Monday, July 29, 2019

Mermaids galore

Sunday: I got to sleep in, got up about a quarter to 8. Got my laundry done and a few things to mail out.
Unicorn and surprise:
 Winner takes All of 2 cards and envelopes:
 Black and white piece of art:
 Pocket letter:
 I also watched a few movies and basically relaxed. I got a little bored earlier in the day, I couldn't get into any books, youtube wasn't doing it and Facebook wasn't doing it. I tried doing some artwork and started the black and white art above. Had lunch and decided to finish the movie I had started on Thursday night. After that I got the pocket letter done.
Monday: Work was much nicer than last Monday. Except apparently when I have too much time off I need a little buffer before interacting with people at work. I had to stop at the post office, as I got a notice for two postage due items on Saturday. They were both obviously parcels, both over 1/4 inch thick. I went to the Asian food store on the way home and picked up some Thai and milk tea. I realized on Saturday as I was drinking my bubble tea, I seem to like milk tea, so I thought I'd try some. The one I picked up is an Earl Grey milk tea, I already like the taste of Earl Grey, so I thought I'd try it out. I also headed over to HyVee looking for some chips. I found them, but didn't want to pay $6 for a bag (it was $1 an ounce),
so I picked up some tri colored potato chips instead, sadly I didn't really like them, so they will be traveling to work on Tuesday.
Got home, had lunch and got some things ready to mail.
Red:
 After putting together that one, I checked the mail and found 5 items.
Die cuts:
 I love layered ones.
 And those Winnie the Pooh ones.
Happy Mail:
 Not so excited about this.
Mermaid tag:
 Cute Pusheen pieces.
Pocket letter:
 And the goodies:
 Favorite animal: jellyfish
 It was supposed to be an octopus, but I told the sender not to worry, I really like jellyfish, too.
Read more of a book I've been working on, but got cold as the AC kicked on. So, I put together a couple more things to mail out.
Mermaid:
 I totally bought this because it was cute, but works great for this tag.
Wish for tag inserts:
I've gotten used to writing on project life cards and I have a ton to get rid of, so figured I'd pass these along to someone who would use them.

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Mini Vacation

Friday: Woke up about 6:30, there wasn't a great window covering in the room I was in, so it wasn't very dark. I played with the blinds, but they didn't seem to make much of a difference either way. I knew I couldn't sleep in as we were leaving at 8:30, but I wasn't expecting to be up so early.
We had picked up some pastries and milk at HyVee the night before, so I had an apple fritter for breakfast. We were on the road shortly after 8:30 to Omaha and the zoo. I pretty much talked with my cousin the whole way. I had told her I was thinking about moving and getting a different job. Both her and my aunt suggested moving to Des Moines. I want to go somewhere that there's a lot of places to walk to, and stuff is close to everything. My aunt was saying there was a lot of subsidized housing downtown, but there's not a lot of shopping (as in Target and Walmart, the necessities) or grocery choices. The thing I really hate about Des Moines is it seems like you have to drive to everything. They're getting a bit better with little strip type malls, but nothing really all together. I feel my cousin is always suggesting I move to Des Moines, it gets a little tiring.
We arrived about 10:30 and headed in, saw some outside things. First thing was this cool stingray fountain that was right inside the front gate:
 Rhino butt:
We were waiting for the train while we were watching the rhino, sadly it was a disappointing ride, the guy was hard to hear and you really couldn't see many animals. After the train ride we had lunch, we stopped at an African food stand, but my cousin's kid was the only one that got something really exciting, a pork chop, because the other stuff (chicken wrap, samosas and something else I don't remember) were described as spicy. I got a double cheeseburger and basically everyone else had hot dogs. We did get an order of sweet potato fries to share, those were pretty good.
 Mammoth statue:
 Sea lions:
 The cheetahs were taking a nap:
 Bongo:
 There was a grouping of these cool bear statues:

 The sad thing was the black was somewhat smudged, it looked like whatever they used to seal them smeared the black, you can really see it on the one below, but all the ones with white and black on top looked like the black paint ran.





