A blue octopus

Sunday: I made a sweet treats flip book:

 and put together a secret package:

 And of course did laundry. I know I finished a book called Reading with Patrick.
Monday: Work was fine, except I seemed to screw up on a lot of tiny things. I came home to some happy mail.
SMS flowery:

 I was kinda hoping for something more 3D, but these cards are goregeous, especially the orchids, and I know you can't tell in the picture but there is gold foiling on them.
Snack:

 Again, I was hoping for something different, though I'm not sure what, I probably won't do this tag next time. I'm not a fan of plain Oreos and the granola bar was ok.
Magnet:

 Love this one, it cracked me up when I read it. I seem to be collecting a lot of magnets lately.
Unicorn:

 I keep hoping for something different, but people seem to like sending notepads in this group, and I already have a ton of sticky notes and note pads. I'll probably pass it on to someone else.
Candy bag:

 The person sending to me was in Switzerland (or Sweden, I don't really recall) and I was super excited about that, because other countries seem to have more interesting food than US (though I wonder if they feel the same way), I'm not a huge fan of lemon candy, or sour. I ate the gummy pizza, that was good. I decided to save the xylitol gum for the X tag. I haven't tried the thing at the bottom yet. There's a lot of licorice flavored things, not a flavor I'm liking. I love the variety and the funness of coming from a different country. I know it's really hard for people to guess what the other person will like, which I think is part of the fun. I know I don't look at people's favorites for the tags (unless I'm making something), I'll do it for swaps, but I think the tags are just a fun way to send and get mail.
How neat is the back cover of this book:

 I may have checked it out for this picture. It's actually about the women in the animation department at Disney, which sounded great, but it's huge and heavy and it's more words than pictures. Sometimes I just want to look at pictures.
Tuesday: I'm still doing my lazy Tuesday thing. I know I was reading a bunch on wikipedia, but I don't really know what else I did other than go to work that night.
Today: this was my view when I left the house:

 It doesn't come out as well in the picture, but it was pretty foggy and kinda chilly.
I found some happy mail when I got home.
Letter O:

 Okra and old fashioned seeds, which is pretty different as a tag, but not something I'll use.
I love the creativity people use to figure out what to send for these alphabet tags, which is a lot of the reason I do them.
Birthday pocket letter:

 LOVE this. Do you see that card in the second row that has elephants holding button balloons? That's my favorite.
3x3 notecards:

 We only had to make 6, my partner totally went overboard with the 10 she sent me. I think my favorites are the typewriter and the cactus.
Blue swap:

 This came in a package that looked like my partner sells these, which is fine, it was so cutely packaged up.
And a Hollar haul:

Here's what was in it:

 Glitter pens ($2), Peanuts gummies ($1), Care Bear Gummies ($1), toffee peanuts ($1 each), unicorn glitter carabiner keychain ($2), Frozen blind bag ($1), Jasmine rice ($1.25)
I totally opened the Frozen blind bag before I thought about taking the picture, sorry. I love these peanuts, they are soo goods. I also thought it would be fun to try the Peanuts gummies, the care bears gummies and the jasmine rice.

 more glitter pens ($2 each),  fairy hatching egg and mermaid hatching egg ($2 each), colored staples ($1), stuffed octopus ($3), unicorn pom keychain ($3), unicorn sticky notes ($2) and cookie thins ($1)
Here's what that sticky notes pack looks like open:

I also purchased a 4 piece girls' toys mystery bag:

 a pillow, swirl n spin art, lol calculator set and a super hero girls hot wheels car. This was $4. Cause I can't pass up a mystery thing.

I may have gone a little overboard on the glitter pens, I didn't know I had two of the one set in my 'cart' and I certainly don't need more gel pens, I've actually stopped myself from buying them in stores. I also may have gone a little overboard in unicorn items, two keychains and a sticky note set. I know at one point I was thinking about unicorn tags on my group, also mermaid tags. I'm trying to decide if I should hatch the mermaid and fairy, or send them on to someone else. I'm not as disappointed in the girls' mystery bag, I don't know what I'll do with any of it. I kinda wish I knew someone I could just push off my really kiddy purchases on. At Christmas I donated them to Toys for Tots, I wish there was a box somewhere I could just drop things off at all year round.
I'm actually pretty proud of myself. This stuff has been sitting in my Hollar cart since a little after Easter. I have a tendency to visit when they send me an email and I find something interesting in the email, and then sometimes it just sits in my cart until I build up enough to purchase. Sometimes things sell out before I get to them, which is fine (because like at Hobby Lobby, I don't need any of this stuff).

Owls galore

After arriving home on Wednesday, I found some happy mail. 

