With Easter fast approaching and all of us self-quarantining, I’m wondering if we could make the day we celebrate Easter with family and friends, a different day of our choosing.  If we can celebrate Easter on the real Easter, that would be great, but I’m thinking it’s not very practical.  I don’t know about you, but if my parents were still alive, I wouldn’t want to have an Easter celebration, and possibly infect other them, or be infected myself.  No holiday is worth that, in my opinion.

So with that being said, I’m thinking of choosing a date in the distant future, where we can safely celebrate with friends.  Rich and I don’t have any local family, but have a wonderful group of friends that are as close to family as you can get.  Most of them are college friends, so you can imagine we’ve known each other over forty years…We sound so old when I use numbers like forty.  In my head, I’m about twenty-five…My Dad passed away at sixty-four, and at the time, I thought he was too young to go, but as I quickly approach that age, I think of just how young he truly was.  He was young at heart, and so full of life, and his smile was the greatest–It’s hard to believe he’s been gone since 1994.

Enough reminiscing….Here’s what I’ve been busy doing in the craft room.  I finished three small diamond projects yesterday, one being a journal with Mother Mary on it.  My close girlfriend mentioned she loved the Mary diamond painting I made for my sister, and I decided it would be fun to give her a Mary fronted-journal.  It came out really cute, and I’ll upload photos of it in an upcoming video.  I also covered more refrigerator magnets, and this time the food items were actually magnets, and not key rings I had to turn into magnets.  They are brightly colored and you’ll see those in an upcoming video as well.  And finally, I finished a bookmark of a cardinal for my Mother’s close friend.  Their high school mascot was the cardinal, and the classmates get together once a month from spring until fall for lunch.  I thought she’d like the bookmark, and included a pack of the cardinal cards I made when I wanted to use all of the colored images I’d made a long time ago.   I can’t wait for you to see this (in the same video as the others) because Fansells put a really nice tassel with a metal butterfly in the kit.  I’ll say this for Fansells, they don’t do anything halfway.

I finally mailed (OK, Rich mailed) the cards I’d promised people as well as a bunch of “thinking of you” cards to our close friends.  I had a couple of viewers tell me that I could just put stamps on the cards, but our post office isn’t like anywhere else.  The reason I say this, is I bought a bunch of 70 cent stamps for my cards that were too big or too thick, as last year that was the price to mail anything out of the ordinary…In this batch, some of the cards I sent were normal small cards…The postage was never under 70 cents for any of the cards, and a lot of them were over 90 cents to mail.  How can you predict the cost of postage when it never seems to be consistent? Rich said the postal worker felt every envelope and that’s how he made his determination of cost (I guess.)

I’m just glad they are in the mail, as I’d promised to send them to so many people, and felt badly that none of them had been mailed.  I’m great at making and writing in cards, but getting them in the mail is a whole other ballgame…darn it…  Especially now that I don’t leave the house.  I’m sure our mailman would have been happy to take them with him if they’d had postage on them, but Rich watched the postal worker determine the costs on each envelope, and he said there was no way he’d be able to predict the cost…and I’d be so embarrassed if a card I sent arrived “postage due.”

And speaking of our postman, I’m going to make a card for him, our garbage collectors, and others still working, to thank them for their service.  I think it’s times like this when we all need to step up and thank people for doing their jobs, especially when their jobs put them in harm’s way…I’ve always sent cards to our deployed service people, but definitely think it’s time to extend the cards to the people in the front lines that are keeping our country going, while a lot of us stay at home.  I’m thinking of making a bunch of 3 x 3″ cards that I can carry in my purse, that just say thanks for being there for us when we need you, and handing them to grocery store clerks, cashiers,  and basically anyone still working in the public.  These are not safe times and I think we all need to give thanks for those that are keeping us afloat.

I’m also thinking of making cookies to drop off at a couple of neighbor’s homes to let them know we’re thinking of them, as they’ve been housebound like me.  I think I’ll give some to the postman and garbage collectors as well.  I need to give back…I need to do something to feel like I’m doing my part to make a difference, however small…

As for my channel…I’ve got at least two upcoming videos where I’ll be giving away things…diamond paintings and chalk marker sets.  Hopefully, that will give others something to occupy their minds and maybe even take a little of their anxiety away.  We can all use a little of that.

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