Target…and Scrapbooking a New Hobby

In THIS recent post, I talked about the new storage system coming to Tar-jay called ITSO. Well, I just got around to checking my Target ad from last Sunday and there ITSO was! It’s on sale this week, so guess where I’m going tomorrow?? WALMART! Just kidding. It works out well, I have a prescription sitting @ Target that they’re about to put back because I haven’t picked it up. And I’m going to try out their photo developing kiosk. Someone told me you can do the 2×3 photos on there, of two different shots. When I tried it at Longs Drugs, you had to do 2 of the same shot which was mucho aggravating. Luckily, it was a school event so I gave the extra photos to the school. It’s seriously way past time to develop all these photos on my digital card. We went letterboxing yesterday (more about that later), and I actually *GASP!* ran out of room on my memory card. Shizzle! Luckily, I had my little Kodak Advantix in the car, but just not the same, ya know? Tonight I’ve been squinting at the tiny window on my digi cam, going through and deleting unneeded photos {weirdly, there were tons of pix of scrapbooking supplies…hrmmm}. So I feel better now, I reduced my number of photos on my card (taken from Feb. til now) from 1145 to 993 (deleted 152, whoo! See, while a good effort, that deserves just a whoo, not a full whoo hoo}. SO…now I can take pix tomorrow of all the stuff I want/need to Craigslist for my own Get Rid of Your Crap…I mean, Cool Scrap Stuff challenge on AMR. Speaking of which {sorry folks, my mind is like a hamster’s…I’m running along on the wheel then all of a sudden…ooh, look, shiny stuff!}, NICOLE started a cool scrapbook garage sale BLOG for everyone to advertise their wares. Whether you’re shopping or selling, go give it a peep. Yeah, so I need to take my photos, get them posted to Craigslist, and to that blog. I’m vending my Memory Works things at a crop on August 8 & 9, so maybe I’ll sell some stuff there. But like a dummy, I made the deadline for my Challenge 8-8-08. Dork.

Now, for letterboxing…have you done this??? How come no one told me?!??! Sheesh, I thought I could count on you girls. I give you the scrappin gossip and enabling, you give me the latest trends and fun stuff in the rest of the world. Thanks to Janis/JANOBEAN, I first heard of letterboxing from THIS post on AMR. I’m home with the kids all week so what better time to get them out of the house and try this thang? In a nutshell, you go to www.letterboxing.org, find your region or community, and find out where letterboxes have been hidden. Then grab a map and go find ’em! A lot of them have a story that goes along with the box, so it’s fun to read that and it gets the kids more involved. I printed out 6 from a beach town near us, since it was so hot here and the coast sounded lovely. Most of them are outdoors, but our first try was to begin inside a business establishment. However, when we got there, it had closed for the day. Strike Out #1. We found the next one, tied to the exposed roots of a tree at the water line. We opened the waterproof box, found all the messages from other letterbox-ers, and ~ oopsie ~ apparently, we were supposed to have our own special stamp to leave with our message. Ah well, we’ll bring one next time. We wrote our message, put the box back where it was, and high fives all around. Success #1!

The next one began at a coastal hotel, took us on a walk near a bird sanctuary, looking for “stars” on the ends of tree trunks, and finally digging through eucalyptus leaves under a fallen tree. I don’t know if the box wasn’t there, or if there were just too many leaves to find it, but no luck. A family walked by, saw us digging around and reading the instructions, and said, “Are you guys letterboxing?” I’m like, “WTF??? EVERYone knew about this but me???” I swear. Anyhow, Strike #2. Our next endeavor took us traipsing through a misty golf course, hiking through a field, only to discover we’d parked in the wrong “lot with the Dogs on Leash sign.” Asked some directions, began climbing a rocky trail, got passed by a goth couple and their pit bull (given my recent experience with Pits, you know I nutted up big time!), huffed and puffed my fat a** all the way to the top, was jealous of the 4 ladies having a sunset wine and cheese picnic at the top, found the geo land marker, dug around under a boulder, and….no letterbox! We were bummed, but wait, lift your head up silly! The view was 360 degrees of AB-solutely Breathtaking. It was too foggy to see the ocean, but the landscape around there was beautiful and, with the sun going down, everything was golden. Wow, that’s what it’s all about, ya know?

However, back to Letterboxing Reality, that was Strike #3. We hiked back down the hill to our car, then it was on to the marina, past the cafe, up the wooden steps, then the stone steps, look for the geo-whatever marker, take 18 paces at 105 degrees, find a loaf sized rock under a lichen-covered boulder leaning against a eucalyptus tree. After checking every ding-dang tree at the top of that hill, we ended up finding it back near the first tree we looked at (yeah, figures). The loaf-sized rock had been moved but we found the letterbox anyway – whoo hoo, we got to leave another message and savor the feelings of Sweet Success (Success #2, that is). By then, we were starvin’, Marvin. We found a cool seafood place to eat at 8:30, gobbled our dinner, grabbed Momma a coffee for the drive home, and let’s just say I was the only one awake by the time our car drove in the driveway. So, if you haven’t tried Letterboxing, I highly, highly, highly recommend it. At one point, one of my kids looked at me with a huge smile on their face and said, “THANK YOU! Thank you, mom, for bringing us letterboxing!” They’ve been bugging me all day to print out some more and asking, “When can we go again??” And you bet I’m scrappin’ these memories…