SMS edible and sticker sheets

 I totally devoured those Swedish Fish, I never knew they came in other flavors, they were soo good. I like the pastel stickers and the troll stickers.
Thursday was National Coloring Book Day, I decided to do a giveaway in one of my Facebook groups and give these cards away:

 Sadly, I've only gotten 6 comments, I was going to leave it up until Sunday, but I'm not sure I'm going to get more entries.
I finished my September Tag:

 I'm not sure how I feel about that smile piece. It's a metal piece and I had to tack it down with hot glue, it's a little weird looking.
I also made some 3x3 notecards:

 I love this size of cards. They're just so cute.
The mail came really late on Thursday, like after 5, and of course I didn't get anything.
Friday, I decided to go to Hobby Lobby and JoAnn Fabrics.
Hobby Lobby:

fuzzy kit, stickers, tags, paper, dish
Apparently I'm drawn to bright colors lately. I was in the kid's craft aisle and found this kit. I have a back to school swap coming up so I picked up stickers for that. The butterfly stickers are also for a swap. I wanted to buy more for me, but I'm trying not to buy crafting stuff, so I settled for the paper, I might use it as backgrounds for a sweet treats flipbook I have to make. I also really liked the sticker book, there's a few sheets I won't use, but I'll pass them on. I really liked the unicorn shaker tags. I've been wanting to buy the hot air balloon dish for awhile, it was originally $6.99, not paying that price, but at 90% off and 60 cents, I'll totally buy it.

baking book, flowers, tags, beads
 The Pops! book and beads are for a swap. I liked the flowers and I originally wanted those tags, I just didn't want to spend $2.50 for them.
When the beads rang up, they came up as $3.97, I thought for sure the sign said $2.97, so the cashier kinda stood there and stared at me waiting for me to say it was ok and pay, she finally changed the price to $2.97 and then as I was leaving, I wondered if I was wrong and they were really $3.97, so I high-tailed it home in case I was wrong.

 Weirdly enough, the mail was waiting for me when I got home, close to 11 AM. One of my pieces was this pretty heavy box from Germany, I was going to wait and open my mail at work (cause I usually don't get my mail until I'm on my way in to work), but I couldn't wait.
surprise:

The snails are really good, I haven't tried the kool-aid things, or the gum (these are the largest pieces of gum I've ever seen), I'm not a huge fan of goldfish.

 Favorites:

 I know it says surprise, but I deemed it part of my favorites tag. I have a smaller roll of the washi.
More favorites:

 I haven't actually opened the unicorn pack to see what exactly it is.
Destash:

 Destash swaps/tags are my favorite swaps/tags because one man's junk....I love collecting other people's stuff.
Flamingo:

 These are cute stickers.
I wandered off to work about 1, after work my friend and I were going to go to a church sale, but she got caught up in work, so I went by myself.

 stuffed crab, stationery set, necklace, magnets, butterflies.
I realized why I have so many stuffed animals, I guess when I'm feeling depressed I buy one. It doesn't matter that I have tons at home, I still have to buy another one. Thankfully, they're usually from the Dollar Tree or garage sales so they are cheaper than $1. I liked the stationery set, thought I could use it in a swap. Also, just liked the necklace. I love the mouse with his money magnet, and Rainbow Row is actually row houses in Charleston, SC. We saw them when we were there for Christmas a few years ago, that may be my favorite purchase. I picked up the butterflies for a swap and I really liked this little chick.
I bought Mountain Dew and ice cream on my way home to make myself feel better. After getting home I saw more garage sales were posted for Saturday and got pretty excited.
Saturday I got up and wandered off to some sales. I had originally had 2 sales on my list which were on opposite sides of my traveling area, so when i saw a bunch more posted, it made me wicked excited.
First sale:

 pencil, owls, file folders, flowers.
There were a lot of owls at this sale, they had trivets and mugs and salt and pepper shakers, but I refrained from getting the others, mostly because I didn't want to carry them home and/or didn't think I'd enjoy them. I picked up the pencil for tags. The white owl is just a stuffed ornament, the smaller owl is made from perler beads and the owls on white are a compact mirror, I might send that one in a swap. I keep hoping I'll make more of the file folder pocket letters, so I picked up more. The big flowers are pins. The jar is glass filled with paper flowers.
I found another sale on my way to the next one, but it was mostly baby clothes. My next scheduled sale was mostly kids stuff, too, but I found some things:

 I didn't really want to spend $2 for the bag of trims, but I wanted the yellow/orange vintagey stuff in front there and the other flowery stuff, so I picked it up. I got really excited over the butterflies, which I'll probably use in a swap.
Found another random one, but I didn't think it was near enough to call a garage sale. This is the next one on my list, it was listed as an estate sale. It was basically just boxes of stuff everywhere. I heard some mention of a restraining order and that's why we're having the sale, and then another conversation about ancestry.com and people's heritage, and there were a bunch of people joining in that conversation, I didn't care, I just wanted to pay for my stuff and move on.

