Stupid Credit Card Applications

Ever since David opened an account at Chase Bank he's been getting about 3-6 credit card applications a week. Most of them are from the institution itself, but he's also been getting them from other companies as well. I used to get these all the time, not really sure what I did to make them stop.
Thinking back, it might have been moving around the country and my junk mail not really following me, but it could have also been the Credit-Card Law Obama signed into law two years ago. Who knows, really.

Well, since I am a crazy person who has to shred the mail each week, I was fed up with all the junk that comes with it and all the other junk mail we get. I reverted back to when I had time and tore off all of the personal information from the letters and took the applications out (shredded them). Then I took the pre-paid envelope that comes with the application and stuffed it with whatever I could. The actual envelope we got the application in, the grocery store ads, the neighborhood news letter, the alumni mail we get from the previous tenants. Anything. 

I know, I know... I wasted my time. But I figure if there are enough crazy people like me out there, the costs of these mailers coming back to them with garbage might outweigh the costs of sending them to people and we could save paper and other resources required to transport all this crap. Plus, I won't have to waist time, energy (both personal and electricity) shredding the damn things.

I'm probably the only crazy person doing this, but I figure if I can cost these giant corporations even a few cents, it makes me happy.

More cardstock and scrapbooking paper

My spouse is rather excited I can sew cardstock to more cardstock and have it look pretty good, so he asked me to sew people's names into a piece of paper so he could burn the edges for the handout he has to make for his group.

Why is this necessary?
Evidently there is a group member who brings in handouts printed on high quality paper and everyone comments on how nice the paper is. Spouse says he thinks this is rather ridiculous, but he still wants to 'one-up' her. Of course, he can't do this on his own.


Off we go to the craft store. Of course he picks the most god-awful colors for card stock. Seriously, BRIGHT pink is the main color in the pack.

After a conversation about what I can do and what I can't (Sorry, I can't actually embroider people's names into cardstock). He then tells me to "do whatever".

Okay-- what does that even mean?

So, I get to thinking and come up with a design in my head while he plans his backpacking trip. Second step: ask him for the spelling of his group members names.
You'd have thought I were asking HIM for the favor.
Yes he has to get up and get them to be now, so I can do this project over the weekend. The name part needs to be done first, so he cannot give them to me when he gets home.
WHINER!!!

Anyways- we're tired and he has to get up early. So- bed.

Today, I see just how horrible this card stock color theme really is. Eeish.
I know he's trying to out-do the ridiculous factor, but I don't do that so well. I wish I would have been handed some better colors to work with.

Here's what I came up with. for his handout.

First I wrote everyone's name in Calligraphy on parchment paper, then sewed them to a dark green back.



Then I cut the bright pink cardstock into thirds, took a sharp knife and cut slits to fit the name cards.



Third step, choose a scrapbooking page that would match the cardstock David chose and decide how it should be laid out. Then sew it all together.

This is what I came up with:

My stitch choices:


Inside the folder:




All ten of them finished:




WHEW!!

The things we do for love.

The only seam all the way through is on the very left. I didn't know if David would want to stick a cover page or something in there. I thought they would lay a bit more flat, but I'm still happy with them. David is welcome to do what he wants with them now. They are his folders. If he wants more in the future, I think he'll be making them.

sewing paperbags

Never would I have thought I'd sew tear up a sweatshirt so it's pieces along with pieces of a paper bags to a torn up t-shirt.

Nope.
Never thought I'd see the day.

However, Saturday was that day.

David, for Itamar's birthday party (you can see his birthday card I sewed here) was "Post-apocalyptic Itamar".


Actually, everyone dressed up as Itamar. The beard David is wearing I had crocheted for myself while on the ferry on the way to the party.
It was of course, not very comfortable, but David was actually quite eager to wear it making the costume so much better.

So yes this is what an skilled 55 minute costume sewing job and a 20 minutes of crocheting can do for a person.

I hope I'll spending more time on projects in the future. I also hope I'll know about costume parties further in advance next time. 24 hours just isn't enough time.

You can see the spread of snacks we had for the party over at Transported Tastes.

