Postcrossing

Today I received my 100th postcard since joining Postcrossing - so thought it was about time I updated you with some photos of how it is going. 

First of all lets give some credit to my 100th postcard I received today - it came from Thunder Bay in Canada from Nature-Lover. It looks and sounds like a beautiful place to live.

I've been a member of the site for 9 months, and it certainly makes it fun sending and receiving mail. If you do sign up it is entirely up to you how many cards you send and how often, so it can be as cheap as you want it to be. Although the site does cap how many you can have traveling at one time. I buy my cards from Pier 39 usually where I get 5 for $1, stamps range from 32c (mailing within US) to $1.05 (international). 

I purchased some display pouches from amazon, each one holds 40 photos or 80 if you want to make it double sided and the pouches are $21.00. I think it is a nice way to display the cards and I have them hung on the walls in my office. Unfortunately the cute dogs are an added extra!

In the 9 months I have successfully sent 110 cards to a total of 27 countries, and I currently have 6 traveling and sadly 5 expired (which means they didn't reach their destination within 60 days), although I have had previous expired cards take over 90 days and then get registered. The 100 (well 101 in fact) cards I have received have come from a total of 25 countries. I've taken some stats from the site to show you the breakdown, I also think it is interesting to see the time traveled data too. I personally log my cards on the day they are received, but I know some people hold their cards and log once a week, so this could make up for some of the longer sent times.

If you love sending and receiving mail, this is a great site for you to sign up to. 

Have a great day
Sarah x

Postcrossing

I've been meaning to blog about Postcrossing for the last month, then today I finally got round to buying something to display my cards in :)

I have been a member of the postcrossing community for almost 5 months now. In that time I have sent a total of 48 cards to 17 different countries and received 46 cards from 16 different countries. I also have 9 cards currently traveling to their destinations. I love how on the site you can see the stats for where you have sent and received cards from.

I do sadly have one expired card which I sent to Russia 71 days ago, the system expires them after 60 days :( Although I did receive a card from Russia recently that had been traveling for 67 days, so maybe my card will eventually get there. I also have three other cards I mailed on the same day to three different countries and none of them have arrived, so I'm wondering if something happened to the mail in my mailbox that day :( hopefully if it got lost at the sorting office it will get found and eventually delivered.

The whole community is really friendly and everyone sends you nice messages about themselves and lovely thank you messages when they receive your cards. If you love receiving nice mail (nor bills, or junk mail) then this project is definitely for you.

As you can see I have had a nice variety of cards from different places. I need to buy some more hangars to display them and also find a way of displaying the oversized ones too.

I will blog again in a few more months with some updated photos of my collection.

Catch Up time

Hello :)

Yes I know other than my challenge blog posts (well done to all the participants) I've been AWOL - apologies.

Life has been busy, I moved house and have had lots of visitors staying. My mother in law has been here for the last two weeks and flew home today, so I will be resuming normal service again shortly :)

So what have I been upto...

We took my mother in law to South Lake Tahoe for her 60th birthday and had lots of fun, we got there on the Friday afternoon and it was 99 degrees, when we left on the Monday it was 55 degrees, heavy rain and there was snow showers expected. Such strange weather. We had the heat the whole weekend we were there, which made it even nicer, we went to a Renaissance fair which was awesome, although not sure Dave was too impressed, as I got them to arrest him for walking off and abandoning me (they have lots of people in character walking around the event acting things out) and they put him in jail and he ended up getting drenched in the water barrel - those of you who are my friends on Facebook can see the photos from the event.

The biggest news for the last few weeks, which I'm sure that most of you would have read on twitter on Facebook, was that Dave and I became permanent residents of the US. We now have our green cards, so you are stuck with us for at least the next 10 years :) and it also means I'm now allowed to go and get a job (which is a scary thought after not working for almost 3 years). Although first I have the fun job of going to the social security office to get issued with a social security number - for those of you in the US - you know what a mundane task this is (much like a trip to the DMV!!). 

As most of you will know I signed up to do the Susan G Komen 3 day, 60 mile walk this September, which I was really looking forward to and had just started the official training (until the day I fell off the treadmill!!). Well unfortunately I am longer going to be taking part :( For those of you who didnt know, I have two herniated discs in my lower spine, I recently had an epidural injection to help with the pain, which worked great, but the last few weeks I have been in some pain again :( I went to see my spine doctor last week and he has said that he thinks I will need a second epidural injection soon, but there is no guarantee it will work, and there is still a good chance I will need surgery on my spine/discs, which can have a long recovery period. I discussed the walk with him, and he advised me against doing it with my back in it's current condition, as he said it would put too much pressure on my discs and possibly do more damage :( So I am no longer taking part. A special thanks again to everyone who did donate to such a great cause. I am still planning to do the two 5k walks next month, which my doctor said shouldn't be an issue as long as I stretch plenty and take it easy. So I will be doing the Do Life walk on July10th and The Color Run on July 14th.

I'm still busy sending and receiving postcards through Postcrossing, I have sent a total of o 20 cards and have received 16 so far, I look forward to the mailman coming each day now in case he has a postcard for me :) It's interesting hearing from people all over the world. I plan to make some kind of collage out of them when I get 20. Not sure exactly what or how, but there will be photos.

