DEC to Ava - falling off the wagon

Ava's first exchange was in December. I love the letters in her name and hope she signs up again. This is very similar to some of the envelopes that have already been posted. I had done some holiday envelopes in November and figured it would be OK to do some more of the ones that I thought had been successful. There will be a couple more days of variations on this theme and then we will have something new.

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Did anyone notice that yesterday's blog post was written as though it was the last day of the year? The minute I clicked on [Publish] and saw that there is one more day, I pondered how to correct that. It's ironic that I also announced the plans for the new year. 

Man plans, God laughs. 

Jean plans, everyone else laughs along with God. 

*** Do not read any further if you are trying to get things done. The following is only for people who have run out of things to do and need to kill time.

The new year has not started and I have already fallen off the wagon. My *wagon* is not about drinking it's the organizational thing. Does anyone know where that expression came from? I was curious and here is what I found:

Suggested explanations of the origin of ‘on the wagon’ focus on actual wagons that were used to transport people; for example, condemned prisoners who had taken their last drink in this life and were transported to the gallows by wagon. Another story has it that Evangeline Booth, the US Salvation Army National Commander, toured the Bowery slums in a wagon picking up drunks and delivering them to sobriety. The phrase pre-dates Booth’s work in New York, so that can’t be the origin. It isn’t far from the truth though, but, as we’ll see below, no actual wagon rides were involved. 

‘On the wagon’ was coined in the USA around the turn of the 20th century. The phrase began as ‘on the water-cart’, migrated to ‘on the water-wagon’ and finally to ‘on the wagon’.

The late 19th century saw the emergence of several temperance organisations, notably The Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893 and The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874. These followed on from the work of The Abstinence Society which had encouraged millions of men to ‘take the pledge’. The Pledge wasn’t just a vague intention to avoid drink; it was a specific and absolute promise never to drink again and was taken very seriously:

“I promise to abstain from all intoxicating drinks except used medicinally and by order of a medical man, and to discountenance the cause and practice of intemperance.

Water wagons were a commonplace sight in US cities at the time. They didn’t carry drinking water but were used to damp down dusty streets during dry weather. Those who had vowed to give up drink and were tempted to lapse said that they would drink from the water-cart rather than take strong drink. 

The first reference to it that I’ve found in print is from Alice Caldwell Hegan’s comic novel Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, 1901: 

I wanted to git him some whisky, but he shuck his head. “I’m on the water-cart.”

‘Water-wagon’ was soon used as an alternative and the distinction between the figurative phrase ‘on the wagon’ and real water-wagons was made clear in this piece from The Davenport Daily Leader, March 1904:

“Peter Solle took a bad fall from the water wagon this morning. The water wagon was not that imaginary, visionary affair that is sometimes applied to he who signs the pledge, but was the real thing, all there and big as life.”

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The quote is from https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/on-the-wagon.html

Battle Toaster

 IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Blogger has not been alerting me to the comments that people have been leaving - so that I can approve them to be posted. I just discovered all kinds of lovely comments and OKed them. Thank you to everyone who left a comment. They confirm all the nice things I said in my  Xmas eve post about how much I appreciate my reader/pen pals.

***

I blocked out the street address which was right above the city/state/zip.

I've always enjoyed designing and addressing holiday cards for my daughter. It was easy when the kids were little - I just did everything and she was grateful. Then the kids got older and there were no good photos of them for a card so we stopped doing them. Then the granddaughter turned 10 and wanted to know why their family did not send cards because they received so many. So, my daughter let her daughter design them and they ordered them online - shipped to me to do the addressing. That worked out fine.

This year the two of them made a huge blunder. Instead of the usual 5x7 cards, they ordered 6x8. On top of that they ordered double thick. They had no idea that the weight would be over an ounce....and I had already bought stamps - for normal 1-oz mail. 

I did not discover the blunder until their order arrived to be addressed - and I was hoping to do a one day turnaround to get them in the mail. I could have put a yellow school bus stamp on each one - but that would have looked goofy. So I did double stamps on 40 of them and then bought some 2-ounce stamps. They're OK - but I haven't told them what I did. I'm guessing they will be OK with it - I just couldn't make myself buy double stamps for all the cards. I suppose they can fire me. [Real time add-on: they were fvery happy with what I did.]