 I really just wanted the box, which was good, because when I got home and looked closer at it, most of the stationery set is not there, oh well. I always need envelopes, and I seem to be using up ones that go with cards but not using the cards lately. I saw these beverage set in the pictures they had posted and hoped it was still there. I don't have plans for it, but thought it would work for some tags in my groups. I also couldn't pass up the Fifel stocking.
Here's the last sale:

 I needed something miniature for a swap and everything I kept finding I didn't like. I like this.
I ended up walking 4.77 miles, 10,985 steps (cause my mom's whining about my steps lately and I found out I can track them with my mp3 player) and spent $11.35. I took a cold shower when I got home and relaxed for the rest of the day.
Again, the mail was kinda late, arrived at 4:10 today. I found a sticky note about insufficient postage for something. I'll be stopping at the post office Monday and refusing it, I don't know what group it's from and some groups you don't get reimbursed, so I'm no longer paying postage.
Summer small tags:

 These are so cute. I love it when other people color stamped images, cause I suck at it.
Sticker sheets:

 I like these, though I'm a bit tired of getting kiddy stickers for things.
Altered paperclips:

Also cute.
Tomorrow is Sunday, I need to make my sweet treats flip book, so I'll probably be working on that.

Lotsa pictures

So, after my post last week, I got a bunch of tags/swaps put together.

Blue (we had to send 10 blue items):

 Die cuts (had to send 10 die cuts):

 Summer small tags (had to make/decorate 6 tags that would fit in an ATC {3.5x2.5} sleeve):

Saturday, I put together a few more

 Library pocket swap (create and decorate 3 library pockets and cards):

 Destash:

 SMS fuzzy:

 wish granted of planner stickers:

 SMS happy:

Sunday was laundry and finishing a few books. 

Monday was work, and

 I also got some mail, surprise tag:

 Some more swaps/tags,
Letter P: popsicles and postcards:

 wish granted: used stamps:

 Thrift store tag:

 50 loose stickers:

 On July 31st, it's moving day around here, cause that's when basically all the leases on apartments end because we're a college town. My friend needed a babysitter for her gecko while she finished last minute errands, so I had a friend for the day:

 My mom and I went school supply shopping today, it was actually a kinda boring trip. The condo association where my parents live are shopping for school supplies and donating them, my mom's not that much fun to shop with, unless it's stuff we don't need (like antiquing), so she was basically in and done. I found a few things to pick up.
First stop, Target:

 daiquiri, sloth keychain, blank books, school bus sequins and pistachio Oreos.
I thought it was kinda funny that they had these frozen daiquiri packs right next to the school supplies, is that a bonus for the parents when they get done school shopping?
I had to pick up the sloth keychain, he was too cute. I thought I could use the blank books as a base for flip books. I have a back to school pocket letter to make, so I picked up the sequins, and I can't pass up anything pistachio, though I feel they'd be better on the white cookies.
Close-up of the sequins:

I needed to go to Dollar Tree for razors and since my mother is ever saying I need the steps, which is very annoying, I think the next time she says that I'm going to tell her how rude it is. She'll probably be annoyed with me and a little hurt because she doesn't see it as rude, but I feel it's a different way of saying I need to lose weight.
Anywho, here's what I picked up:

 cookies, teddy grahams, sweet tarts ropes.
I will be at the bookstore soon, so I picked up the cookies and teddy grahams for my lunches. I love the ropes.

 wall calendar, sticky notes, notepads, magnet, playing cards, pencil pouch, cards, daily calendar.
Someone posted a week or so ago about there being Popples, Strawberry Shortcake, and Care Bears wall calendars at the Dollar Tree, I didn't see any last time I was there. I might've gotten a little excited when I found the popples one. I LOVE popples, I wish I could find them at garage sales. The sticky notes, magnet, and pencil pouch are for tags/swaps. I picked up the notebooks for me (cause I don't have enough), the playing cards I use to send washi samples out in swaps, the cards are actually invitations, but I liked the drink images.
Boring stuff:

 those razors, and a waterbottle. I don't have a great water bottle for the bookstore, and I figure this one only needs to last 3 weeks.

 blind bags, 'chair' bath bombs.
I may have been influenced to get the My Little Pony blind bags by a little kid who was really upset that her mom wouldn't let her get them. I can't pass up a blind bag (especially since they don't usually go for under $4), so I picked up the Monster High ones as well. Also couldn't pass up this cute pineapple 'chair' and some more bath bombs. I don't take a lot of baths, though I might after standing all the time at the bookstore.
Found this little dead guy on the way home:

 After getting home I put together two of the swaps I signed up for today.
Sticker:

 Back to school supply: