this little life of mine

Last week I received two awesome presents in the mail: a custom quilt and pillow from Campus Quilt Company! You see, for decades now I have been lugging around all the t-shirts and sweatshirts from my high school and college years - a total of 10 shirts. They were taking up a lot of space, and I couldn't wear them anymore because I was very tiny then, and am really fat now, but I didn't want to just get rid of them because of the memories attached to them. I knew I should do something with them like make pillows or a quilt, but I'm not really so inclined to make pillows or quilts, so the shirts just sat there in a bin under the bed for a very, very long time.

Then my mom saw a segment on TV for Campus Quilt Company where they will take your old t-shirts and sweatshirts (or really any kind of shirt or clothing item), and make them into a beautiful keepsake quilt. She told me aobut it when I got home, and insisted I send my shirts into this company because God knows I was never going to get around to doing anything with these shirts myself, they are just taking up space, and I really can't enjoy them when they're sitting in a bin, now can I? So, after checking out the company's website as well as some reviews online, I decided it was an awesome idea, and sent out my college residence hall sweatshirts, other college shirts, t-shirts from my high school years and hometown area, as well as one sweatshirt I bought in Scotland to be transformed into something useful and amazing!

There are several different sizes of quilts depending on the number of shirts you have, as well as different options for the backing, sashing, even custom embroidery! I chose the 9-square lap quilt, and since I had an extra sweatshirt, opted for a pillow as well. After putting in my order, I was sent a small packet of instructions and samples of coloured swatches for the back and sashing. I got my shirts all together, numbered them in the order I wanted, filled out the order form with the colours I wanted, packed everything in a box, and mailed it out. 

Within a month, this box arrived (just FYI, everything was originally wrapped up beautifully, safely, and securely in heavy-duty plastic bags, but I couldn't wait to take pictures and opened them right away!):

And inside was an adorable pillow made from the sweatshirt I bought in Edinbrugh, Scotland in 1987:

And, this amazingly beautiful quilt made from my high school and college shirts:

I cannot even begin to tell you how very VERY happy, thrilled, and pleased I am with this quilt! It's gorgeous, it's hanging over my bed right now (I opted to have a wall-hanging sleeve for this exact purpose), and I smile every time I walk in my bedroom! Now I have all these great memories all in one place where I can enjoy it whenever I like! So, if you have some old shirts (college, high school, rock concerts, anything, really!), and you'd like to have a gorgeous quilt and pillow just like these, go straight to Campus Quilt Company's website and get started NOW!!!

Cheers!

Well, I was pretty excited to receive my Legacybox Saturday, and planned to do a quick video showing you all what comes in the box and how Legacybox works (with plans for a follow up unboxing once I received my stuff back!). BUT, as has been the case lately, my computer's web camera, which was suddenly there yesterday afternoon after being MIA for a week or so, decided to vanish again today, so you're all stuck with a blog post with photos instead.

le sigh!

Anyway, in a nutshell, Legacybox is an awesome service where you send them some of your old-school stuff like photos, negatives, filmstrips, audio and/or video cassettes, and they will convert them into a digital format. I have recently been trying to reduce the clutter in my house, and one way was to convert my hundreds of film negatives to digital using the VuPoint converter. It's pretty cool, but for me at least, it was a frustrating and time consuming process. I had a lot of trouble getting negative images to save to the mini SD card, and sometimes I ended up with three or four copies of one image, and zero copies of others. I'm sure it was just operator error, but it was still more than I felt like dealing with on my weekends, so I did some more web searching, and found Legacybox. Problem solved!

They have four different box sizes depending on how much stuff you have to convert. I chose the Collection box, which is $375.00, and will cover 375 negatives (or a combination of other things; right now I'm only concerned with the negatives!). I'm hoping that will just about cover all the negatives I've held on to over the years! I have always been a prolific photographer, and before the digital cameras came about, all I had was film. I started taking pictures in the mid- to late-70s with my Kodak 110, later moving to a Konica 35mm and a Ricoh automatic 35mm in the 80s, before discovering (and being able to afford) digital cameras in the late 90s. So, I have a LOT of negatives!

The box itself measures 17" x 12" x 6 1/2", and contains two interior boxes which measure about 8" x 11" x 5 3/4", and comes with a pre-paid return shipping label for FEDEX. You also get a Welcome Card, Reference Card, and an Order Card which I will return with my negatives.

So, now all I need to do is grab 375 negatives, put them in the interior boxes, tape it up, slap the label on, and drop it off at my local FEDEX place, or I can even drop it at the Post Office, which is probably what I will end up doing.

 Despite knowing I had a lot of negatives, I was surprised at the actual amount. After loading up with 375 negatives (and I'm hoping I did it correctly!), I found I still have 126 negatives left! These are mostly shots for the photography classes I took in college, and therefore only have one or two pictures worth saving per strip, unlike my vacation and holiday ones where I want everything! So, I will deal with the remaining negatives myself.

 I love that Legacybox includes a checklist so I could make sure I had everything I needed, and will keep this card on my bulletin board until I receive my digital copies and original negatives back. Once I see that the images are okay, I plan to shred the negatives and be done with them forever!

So, there you have it! I'm dropping my Legacybox off to the post office tonight after my workout, and in about four weeks or so I should have my smaller, more convenient digital copies! I'm very excited about it, and I look forward to showing you all exactly how it all works out! For now, have a great Monday and a wonderful week! Cheers!

1. OMG, I totally forgot about The August Break, a photo project I usually participate in. It's a bit late, but I'm going to try to catch up with it this weekend. I know, I know, trying to do TWO separate photo projects (I also try to doChantelle's monthly Photo a Day project)  in one month is pretty much setting myself up for absolute failure, but I feel like giving it a shot.
2. If you're a frequent reader of this blog, or follow me on any variety of social networking sites, then you're already aware that my grandpa died on Tuesday. It was not unexpected, and he was quite old (97!), and had had a great, long life, but it was still very sad, and I still cried my eyes out and am still doing so. For all that, I am glad my grandparents are together again. They were married 73 years on this earth before my grandma passed in 2011, and I'm sure they've missed each other.
3. I am contemplating going mostly off-line for the month of September. I was inspired to do this by Satya's recent entry about trying it herself, and also because of the cold shakes I got when I first thought about doing it. How much bigger a sign of addiction do I need??? I'm working on some general guidelines for my "Radical Sabbatical" (or RadSab, as I'm calling it), and will post them next week.
4. One week from today I will be on a brief vacation to Avila Beach, and I'm so excited I can't tell you! Despite being only 20 or so miles away, I rarely get to the beach, as much as I love it. I'm hoping my RadSab will get me out of my rut in that manner as well.
5. And, finally, here's a lovely picture of my grandparents on their 60th wedding anniversary. Cheers!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

•Grab your current read
•Open to a random page
•Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
•BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
•Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Good morning! This week I'm rereading Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. I bought this book at the gift shop of the hospital where my father was dying from cancer in 1981. I found it beautiful, lyrical and comforting. (It also made me wish I could fly!) Periodically over the years I have picked it up and reread it. This year I'm participating in the Rereadathon 2013 during the month of July, and figured this would be a perfect addition to my list. 

Here's my teaser from page 81:

Then one day Jonathan, standing on the shore, closing his eyes, concentrating, all in a flash knew what Chiang had been telling him. "Why, that's true! I am a perfect, unlimited gull!" He felt a great shock of joy.

 
It may have happened 11 years ago, but not only will I never forget  September 11, 2001, I think remembering that day will always break my heart.