I can give credit to my Step-Mom Shellie for the delish Cheese Ball Recipe, which I should put on line because it's that yummy. However the Bacon Hamantaschen was a Bethany original. I don't think I even knew what a Hamantaschen was until Saturday. So thanks for that Bethany.

The Staten Island Ferry -- Tourists and Ads

When moving to Staten Island, one of the things that might be out of the ordinary for most, so much so tourists flock to it, become a part of the daily routine. What am I talking about? The Staten Island Ferry of course.




The Staten Island Ferry carries about 60,000 people every weekday from the St. George Terminal in Staten Island to the Whitehall Station in Lower Manhattan. The ride takes about 25 minutes on average. It route takes longer in the off-peak hours (30 minutes) when it’s generally hauling tourists back and forth and a tad faster when it’s primarily commuters (20 minutes).

St. George Terminal in Staten Island: Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan:


The ferry is free, and during the “tourist time” (10am-5pm) it sneaks closer to the Statue of Liberty. There are 10 currently running ferries, but I’ve only ever seen 8 of them. Not sure what the other two do. They generally house many floors, with the exception of the John Nobel, which they run late at night.

Generally, the lower floor is difficult to find and it’s where you will find those of us that use the ferry to commute hide out. It’s quiet and you can read and have a relatively peaceful ride across the New York harbor.

This means the tourists are on the upper decks and it’s stressful up there because of it. Truly, a mad house up stairs. Really, and not just the kids are running (usually the kids). Sometimes you get the person that runs to every possible spot on the ferry. They start out looking at the Brooklyn Bridge on the East side of the boat, then RUNNING over to see the Statue of Liberty on the West, finally they slow down and fast walk back to the East side of the boat to see the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Then, they realize they can go out on the loading deck and they run out those doors and take pictures of the approaching island. It’s crazy what some people do. I’m not sure if hey chill out on the route back. They’ve already taken pictures of everything.
Anyways, each time they go back and forth they open a door to the deck and just leave it open. So, unless you want to freeze in the winter, you have to get up and close it. Then they will just open it again and run away without closing it and open the one on the other side of the boat. This happens again, and again. Sure, this air isn’t so bad in the warmer months, but those winter months, it can turn your ferry ride frigid.
This is why regular commuters sit downstairs and dread the rides where the tourists find the commuter hang out and then ask you to take their picture. Okay, the asking to take the picture has only happened a handful of times, but it’s always when you’re in the middle of a good book or trying to not think about anything and you’re disturbed.

Anyway, I didn’t actually start to this blog post to complain about tourists (although it’s easy to do since there are so friggin’ many of them). I actually wanted to say good things about the ferry. It’s generally clean, dependable, and the crew has those Staten Island Accents which are growing on me.
One of the most fascinating things about the ferry is the mass marketing. The ads directly targeting Staten Islanders and the giant bill boards in the Whitehall terminal and ads in the ferry itself are directly targeted to those riding the ferry or who live on the island. I guess it makes sense. Even New York City’s least populated borough has almost 500,000 people (almost the size of Portland, OR). I suppose it makes it profitable to up the sales of even just the least populated region of New York.

These are the Maker’s Mark ads on the ferry ride home last night. Actually, the entire ferry system has been taken over with Maker’s Mark ads.



I’ll try and snap a couple of the ads at Whitehall and add them later.


**** MORE PICTURES ****

Here are some more photos from the ferry itself. I believe I was on the 'Spirit of America' taking these:

I apologize for the poor quality.
The left one says "What the tourists are looking at." The right: "What the locals are looking at."



Here at the ads from the Whitehall ferry terminal. Again, I apologize for the quality.

Still making these cards

Tomorrow is David and my friend's birthday, so it's a great excuse to try out some more of what my machine can do with cardstock and scrapbook paper. This is what I came up with for Itamar's big day...


Inside is below.






I started making these "save trees. reuse this card." with the scrap pieces of paper I have. I am just putting a message in the card on separate paper, it'd easy to reuse the card. I'm just not sure if people will think to do so. I also plan on leaving the front of the envelopes blank to try and get people to reuse them.
Hopefully some paper (and money!) can be saved.


