Naoto’s 25th class reunion from Mid Pacific Institute is this year. The actual reunion was held in Hawaii and we didn’t go because we have other vacation plans for 2018. But, it turns out that a few of Naoto’s classmates live in Chicagoland and Wisconsin, so they organized a mini-reunion this month. I offered to make them paper invitations, because, well, I love paper invitations and I had a fun idea. I was going to take a map of the US from one of my vintage encyclopedias and draw a dotted line from Hawaii to Chicago with a little caption like, “Mid-Pac to Mainland” or something. But it turns out, all of my encyclopedias are from before 1959 so no US maps included Hawaii! Then, I was uninspired for awhile, and finally came up with this: a vintage picture of Waikiki Beach with the information typed in a tiny piece of vellum attached with a piece of washi tape in the Mid-Pac school color. Each invitation got put into a Paper Source Spruce envelope and addressed in white.
I’m excited to meet everyone this weekend and hear all the stories about high school Naoto. In the meantime…back to reading O Pioneers!
If you haven’t seen my tweets and Instagrams from last week, I have exciting news! My tiny card business was featured in the local papers last week! You can read the article online here. A few weeks ago, I sat down with Nona Tepper, the reporter for the Forest Park Review, and we chatted about letter writing and card making and sending mail. It was a delightful conversation. A couple weeks later, they sent photographer Alexa Rogals to my home for a photo shoot, which was the most nerve-wracking part, at least before Alexa got there. (She’s a true professional who made me feel very comfortable.) Thankfully I was able to get my desk cleaned up in time for the photo shoot. It was neat to have my actual workspace featured in the article, though it’s never that clean when I’m actually making cards! (Today it’s a chaotic mix of personal mail, prep for my show this weekend, books, and newspapers!)
I’m so grateful to my local newspaper, The Review, for doing the article about me and other small businesses in our community. Just like it’s nice to open your mailbox and find a letter amongst the bills, it’s nice to open a newspaper and read some light articles amongst the politics and crime. We all need a little break now and then, right?
A couple weeks ago I threw a party that has been on my theme party list for a looooong time -actually since before the Mrs. Roper party- The Golden Girls Gala! I love The Golden Girls. It’s my favorite comfort TV and I’ve seen most of the episodes at least ten times each. I love the girls’ style, especially their pajamas. (It makes me want to up my pajama game.) I love Dorothy’s sarcasm, Blanche’s confidence, Rose’s innocence, and Sophia’s attitude. This is my favorite Golden Girls moment:
It’s hard to say what my favorite episode is…maybe “Yes, We Have No Havanas” (Season 4, Episode 1) where Blanche and Sophia fight over the same man? Or “A Little Romance” (Season 1, Episode 13) where Rose is dating a little person and the other girls handle meeting him with…awkwardness. What’s your favorite episode? I found these great Golden Girls paper dolls and used them to decorate the food table. I ordered these Golden Girls faces from Paper Party Parade on Etsy. I used them to make little cheese picks. And I used the leftover circles to make a garland with some Golden Girls postcards from my collection. I’ve used the gold glitter rosettes for a thousand parties and I think they’ve met their end. They have served us well…We mostly hung out in the kitchen where Naoto made pizzas (reminiscent of Sophia and Max’s pizza shop in “Sophia’s Wedding” from Season 4, Episode 7.) We ate other 1980s snacks like cheese balls, Crunch-n-Munch, and Pop Tarts. And we ate guava cheesecake because of course…we had to eat cheesecake.We eventually made it out to the lanai to enjoy dessert and cocktails. I encouraged everyone to dress “in costume” and it was a fabulous variety of Golden Girls interpretations. I wore a peignoir set. (My mom was shocked that I was going to wear it in front of guests, but it covered as much as a summer dress would, so I figured it was fine.) My peignoir set was borrowed from my mom (she, too, has fabulous pajamas) and it’s not as colorful and luxurious as Blanche’s, but it worked for the party. Karen wore a very Dorothy outfit, long and loose. (She also borrowed from her mom’s closet!) Robyn wore the most fantastic 1980s working girl outfit, bright colors, bold necklace, neon sunglasses, clip-on earrings!! (You can see her at the top picture.) Donovan and Kathy both wore wonderful kaftans that were casually fabulous. And Jackie found a hilarious t-shirt of The Girls and the moon. I made a Golden Girl punch based off a recipe I modified from Serious Eats. I’ll share it soon. It was a hit, though we ran out of some key ingredients and I had to save us with Aviations later in the night! Of course at the end of every party I always think about the thousands of ways I could have decorated better or hosted better, but I think everyone had a good time…and really, that’s all you need with friends.
Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans! (To everyone else, happy Wednesday!)
I’m spending today catching up on some mail (and topping it off with the patriotic postage above!) and going to a BBQ at the community garden. Naoto is making an all-American supper tonight (hot dogs, corn on the cob and baked beans) before we go see fireworks. (Or it might rain, so maybe no BBQ or fireworks…time will tell.)
I’ll be back tomorrow with a post about last month’s Golden Girls Gala.
P.S. Naoto was not as excited as I was that this postage ensemble accidentally added up to fifty cents…
Every year, Naoto and I exchange gifts based on our anniversary year. (I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before…) We use this list as our guide, just to keep it consistent. Some years, we are spot on, and other years we leave things open to interpretation. I follow the modern gift guide for Naoto and he follows the traditional for me. The modern gifts for the twelfth anniversary are silk or linen. So I bought Naoto a linen shirt and a chef’s hat. I wrapped his gift in some paper from a shop in Kyoto. (It’s their shop paper that they wrapped our purchases in. It’s been in my paper hoard since…2015?) There was a Kyoto link in our gift-giving this year, as you will see. I think this proves that we are both itching to go back to Japan again. Sadly, the chef’s hat was too small…even for me! But the shirt fit nicely and there’s a new, larger hat on its way. My gift was supposed to be pearls, but Naoto found this vintage “fireworks” brooch and I love it. Pearls are lovely, but really, I have some pearl earrings (from our wedding) and a necklace (from Naoto’s Hawaiian host mom) and I think that’s plenty of the most fragile “gems” on earth, so this was a good substitution. And he gave me gin from a distillery in Kyoto! We’re finally opening it tonight so I’ll have a full report soon. Stay tuned.
A few years ago, I organized my vintage paper by color. It was an effort to get all of the bits and pieces out of their various packages that were strewn about my apartment. And it was a failed effort to get me to use up some of my stash. So far, I haven’t really used much.
The drawer came with dividers, so I figured it would be a good place to color code my vintage papers. Organizing things in rainbow order (or, ROY G BIVing, as I like to call it) is incredibly pleasing to me. I’m also a tiny box hoarder, so those come in handy to corral the little bits of loose things like tiny decals and labels and tickets. Who needs the Container Store when there are so many leftover little paper boxes?Pink, orange and purple are the least full sections. But a lot of my “orange” stuff is in a Halloween bin. I try to keep the holiday stuff separate and tuck out-of-season stuff away, but sometimes it ends up in here (if I order it or find it out of season.) Most of the stuff I’ve had for a long time…too long. I’ve found a lot at thrift stores and flea markets and I’ve gotten a ton from Saturday Morning Vintage and @feedthebirdies on Instagram. I’d say the airmail/red, white, and blue section is my favorite. Purple is my least favorite color but I have to admit, I’m pretty enamored with a lot of my vintage purple bits…especially those Gin Fizz labels! The “neutral section” looks a little drab compared to everything else, but some of the old black and white stuff is great and who doesn’t love an old yellowed book page?
So, I’m working on keeping a notebook with pictures and a bit of journaling and I’ve found that it’s helping me use up some of my stuff. It’s a paper addict’s work in progress.
Naoto and I had our first balcony Hasegawa Happy Hour last weekend. It was freezing. After a week of warm temperatures, the mercury plummeted on Saturday night, leaving me to shiver through our cocktail.
I love a good negroni, but since it was getting so chilly, I decided a warmer version of the drink would do the trick, so I made Boulevardiers. Basically, the gin is swapped out for whiskey. It’s warmer and a bit sweeter than a negroni. We drank them in two of my new favorite cocktail glasses, thanks to my parents’ thrifting luck and genius.
