june, I love you

(postcard I made for last year's swap)

first of june= unofficially summer. even if it doesn't feel like it, even if portland doesn't know it yet. the first of june is when the sandals and floaty skirts come out, it's when I start thinking about things like box fans, lightning bugs and baby pools. I get serious about gardening. speaking of which, my strawberry plants are looking awesome. anyway. june means open windows. it means picnics, yard sales and road trips. and projects. good lord, the projects. june is for the starting of new projects, june is the new january. only without all that pesky dreary weather. unless, of course, you live in portland.


(more of my postcards)

so it was this time last year that I organized my first postcard swap. when I initially put the idea out there, I had no idea so many people would be interested. 20, I thought. 30 tops. when the final count hit 80 something, I was shocked. I decided I needed to break folks up into smaller groups of 12-15. high on some kind of crazy summer happy, I put myself on every list. which is a little nuts, yes, I realize this now. but I'd decided early on to send a postcard to each person who signed up.


(the great wall of postcards, about to be dismantled and *gulp* mailed out)

which meant I made a lot of postcards. oh friends, so many postcards. wore down more gluesticks than I'd care to mention, cut up enough little squares of paper to cover a small third world country. I spread my supplies out everywhere, took over the entire bed, the entire house. each night, ward would try to fit his body into the inch of space I'd so generously left for him on his side of the bed. he would gently (okay and not so gently) push supplies out of the way, curl up into a little ball and try to fall asleep. meanwhile, I woke up with bits of paper stuck to my legs, my arms, found them hiding in the folds of my nightgown.



somewhere around the 50th postcard, I wondered what I'd gotten myself into. but sending out 80 or something postcards also meant that I'd be receiving 80 or something postcards.


(my wall of summer, thanks to all the delightful swap peeps)

actually, I received a little bit of lovely summer mail art everyday for about a month. which made all the hard work absolutely totally worth it. the postcards, they came from all over. some from different countries, many more from all over the united states. each day I found something new waiting for me in my mailbox. a bright-colored collage or painting, an old-fashioned summer recipe, a favorite summer poem. everything from a deconstructed watermelon to the simplicity of the grape popsicle. everyone had a different take on summer and by the end of the season, they'd all found a place on my kitchen wall. which is exactly where they stayed until the night before thanksgiving. I could barely stand to do it but the time finally came to take them all down.



so I just can't not do it all again. and I can't wait for portland to bring me summer because holy crap, she is really dragging her feet. portland, I'm going to pretend that it's not cold and rainy outside today. I am going to shut my eyes and pretend it isn't so. while I am waiting for the sun, I will be working on summer-themed postcards. well, hopefully. I need a few people to sign up to make the second annual summer postcard swap an official thing. so if you're interested, please leave your name and email address in the comment section below or click on my profile where you'll find the option to email me. same guidelines as last year and soon there'll be a new flickr group to join. I'll allow a couple weeks for folks to sign up and then close the swap on june 15th. you'll receive an email with instructions and a list of names and addresses. and then the fun really begins. hopefully, the sun will be out by then. hopefully, summer will be in full swish.