***

My son and I saw this car in a parking lot while he was driving me around looking for more of the Holiday Cheer stamps - back when I thought I only needed 80. He said he had seen it around the neighborhood. I was wildly excited to see it for the first time because I love art cars. Note the sign below the license plate that says *Battle Toaster.*

There are a couple actual street signs on the driver's side of the car. The stop sign is no longer red

I like the fire extinguisher mounted by the windshield. And below is a close up of the dash board sculpture. 

My son knows that I'd love to get one of the retired LLV postal delivery trucks. He asked me if I could magically have either an LLV or the Battle Toaster - which would I choose. That's a really hard question. If we are talking magic - I guess I would go for the LLV but have it turned into a Battle Toaster.

The interior of the Battle Toaster was actually pretty nice. But, my son would not let me take any more photos. Personally, I think if you create a vehicle like this you are happy when people want to photograph it. 

Happy New Year - tomorrow we have the January exchange sign-up and then the next day we launch the new and improved style/tool/layout project that intersects with the hoard reduction project and legible addressing project. <Eye-rolling>

Ben's birthday envelope.

 

I ran out of photos of envelopes so I didn't quite fill up December on the snowy day. <days pass> It's been a week and there was more snow. I did a quick envelope to my grandson who has a Dec 17th birthday. I'm surprised it took me this long to notice the POW in that family's last name. I wonder if he's even seen the old time cartoons with the loud noises done in lettering. He reads graphic novels for kids. I haven't looked at them to see if they have creative lettering.

On my trip to Chicago in November, Ben mentioned that he really liked to write in cursive and had done a whole page of cursive at school that day. I asked him to write some cursive for me. It is so scrunched up. That seems to be what happens to a lot of people. I wonder why.

Oct from Mary and Leslie

Even though we are not in a halloween mood - from a design standpoint these two look great together. Lots of people still had Day of the Dead stamps left. I wonder if they will be available in 2026.

Mary's design (above) is fun. I hope I remember to steal the idea of the name across the bottom. I can think of so many ways to do it where the address would still be very clear for the scanners.

Leslie's (below) might have needed some human eyes - but it was just going across town. I wonder how that works. I have posted, previously, about the one place in the US (I think it is in Utah) where images of envelopes pop up and humans try to figure out what the address is. 

Many years ago, there was a woman in our calligraphy guild who had a job with the USPS and she sat at a desk where actual mail that the scanners could not read would slide by on a track, stop in front of her, and she would decipher the address and type in the bar code. I have no idea if such a job still exists. I'll try to find out.

 

Oct/Nov from Janet, Leslie, Sharen and Cindy

There has been a two week hiatus from writing blog posts.

Here we are at the end of the year. I have two blog posts to fill and then we will launch 2026. I feel the need to wrap things up with the halloween themes. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to start holding half the incoming holiday envelopes and post them the following year. 

These are all fun - I'm happy to report that I have been vigilant on the final push of the hoard reduction. There is no deadline. Maybe I should set a deadline. I'm writing this on Dec 6. Maybe I can reflect on how much has been accomplished in the past three weeks when I get to my final edit of this post.

 

Well, it's a week later, Dec 12. There has been progress on all fronts. I'm hesitant to say that because it might jinx things. On the other hand, the way I am logging this progress report makes me feel like I am keeping a journal. I've noticed several articles on the benefits from journaling. The only time I journaled was when I read The Artist's Way. After I finished the book, I never journaled again. 

On the other hand, if I go back and read old blog posts - it's like reading a journal. One thing I read about how to establish a journal writing routine was to not be too rigid in exactly how/when/where/how often you write. So, that exactly what's happened with the blog. 

Nov to Jacqueline

 

SURPRISE!!!

I actually had one envelope that I really liked in November. Thank you for putting up with all my complaining about all my Nov exchange envelopes. I wish I had come up with this idea earlier. Now that I have it, maybe I will do some more. It was lots of fun to do and I can even think of some fun variations. Maybe I can use this idea for everyone who received one of those yucky gold envelopes.

I don't think I even talked about the cardinals. The shapes on the branches seem like really nice shapes  to use in the design but they were harder than I imagined. Maybe they needed to be done with a brush. 

I haven't been giving many updates on the writing of the blog posts on the snowy day (Nov 29). It is now 2:15 p.m. and I have only five posts left to fill December. That's very doable. I'll go do one of the hoard reduction chores and then come back and write 5 more. Thank you Accountability Posse. You are really keeping me on task.

Nov to Christy, JeanR, Maggie, Rachael, Janet, Patty, Amy and Wayne

Merry Christmas. Here are 8 lumps of coal.