Plus, I was thinking how fun would it be to receive a card you made.
You know, have it go full circle?
I think it's too cool thinking about my handiwork being enjoyed by several people.

Pass on the love people!


Anyways, you'll recognize this basic design from my previous post.
These are what I settled on for my Spring cards. I'm not sure if I am going to send them on for birthdays or happy spring or what.

David and I are thinking about having an 'Easter' dinner, so I might turn them into invitations.

No Standing, damn it.

To many non-new-yorkers, this is a confusing sign.
It would be nice if there were very few of them around the city. Like, oh, the peculiar "No Standing Sign".

No. In New York City, this sign is as common as a crowd. Seriously. They are everywhere.

In short, it means, don't stand there.
Really, no cars should park there, no people should stand there. Keep clear.


I learned the hard lesson a couple months ago when the sign was blocked by a large construction truck with ladders and boards. $115.00 fine!
Yeah. That's ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN DOLLARS.

I was able to depute the ticket, because I had proof they blocked the sign with their stuff, but they wouldn't wave the fine, but took it down to $90 because evidently I should have looked harder for the thing.

Expensive lesson the the signage of NYC.
Now. You. Know.

been rocking my machine.

Went to JoAnns equipped with a coupon shortly after we returned from Washington and I received my sewing machine (thanks Alicia). These are the colors I chose for my quilt and here is block pattern I chose.





The flash made the colors look weird, and no flash made everything blue, so this is the best I could get at the time.
I'm had to re cut and sew some of the pieces, but I'm chocking that up to me finding a block on the internet I liked and laying it out on poster board and then seeing what worked.


I'm thinking of adding a dark purple boarder with light purple squares, but we'll see once all the blocks are finished.

I still have much to do. I think I have about 35 blocks done, and strips for another 30. So, I need 20-30 more blocks. Plus a few for some pillows. I'm trying to make a lovely bed spread for us.



I started my sewing lessons on Sunday. The lady, Linda, very wonderful. Warm and welcoming. I can't say a negative thing about the lady. She knows her stuff. I learned so much about my machine the very first day, and she got me all excited about what I can make and what I can do with everything I just HAD to go to the craft store, then when I came home, I didn't have anywhere to put anything. So I had to clean out the spare room and set up my table and get everything organized.

Of course, after I organized I immediately had to start up. So, I have no pictures of my nice organized table, but here's my table mid work. You can see my new thread holder in the back (clearance!) and my thread in the pencil box (Containers aren't cheap).

One of the neatest things I learned in my lesson (aside from all the funky things my machine does and how to fix tension and such) was sewing paper! Yes, I am VERY excited about this new knowledge and I found clearance cardstock and scrapbook paper and had a little fun until late into the night last night.

You can see on the bottom left of the table are two cards. I took my embroidery setting and some pleasant thread and made a nice design along the sides. Then I took some of my new paper and tried out some other things.

It's so much fun what you can do. I have about embroidery settings on my machine which I thought would be plenty for anyone. After doing this, I can see why someone would opt for the super awesome embroidery machines.

I ended up taking the card of the right over to Linda so she could enjoy it. I left it there for her to have, but I forgot to bring over an envelope for her. Silly me. I'll try and remember for next time.

Seriously, there are some high dollar machines out there and what you can do with them, even on card stock is just amazing.

You can even use a big fat needle and some thick paper or something and make holes in a pattern of some sort to let light shine through. Maybe for a lampshade or window decoration.

Who knew I'd get all these decor ideas when all I wanted to do was sew up a couple crafts and learn to alter my clothes.

I'm really happy with my machine.
It's a great starter, and once the fun of making these cards wears off, I don't think I'll have much use for the embroidery setting. Just the usual stuff.

My next short term project is trying to make one of the husband's shirts that he doesn't like into one that fits me and doesn't look too super weird.
Here's a picture of him in it.


He's looking kinda doofy with that hair he was growing out (which he just cut after it started looking nice, GRR), and those pants are too funny.

I do like the shirt, though, but he doesn't. So I'm going to tray and see if I can make it into something either different, or just fit me without looking completely weird.

If not, oh well, it was in the goodwill pile.

So yes. Hopefully I will be able to keep track of all my progress.