Operators are standing by! If you sign up in the next ten minutes, you get two for the price of one! That's not all! A bonus postcard is yours free! Sheesh. I'm all about the hard sell. Damn infomercials!) Hold on a sec and let me explain the details.

If you sign up, you agree to make 10 postcards and mail them to the addresses I provide you with. In return, you will receive 10 unique postcards from people all over the country. You can make 10 of the exact same card, 10 similar cards, or 10 completely different cards. The only rule is they have to be hand-made (i.e., not store-bought). The suggested theme for this round is "Transitions." I am very anxious for spring to arrive, especially now that I am living in a state where the change of seasons is more than a date on the calendar. But I wanted the theme to be as open-ended as possible, so that's how "Transitions" came about (thanks to some brainstorming help from my knitting friends!). Your postcards can be about spring, or about any other transition you can think of. Caterpillar to butterfly. Day into night. Night into day. Child to adult. You get the idea. If you want to participate but think Transitions is a difficult theme, you can still sign up and let your own inspirations guide you.

Guidelines

Materials
You can create your postcard using any art supplies you have on hand such as paint, markers, glitter, watercolors, felt, fabric, ribbon, or even just pencil and ink. Some may wish to do a collage of some sort. Photography is also welcome. There are no restrictions per se on what you can use to make your postcards, but keep in mind that as a postcard, what you create will need to be sturdy enough to make it through the US postal system intact. If you are concerned about your creation's safety, you can always mail it in an envelope.

Size
The size should be about 4" x 6" (I'm going to start with blank index cards).

What to write
If you have a blog, which I'm assuming most participants will (although it is not required to have a blog to participate), please include your blog address either on the front or back of the card. Otherwise, you don't have to write anything on the card if you don't feel like it (except the recipient's address of course!).

Photos
Don't forget to take a picture of your cards before you send them, and then email me the photo(s) so I can collect them all and display them on Flickr. That way you'll get to see everyone's cards.

Sign Up
Send me an email with your snail mail address (required) and your blog address (optional) to blogpostcards[at]yahoo[dot]com. Since this is my first postcard swap, I'm setting a realistic goal of 11 participants--me plus 10 more. But if more want to join, all the better! The deadline to respond is March 12, and if you participate you are agreeing to mail the postcards sometime during the week of March 20, the first day of Spring.

Please feel free to email this post to your friends who might be interested, or link to it from your own blog. I've created a little Postcard Swap button (see sidebar) that you can put on your blog if that's your thing. It's kind of international looking, and I highly doubt I'll get any participants from overseas at this point. But hey, aim high, right?

I have to credit this site with giving me the idea in the first place. I would have signed up for their swap but the deadline had already passed--so I'm creating my own! You can check out some of the little masterpieces they traded by going here.

All right, that's my spiel; now it's up to y'all to sign up for this and make it work. If you have any ideas on how to improve this little experiment, please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks for reading!