In My Neighborhood | kimberly ah

Aug 03 2015

adventures, Forest Park, Oak Park, In My Neighborhood, Postal Consumer Advisory Council, snail mail

A Day at the Market

The mobile post office made it to the Oak Park Farmers Market! Hallelujah!

We got to the market around 10:45am and there were a couple of people in line ahead of us. I was excited to buy a few sheets each of the Summer Harvest stamps and the Coastal Birds postcard stamps, but their credit card machine was “down” and they were out of the postcard stamps. Since I was saving my cash for the farmers market, I only bought one sheet of the Summer Harvest stamps. So, what could have been a $40+ sale ended up being less than $10. (Bummer…) But on a high note, Orlando was working and he’s our old favorite from our Oak Park Post Office days, so it was good to catch up with him. Clearly the USPS made a good decision to have their cheeriest employee working at the market!

There was no special postmark, but they had a table with coloring books for kids and a free bubble mailer for participating in a survey about your experience at the window. I’m interested to hear how the post office fared financially because future participation will depend on Saturday’s sales. I’ll report back when we have our next council meeting in a couple of weeks. After we got our postage stamps, we hopped in the donut line for the famous farmers market donuts, bought a load of Mirai corn, and went home. (And of course, both the donuts and the corn were out of this world!)

Tagged adventures, forest park, snail mail, summer

Jan 06 2015

NYE 2015 at the Golden Steer

For the third year in a row, we had New Year’s Eve dinner at the Golden Steer. Each year, the crowd has grown. Two years ago, it was just Naoto and me. Last year, we added Karen to the mix. This year, along with Karen, we added four more people–our friends Jackie, Jim, Brett and Stacy. Ending the year with good friends, good steaks (and French onion soup, tasty salads, baked potatoes and cracker baskets) and good cocktails was the best way to say goodbye to 2014 and hello to 2015. (I really need to do an official post about Golden Steer–its old school charm has not been captured properly in these pictures.)

After the Steer, we came back to our place and had prosecco cocktails and snacks. Jim made this Martha Stewart smoked salmon spread…soooo good! I made Chex Mix and Karen made sweets, including her famous toffee and caramels.

So far, so good, 2015.

Let’s keep it that way.

Tagged adventures, celebrations, cocktails, food, forest park, holidays

Oct 02 2014

3 Comments

celebrations, crafty adventures, Forest Park, Oak Park, In My Neighborhood, snail mail

So Long, John the Mailman

John the Mailman delivered his last piece of mail on Saturday. Karen and I hung a simple banner in his honor. (I made it using these Paper Source labels on these Paper Source circle cards strung on this Air Mail twine.) We left a little gift for John in our mailbox, but we also went down to the lobby to say goodbye. (There may have been tears.)

So far our new letter carrier is doing a commendable job.

It’s been kind of a slow mail week around here. I have a few letters to return and some Halloween mail to plan and some postcards to write. It’s supposed to rain later, so it just might be the perfect night to make some mail.

Sep 25 2014

2 Comments

celebrations, Forest Park, Oak Park, In My Neighborhood, snail mail

John-the-Mailman Retires

A quick post today…

I know I blathered on about my letter carrier, affectionately know as John the Mailman, in this post, but he’s retiring this week after forty years of delivering mail.

The Forest Park Review featured a really sweet article about John this week. Our new letter carrier has some big shoes to fill…

P.S. Pictured is a card that Donovan made during her letterpress class with Rar Rar Press. I’m going to give it to John as a retirement card.

Tagged celebrations, forest park, letterpress, snail mail

Aug 14 2014

3 Comments

Forest Park, Oak Park, in my library, In My Neighborhood

In My Neighborhood: Little Free Library

I’ve been reading about Little Free Libraries popping up in cities all across the country. It’s an intriguing idea–build a tiny library, fill it with a few books and let people give and take on the honor system. It’s so community-driven and idealist…two things I love.

Imagine my surprise when Little Free Library recently popped up in front of a tiny house in my own neighborhood!

This house is only a block north of me, and one that I walk by almost every day on my way to get a coffee or go to work. It’s in a neighborhood of both houses and apartments a couple of blocks away from the train station. If you ask me, it’s a perfect neighborhood for something like this. People can pick up and drop off books on their way to their morning trains. Hopefully some of the neighborhood kids can find some titles in there eventually. The little library house is surrounded by solar-operated twinkle lights, but I haven’t seen it all lit up at night yet. I don’t see any titles inside that I want to borrow yet (I am a huge user of our public library), but I have a few good classics on my shelf that I’m going to drop off later this week. Do you have a Little Free Library in your neighborhood? There’s a giant list of them here and a map here.

Speaking of reading…I’m going to go outside now and finish my book for book group this weekend. We’re reading Two Years Before the Mast. What an adventure!

Tagged books, forest park