 Next up was the aviary and this guy surprised us:
 And there was this one with a bad hairdo:
 We headed inside at this time as it was getting rather warm and we were all getting tired.
Gorilla:
 Monkey butt:
 Another gorilla, this one was outside:
 Baby gorilla exercising:
 The last building we visited had an aquarium, stingrays:
 There was a tube that you walked through and the fish swam over you. these guys were in it:
 This one is a little hard to see, but these were upside down starfish:
 And a giant moray eel:
 I found a few cool sculptures on our way out, lizard and turtle:
 And an octopus:
 In the gift shop I was debating between these three shot glasses:
 I chose the clear one in the middle because it was cheaper.
 I picked up a stingray (I had picked up one at the St. Louis zoo last year, so I thought I'd start a collection), it was $7.99, also grabbed a few postcards (they were kind of expensive at 89 cents each), a jellyfish magnet ($3.99) and the shot glass (5.99). We left about 3:30 and headed back to Iowa, picking up some wings for supper on the way there. There was a tiny bit of road construction, but with all the merging it added an hour onto our trip. I'm not a wing fan, so I got to have McDonald's for my supper, I tried a couple of the international food items. I got the loaded fries from Australia and the sandwich from Canada. The fries were not good, they were basically fries with liquid cheese sauce and bacon, not sure why that's an Australian thing. The sandwich was pretty good it was a grilled chicken with mozzarella (maybe) and tomato and lettuce and onions and an orange sauce that kind of reminded me of thousand island dressing.
We were going to watch Mary Poppins Returns, but we were all tired and my arms and legs felt sticky (sun lotion) and sweaty and all I really wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed, so I did.
Saturday: woke up rather early again, oh well. My aunt and I went to the Farmer's Market which was large and had a bunch of stuff. I keep going to the local farmer's market hoping there will be something I want to buy, but it doesn't happen very often, if ours was a bit bigger and had more stuff like this one, I'd probably go to more often. It was at least 5 blocks plus side streets. I ended up buying some pastries and a milk bubble tea. It was pretty fun, there were tons of dogs and I could have just dog watched the whole time.
We headed over to a couple places to shop, mostly just looked at stuff, every time I picked something up it was either too expensive or I couldn't figure out what I would do with it. We went to another shopping place, kinda reminded me of our main street as it was a long stretch of street with a bunch of stores. Found this cute book:
 I want to see if the library has it.
This store was pretty cool, had a ton of cute things.
I picked up some finger puppets ($1 each), a troll ($2) and a tiny typewriter ($3). We had to spend a little extra time in this store (which was fine) because it downpoured for about five minutes when we were about to leave.
Our next stop was a candy store, I wish it had more variety, there was a lot salt water taffy and jelly beans. I was very proud that I didn't buy anything.
The next store had a lot of things repurposed, including this front end:
Thought it was a cool way to recycle something old.
We had lunch afterwards, I had a grown up grilled cheese, it had gouda and American cheese and bacon with some zucchini fries, they were both great.
Next up was an antique store. Loved this giant lego clock figure:
By that time we were both getting tired, so we headed back to my aunt's place, picked up my stuff and headed back to my house, stopping for a bit more shopping, thought I didn't buy anything else.
I had a great time, I'm ready to sleep in my own bed for a little longer in the morning. I was a bit bummed because I keep associating fun times with buying a lot, I need to retrain my brain.
Found out I only got one item in the mail while I was gone.
A frog tag:
I really do like them, I'm just annoyed because there was never a post about it being mailed and it was supposed to be mailed by last Saturday.
I'm also a bit annoyed about the lack of mail this week. I received three items on Monday (one not so great swap) and this one other item. There was also a pink slip from the post office saying they had two items with postage due for me, those will be refused and going back to senders on Monday, one was missing over $2 in postage meaning they probably put one stamp on it and it was a parcel. I wish people would just go to the post office. If it's more than 1/4 inch thick, not uniformly thick, it's a parcel, why is that so hard? Now it's going to take another week to get back to me, if they fix it as soon as they get it returned to them. Very frustrating.
I plan to sleep in tomorrow (later than 6:30), do my laundry and try to read a book or two and just ignore the world tomorrow.

Boo

Today was not as exciting as I wanted it to be. I had planned to hit the downtown dollar days with a friend, but she never got back to me about being able to go, so I headed out on my own. Put on my new dress and was less excited about it than last week. I was very disappointed with the dollar days. The first place I went didn't have any deals, found out later they were doing it Friday and Saturday. The second place, the shopkeeper was on her computer, she said hi, but went right back to her computer also I didn't see any extra deals, supposedly there were a bunch of $5 deals. The third place, there were some deals, nothing really interesting, the shopkeeper there was on her phone, also said hi, but went back to her phone. This place I hadn't gone into for awhile and I still wasn't impressed, won't be going back. The next place the whole store was on sale because it had to close, but again the shopkeeper wasn't paying attention, she was on a phone call, didn't say hi, it was on speaker phone. There were a couple things I was interested in, but I'm not going to buy from you if you're rude and can't even greet your customers. The next place I wanted to buy something, but I didn't see any deals, even though they were also supposed to have some. And the last place had good deals, I almost bought something, but realized I would be buying just to buy something, so I put it back.
And then I was just bored for the rest of the day, packed for my mini vacation and just couldn't get into anything. I renewed a book that would've been due tomorrow but I didn't want to have to remember. I was a little perturbed when my friend finally texted me about 4pm and said she wouldn't be able to join me.
My aunt came to pick me up about 7pm and we headed back to her house (about an hour away). We watched a little TV and then went to bed.
Very uninteresting.