I don't think the lady who used to host Sepia Scenes is blogging anymore, but I always enjoyed this meme, so I've decided to just keep doing it on my own. This past weekend my mom and I started cleaning out my grandparent's house. We discovered several treasures including this old rubber stamp that my grandfather apparently used for his work. It doesn't have a date on it or anything, but I know it's pretty old because my grandparents moved out of Dayton in the early- to mid-70s, I think around the time my grandpa retired. Also, this box only cost 8 cents for third class mail! Ha!

Yesterday my mom and I went up to my grandparent's house to collect my dishes and generally go through some stuff. 

There were lots of really old, interesting things to go through. Here's a cute little pitcher/vase:

And here's a collection of miscellaneous keys:

This, um, I'm not sure what it's called. Shot? It's not a bullet, but it's used in a rifle. My dad used to make these when he'd go hunting. It has to be pretty old because my dad died in 1981, and I don't know if grandpa went hunting after that. I know he didn't do any hunting after he moved to California, and that was in '95.

We found several pocket watches, too. Here's a cool one that lost it's glass. But it still works!

Cheers!

All photos taken by me; collage created at picmonkey.com.

This week's All About Me Blog Challenge is the letter "C", and I have chosen to write about coffee - with much thanks to Kate for the prompt!

As you can see from the collage of coffee pictures I've taken over the years, I LOVE coffee! It started in childhood when I tried some of my grandmother's coffee with Coffeemate Creamer. Oooh, the creamy goodness! I wasn't allowed to drink much coffee as a child (it stunts your growth!), but started drinking quite a bit in high school. My friends and I would go have Cafe Mochas at either The Combine Mall in Pullman, WA or The Peppermill at the Moscow Mall (Moscow, ID). (I wish I'd thought to take pictures of those cups of coffee complete with the swirls of whipped cream and dark chocolate shavings on top, but I had no idea taking pictures of food and drink would become such a "thing"! ) 

In college (Central Washington University in Ellensburg, WA) my roomie and I had our own coffeepot and made and comsumed at least a pot of coffee a day. Just regular coffee like Folgers or something; nothing fancy or special. It was good, though, and really helped us study! On the weekends, I would walk downtown to The Village Cafe and treat myself to a Cafe Mocha and toasted cheddar bagel. I believe there was a little bookstore downtown that also made espressos, but I can't recall the name of it now.

Nowadays I'll get coffee at Starbucks, or Peets, or my current favourite coffeehouse, Bru in Atascadero, CA. At home I prefer Dunkin' Donuts regular coffee or flavoured coffees (I love vanilla!), but I'll buy pretty much whatever's on sale, and at work I use the Starbucks Via packets to make a cup of really yummy coffee. 

In the garden there is a small, but abundant lavender bush. Lavender is one my all-time favourite fragrances. I used to buy straight lavender oil to use as perfume when I was in college, and have a couple lavender-scented sachets that I keep in my "intimates" drawer. (I know, TMI! Sorry!) I would love to cut off a few pieces  of this plant to bring that delightful scent into my home, but I'm not quite brave enough to battle the bees for it! The bush is simply COVERED with bees! I tried to get some pictures, but most of them didn't come out because those busy little bees are fast!

I was doing OK until the bees kinda discovered me and started pestering me, so I fled! It's not that I'm scared of bees, exactly, but when I was a kid, I was stung by a bee, so now I'm wary of them. I was on a field trip to Rocky Reach Dam with my Blue Bird group frolicking barefoot around a grassy area by the Visitor's Center when I stepped on a bee and it stung me. I suppose it had every right to since I stepped on it, but ouch! It hurt like madness and my food swelled up really bad. It was scary, but a really nice older couple came over and helped out. They carefully pulled out the stinger, then mixed up some bakintg soda and water and put the paste on the site of the sting. I think that was supposed to take the swelling down or something, but I remember my foot was swollen for several days.

I didn't have any other allergy problems from the sting - thank God! - but I really don't want to get stung again and find out if my allergy to bees has gotten any worse!

Still, I really wish I knew where those bees lived, because I bet their lavender honey is delicious! 

Cheers!