I'm perfectly happy with the sentiment of thanking my exchangers for exchanging.

It's hard to say why I am so disappointed in these. One would think I could find something nice to go with the gold. I like gold. Maybe it's the black that is throwing me off. I still have a lot of the gold envelopes left and I don't like to give up - so I fear there will be more yucky gold envelopes. 

Maybe the right stamp will appear. The stamps with white backgrounds are better than a lot of other one. Maybe I should try those stamps with the gold calligraphic *ThankYou*

These layered ones remind me of the pictures where you have to wear 3D glasses to see the image in 3D.

I wish I had done three stamp shapes on this one - and maybe that's the solution to the gold envelopes - lots and lots of stamps. Something really crazy. As I said, I'm not afraid of a challenge and I do like the idea of figuring out something wonderful. I just don't want to figure it out on the very last envelope...and then have no more gold envelopes....because the last thing I'm going to do is buy more gold envelopes. I did not buy these - they were left over from a job.

 

Nov to Lynne - the annual story which is just musing

 

Well, here we are. Christmas Eve. This envelope is the equivalent of getting a lump of coal. Or maybe it isn't that bad. There are a total of nine gold envelopes. I'll run the other eight tomorrow and hopefully I'll be back on track with good ideas. Or maybe not. Either way, I live by what I preach. It's not the content, it's the process. We still need to putter without getting all self-judgy.

***

Nothing popped up for a really good Annual Dec 24th story. I'm writing this on Thursday, Nov 27th which was Thanksgiving. It was also the 45th birthday of my daughter, my first born. In 1980, Thanksgiving fell on the 27th. Few things compare to the experience of 30-some hours of labor followed by hospital food on Thanksgiving. I was 28 years old. At 28 a person is still full of impressions about the path they are on and what they are planning to accomplish. At 28 you have not learned that *People plan. God laughs.*

Flash forward 45 years. None of what I was imagining came true. Not a single thing. My imagination was kooky, at best. Pie in the sky is another way of looking at it.

But not in a bad way. This isn't going to be a story - it's just musing.

The stork was either drunk or on drugs when he dropped my babies down the chimney. Tests would reveal that we share DNA, but, honestly, I feel like we are five people who came from 5 different planets. Again - that's not a bad thing. It's just not what I was expecting. But, I'm thankful that everyone is cordial and they have found paths that seem to be working out.

I am thankful for my pen pals. Some people send the sweetest notes in their envelopes. Other people send emails that warm my heart. And then there are those complete strangers who keep to themselves but I totally get it that we have some weird connection. I see you when I look at the numbers of page views. An unbelievable number.

Some of my Christmas Eve stories are funny and there were a few humorous incidents this year that I considered for Dec 24th. I feel like I already shared the truly absurd ones - like MrW offering to buy generic stamps. 

I can always do an add on if something bizarre happens.

To reiterate - my penpals/readers are a perfect balance to my actual day-to-day existence. It blows my mind a bit to have created this little corner of the WorldWideWeb and it keeps chugging along. Thank you for sending me the right amount of encouragement to keep the blog going and Happy Holidays.

***

OK -  a really good add-on popped up on Dec 23. My weaning off the internet has progressed nicely. In place of surfing, I read magazines. They are available for free online through my library - so technically - it's still screen time - but, it's more focused on topics.

The Dec 29th issue of The New Yorker (pg 13) had a review of the current Gagosian installation in Paris. The basement studio of Joseph Cornell has been reimagined in three storefront windows. This add-on is for people who already know and love the work of Joseph Cornell. I don't have time to say more - it's a quirky corner of the art world that a few of you might enjoy seeing.

Here is a

LINK to a review of the installation/exhibit

Nov to Grace, Jessica, Cindy, Juliana and Nanski

These are the very first ideas I tried with the holiday stamps. I did just the design part the first week of November before I left for my two weeks in Chicago and I knew they were dismal. When I got back, I pulled out that super chunky, dark green marker with the Neuland that ran yesterday and the day before.

I'm going to let you see some work that is not blog worthy. The whole point of the blog is to spend time puttering and see what happens. I'm sure some of these look just fine and I can't really articulate why I find them so disappointing. 

After the two weeks in Chicago, I tried some new things that turned out better. Then a few days after mailing them I realized that I should have written names in a circle to look like a wreath. I'll probably buy some more of these stamps and do some names in circles. 

It's still snowy day - and I already have the 24th written - so - I'll finish out the week with some ugly ducklings and then return to Oct and Nov incoming envelopes.