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

I bought a sloth

Sunday: was work, started a book, trying to get through my books instead of just renewing them. Got my laundry done, too.
Monday: work started out interesting, we had the cops come within the first half hour of opening, some guy yelling at and threatening people. It ended normally.
Went home and made cheesecake for work. Realized as I was mixing it up I had accidentally bought evaporated milk instead of sweetened condensed milk. I was glad I noticed it then, Google told me I could remedy it by adding sugar, so I did. I was also a bit afraid it wouldn't taste very lemony as after I dumped in the pudding mix I couldn't really taste it, so I added some lemon extract but stopped because I was afraid I'd add too much. I had too much filling again, so had an extra:
 The extra was the round one, I thought the consistency wasn't really cheesecakey. Received some mail.
Secret Sister Shades of Summer swap:
 I was a bit disappointed in this one. It looks like my partner just went to Walmart and bought stuff in all the colors. It didn't feel like a lot of thought went into it. The only thing I feel I'll use are the gems. Everyone else's pictures look like so much fun.
Winner Takes All: Clear stamps
 These are really pretty, but I don't use clear stamps.
Winner Takes All: Minnie writing set:
 This is wicked cute, I'm not sure if I'll use it or not.
I'm still waiting on 3 more winner takes all, I only know that one person has sent them.
I granted a wish to send some happy mail out:
 This person likes cats, so I collected some cat related stuff and mailed it out.
Since I received some stickers that I wouldn't use, I thought I'd sign up for a sticker swap:
 Mail out date is later in July.
Tuesday: Had to go shopping because I realized I forgot some stuff I needed when I went shopping on Thursday. I had to do it on Tuesday, as it's the only free day I had.
Found this guy on my way out:
 First stop was Walmart:
 lots of tape ($6 each), 6x9 envelopes ($3), shorts ($10), cleaning wipes ($2).
This was the whole reason I had to go shopping last week and subsequently this week. I needed double stick tape. I'm supposed to be picking up a package every time I go to Walmart, I haven't the last two times I've been at Walmart. I also needed some more 6x9 envelopes. I picked up some more shorts to wear under my skirts/dresses. Last Friday I had worn a pair under my dress and they slipped way up, not sure why, thought it was maybe they were a bit loose. Also, needed some cleaning stuff.
 Sloth, Party pop teenies
I splurged on these, especially the sloth ($5), the blind bag was 50 cents. I've been wanting to figure out what they were. Not too exciting but for 50 cents, it's an ok value.
I spent less than I thought I would at Walmart. I knew it was going to be high, but I wasn't sure how many packages of tape I would buy.
I bypassed Target as I didn't need anything there, and hit Dollar Tree as my last stop
 Lifesavers gummies, lucky charms bar, mango almond bar, 2 narwhal pens, peanut butter cupcakes, veggie chips, white twix.
I really wanted something fun and different, but all I ended up with was the pens. The veggie chips were really good, I devoured them when I got home.
 sponges, air fresheners, pads
A couple other things I really needed.
A close-up of the narwhal pens:
They had different expressions on each side.
Found this guy waiting on the porch for me when I got home:
 The detail in this new phone camera is great.
 These are very close pictures and still the detail is very nice.
 And the last one.
 No idea what kind of caterpillar except that he was really furry.
  No mail that day, but I did put together a few things to mail out.
Send Me something butterfly stickers:
 happy mail:
 red crafting supplies:
 wish for Halloween washi samples and Halloween cards:
 This is for a card sketch.
We had to make a fold card with. This is called a gate card.
Wednesday: took my cheesecake to work for a small plates get together, we all decided it was a great idea and we should have it more often. I feel we also all ate too much. I was originally going to be going to Pizza Ranch with one of my work friends tonight, but we decided we were too full from lunch, that will be postponed until later.
No mail again on Wednesday. OK, I shouldn't say no mail, just no happy mail. My mail's tapered off quite a bit since my birthday, I'm still getting swaps and tags in. I feel things are taking longer these days, usually it takes up to a week for single stamp items to get to me, or stuff people throw in a mailbox instead of taking to the post office, but I have stuff people say they mailed in June I still haven't received and this is from people in the US. I seem to get the out of country stuff faster than the other stuff. Of course you can never tell when they actually mailed it because you can post pictures of an envelope with stamps as proof of postage, there's no way to tell when it's been mailed until I get it and see a post mark. I feel when I get less mail, I want to shop more or sign up for more tags because I want more mail. I'm trying not to sign up for so much, just stuff I really want.