Weight watchers - erm........ well...... I haven't pointed in weeks :( and as a result I have gained a total of 5lbs in the last three weeks, taking my total weight loss since the beginning of the year to a measly 6.8lbs. So I now have no excuse to get back on track, I have no more visitors planned until October, and nothing else planned that I can use as an excuse to not track. Plus I joined my local gym yesterday and plan to start swimming again and attending aqua aerobics classes. Feel free to harass me on twitter and Facebook, and any other ways to keep me on track - it will be much appreciated.

Oh and I booked tickets to see The Lion King in SF for my birthday in November :)

If you have made it to the end of my lengthy blog post - pat yourself on the back you deserve it :)

Catching up plus week 18

Life has been crazy here for the last few weeks. 

We moved house, then three days after moving in my sister and her husband came to visit, and then last weekend I was in Vegas - which was awesome (and very very hot!).

I'm finally getting a chance to sit down and chill out and start getting organized, and also planning for our next visitor (my mother in law) who arrives in 11 days and a trip to Tahoe :)

Last week's weigh in was a big surprise to me, as I wasn't expecting a huge gain, and wasn't sure why, I put it down to a few things, new medication, possibly eating more and scales on a new floor. The scales theory I kind of ruled out almost immediately as it showed the same weight on various places in the house. Last weekend I was in Vegas and I walked loads, I wore my fitbit the whole time and one day I walked 23,000 steps! I drank lots of water whilst there, and whilst I did eat unhealthy things I didn't eat loads. So I was surprised to have another gain this week of 3.8lbs, so a total of 10.8lbs in 2 weeks. I stopped my medication on Tuesday and weighed myself this morning and I am down 2.8lbs so far, so I'm thinking it must have been from the medication, plus I had really swollen ankles after returning from Vegas. So hopefully now the medication is out of my system the scales will be going the right way.

So onwards and upwards or should I say downwards as I don't plan on another gain. I have a plan of action too. I have been organizing my new gym/office room in our new house. 

 

 As you can see I have a treadmill, bike, exercise ball, jump rope, dumbells, stretch bands and a bodyblade. So lots of things to keep me busy, plus all the steps in my house! Plus near to my house there is a HUGE staircase, twice this week I have tackled part of it, each time I climbed 75 steps, the first time felt OK, but I was out of breath at the top, the second time seemed a lot harder. One day I hope to walk the full set, which I guess is probably around 160, haven't counted them yet.

It is also only 16 weeks until my 3 day, 60 mile walk, so think it is time to do some training, each week they send me an email with a training plan, so I have written it out on the board in my gym room and plan to mark off each day I complete it - I will be reporting back next week :) This should also give me weight loss a boost. I also need to work on my fundraising as I have to raise $2300 in order to be allowed to take part, I've raised $1,295 so far, so am over half way there :) Thanks to everyone who has donated already.

I am still pain free since my epidural injection (yay!), and restarted physiotherapy on Friday, I have been referred for 8 sessions and this week I am focusing on stretching as my muscles are very tight. They also put me on a traction machine, which was a very strange experience.

We are coming to the end of the first week of my summer challenge, so I will be posting about that tomorrow. The challenge for this week was to drink 100oz of water each day. I have been drinking loads but must confess I haven't been keeping track of the actual amount, but am hoping it has been 100oz, I must measure my cup sometime, it helps that we have a fridge with a water dispenser on the front, so every time I am in the kitchen I have a glass of water.

I am in the process of transferring my gym membership, I just need to go into the new location to activate it, which I plan on doing next week. Then I hope to get back to my water running classes as well. Maybe I should stop using the words hope and hopefully and be more positive!!

I mentioned a few weeks back about a website called Postcrossing, well I received my first postcard this week which came from Germany.

I have mailed a total of 11 now, so should be receiving more in the mail very soon. I have also this week discovered foodie penpals, which sounds like an awesome idea, where you send food packages to people each month, so am thinking of signing up for that also.

Well done if you made it to the end of my blog post. Have a great week xxx

Postcrossing

I discovered this pretty cool site the other day when I was browsing various blogs, unfortunately I can't remember who mentioned it (sorry).

Postcrossing is a site where you send and receive postcards from all over the world. I'm not sure if it is a British thing or not, but I love sending and especially receiving things in the mail (except bills!), of course I love emails too, but a letter, card, postcard etc is something extra special. Since moving to the US, I notice people here don't seem to be big card senders :(

It's free to register on the site, and you submit your details: name and address and a bit about yourself in a profile section. Then you request an address, I think to start with you can request up to 5 addresses. You can choose whether to include or exclude your country, I chose to exclude USA, but may consider re-adding it at a later date for some variety. So I requested 5 addresses, mine were in Finland, Netherlands, Russia, Germany and England. I went to the store and bought a bunch of San Francisco themed postcards and mailed them today with a few notes about living in SF. Each name and address I was given came with an ID # which I had to include on the card. Then when the recipient receives the card they go on to the site and input the ID and say they received it, that then makes my name and address available to the next person in the queue. So for every postcard you send you should get one back.

I personally think this is quite exciting and look forward to receiving my first postcard. They even have regular meetups too in different locations. I will be sure to update you when I receive my first postcard.

Anyone want to take a guess where it may come from?