Boulevardier
1 1/2 oz bourbon
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
3/4 oz Campari
Pour into a mixing glass and stir with ice until completely chilled. In my experience, that means stir for way longer than you think you should be stirring, 25-30 seconds. Strain into a pretty cocktail glass and garnish with an orange peel, if desired. Enjoy on your balcony on a chilly night, and come inside when you get too cold.
The Post Office Book: Mail and How It Moves was a gift from my pen pals in Wisconsin, Angela and Penny! It is a fun little paperback they found at a bookstore and sent to me last year. It’s super cute drawings really get into the nitty gritty of how mail gets from one mailbox to another. It was written in the 80s, but I think the illustrations are timeless, though things are a little more high tech now. It starts with a little history of early “mail.” And then they jump into “modern mail.” I like how it shows different types of mailboxes: mail slots, apartment mailboxes, rural mailboxes, and PO boxes. It’s fun to see how automated things were in the eighties compared to the older books from the fifties and sixties. And I think things are even more automated now. Based on my post office visit a few years ago, my understanding is that humans are only sorting things at the very end of the mail journey as letter carriers are sorting for their own routes.
Have you seen any other good kids books about the post office?
I’ve added to my collection of books about mail! Mr. Zip and the U.S. Mail is another book designed to teach kids about the U.S. postal system. Someone posted it on Instagram last year and I found it on Amazon through a used book dealer for $5. It’s an old school library book in excellent condition. I’m no reading level expert, but it feels like it was written for a younger audience than this book that I wrote about a few years ago. It was written in 1964 by Jene Barr and it follows Mr. Zip, a letter carrier, through the mail delivery system. (I really wish we still had small letter boxes on posts like the one next to the traditional blue box! Can you still send a baby chick in the mail? Jimmy is mailing a thank you note to his Uncle Mike for sending him a stamp book. It’s so funny that we think of mail as “slow” nowadays when it was considered fast back then. But this is a pretty fun predictor: someday maybe we’ll be sending chocolates and letters to our friends on the moon!
Naoto was a little worried about party decorations so I told him I’d handle it. I love making garlands and I already had a bunch of supplies leftover from last year’s Write On Party.
I just strung a bunch of airmail envelopes from the ceiling and then made a garland with First Day Covers and old postcards from my vintage paper drawer. And for the “centerpiece” I made a giant paper airplane based on this Oh Happy Day tutorial. I just used eco white roll wrap from Paper Source and drew lines with a pink and blue Sharpie. Then I used this tutorial to fold the plane. I haven’t folded a paper airplane since grade school so I needed a little refresher course.
Presley was impressed.
Naoto made a kraft paper tablecloth for me with “post office” written in several languages and he even drew the Japan Post mascot for me! We scattered some airmail envelopes on the table with the stationery and called it done. Simple but on-theme. Presley enjoyed pushing the mail truck off the table. She doesn’t like being left out of the letter writing fun.
Simple, and at the end of the day, everything is reusable (especially for National Card & Letter Writing Month happening now!) and recyclable!
Naoto’s 25th class reunion from Mid Pacific Institute is this year. The actual reunion was held in Hawaii and we didn’t go because we have other vacation plans for 2018. But, it turns out that a few of Naoto’s classmates live in Chicagoland and Wisconsin, so they organized a mini-reunion this month. I offered to make them paper invitations, because, well, I love paper invitations and I had a fun idea. I was going to take a map of the US from one of my vintage encyclopedias and draw a dotted line from Hawaii to Chicago with a little caption like, “Mid-Pac to Mainland” or something. But it turns out, all of my encyclopedias are from before 1959 so no US maps included Hawaii! Then, I was uninspired for awhile, and finally came up with this: a vintage picture of Waikiki Beach with the information typed in a tiny piece of vellum attached with a piece of washi tape in the Mid-Pac school color. Each invitation got put into a Paper Source Spruce envelope and addressed in white.
Naoto and I had our first balcony Hasegawa Happy Hour last weekend. It was freezing. After a week of warm temperatures, the mercury plummeted on Saturday night, leaving me to shiver through our cocktail.
kimberly ah 