 Real time add-on. I can now articulate what's wrong with these. They are lacking finesse. They are warm ups. Sadly, I do not have time to discard all of my warm ups - some people just have to put up with them. There is no rhyme or reason to how I decide who gets a warm up and who gets something further down the line. There are times that I peak in the middle so - it's very very random how the lists get done.

Nov to Erika, Nicky, Renee, Riley, Sharen and Samantha

I'll just run the rest of the Neuland envelopes that went with this stamp. I don't think many people are interested in Neuland. I coordinated the details from the stamps. Yesterday I ran the holly stamps. Erika and Nicky have pine needle designs. I like that light green on Nicky's.

I wasn't sure what to do with the amaryllis stamps. I'm not too happy with how these turned out. Now that they have been gone for a while, maybe a red outline would have helped. Or gold?

I'm grrrring at myself for the way Samantha's turned out. That's egregious how the stamp is sideways. Then I had second thoughts about putting the address up top so put just the street and zip at the bottom. I hope Samanthat signs up again. She's a newer exchanger and I hope I get another chance to send her something nice. Of course, when she sees what's coming up tomorrow, she can feel better about what she did receive. 

Brace yourself - the duds are coming.

 

Nov to Lucy, Kate and Irene

Last week featured incoming Oct and Nov envelopes - and possibly some real time posting of incoming Dec envelopes - at least that's the plan I came up with when I loaded all the photos and decided to hold off on blurb writing. It's still that snowy Saturday right after T-day as I write this.

I ended up sending holiday themed envelopes for the November exchange. I tried to do some *thankful* themed envelopes but did not care for them so I switched to these stamps. I like the designs and colors and was pretty sure I'd have really good ideas.

They are not wildly inspired but the colors are nice. Neuland is one of those styles that *drips from my fingers.* That's the expression that Sheila Waters used for that feeling you get when you have practiced a style so much that you don't have to think very hard about all the subtle details. I love that expression.

The green marker is a little bleedy. I think it would have been nicer to have sharp, crisp edges. But I like the way these turned out. 

I don't remember what order I did these three. Kate's has all white. Lucy has the white in-line and multi colored holly leaves. Irene's has multi colored holly leaves. All three have various amounts of bounce. 

 

Nov from Jessica, Lynne and Kristine - Pella photo

From Jessica (above) and Lynne (below)

Both get that vote of approval for their clear penmanship on the addresses.

Lynne used WeaverWriting which is a little quirky. Hopefully the scanners can read the letters that fling or swoop.

Kristine's (below) has clear penmanship.

Hopefully the scanners can ignore stripes and patterns.

Janet sent me a fun photo from Pella, Iowa, which is a charming Dutch community about 45 minutes SE of Des Moines. They are famous for Pella windows, their baked goods and most of all the Tulip Festival. I've been to see the tulips and much prefer to watch the news for when the tulips are at their peak and hopefully it is a day or two before or after the actual festival. Thanks, Janet. The whole thing looks like a giant envelope - if there was an address in place of one of the stamps. Good idea for an envelope.

 

Nov from Riley and JeanR - last minute paper decorations

From Riley (above) and JeanR (below)

Nice clear addressing - I can't remember my shortened way of designating approval for clear addresses so we are letting that go.

The the three boxed letters are gold which did not photograph very well - so you have to imagine how pretty this is.

 Trust me - if you like to make things out of paper - there are some fun ideas at this website. I don't think you need to buy any of the templates. I think most of the items are pretty straightforward if you can work a ruler and a protractor. Part of me even thinks they could be very fun decorations if they were done free-hand. Too bad I am full of self-control to not test that theory. Or am I? Is this a cliff hanger?

LINK to fun stuff

Maggie and Nicky or Lucy - comic strip clothes

 

Maggie used watercolor pencils.

I have watercolor pencils and I need to add them to the list of tools to use in the Style/Tool project.

SRSA

Scanner Recognition Seal of Approval

No return name - Nicky or Lucy? SRSA.

It's still Dec 6th which is Saturday and I need to get these last three posts filled. 

Apologies for the shortness, but, I'm pretty pumped for how things are shaping up for my 2026 posts.

LINK to a shirt. and who knows what else. This would be the shirt to wear to one of those restaurants that is painted to look like a comic strip.

LINK to the comic strip restaurant  which is close to my daughter's home in Chicago - so I think I'm going to try to go next time I am in Chicago....if I remember.....

I think I like this sweater even better than the shirt