Hearts, Love, Mail Art, and Valentines, VA.

 These little hearts are from a stamp set that I got a long time ago and am happy that I kept. How perfect they are for the day that we're reminded about love, being loving, saying I love you. All of which, we need to be doing on a regular basis not just once a year, right?

 I received some Mail Art recently from Marseille, France - a beautiful painted mermaid. I'll post that here soon, but here's the card that I made in response. I altered a show card - one of Keith Long's wood sculptures. I make myself laugh when I do these alteration. I hope the artist in Marseille will get a smile, at least.

This is for Clyde, my letter carrier most excellent! He's leaving us after 18 years on this route, going to an easier one so he can make it 8 more years to retirement. We will soooo miss him. 

 I had this commercial postcard from the Meatball Shop and don't know why, but the pale flowers and kitty seemed appropriate for it. "You had...." fill in the blank.

photo by Bill Tiernan, Virginia-Pilot 2011

There's a little post office in Virginia, in a place called Valentines, that gets inundated with mail this time of year. The rest of the year, not so much. A few days ago, an article appeared in our newspaper telling about how it's at risk of having reduced hours and maybe even being closed. Lots of rural post offices are in the same situation.
Here's a photo of it that I found on-line. Actually, this is a little store with the post office inside it. You can read about it here.  If you feel like sending a postcard of support, you can mail it to Kathy Fajna, Postmaster, Valentines, VA 23887 - maybe an influx of mail year round will help.

And if you are really interested in Post Offices, check out THIS blog.

Elflog update

Yesterday the shelf was almost bare. Three little stones, the paper clip with the two buttons, a round magnet on a nail way up high on the pole, and a very bedraggled mermaid...what a sorry state of affairs at the shelf. I brought the mermaid home. she looks like she was caught in a gale or a fishing net. Her hair is disheveled, her companion fish is gone, and her tail was twisted...we'll never know what happened! Today, I moved the magnet closer to the shelf, added some word stones, and a rubbery coin purse with a quote on paper inside. The coin purse was in the swag bag we got at the swap meet in Winston-Salem. It says "keshwaukee," or something like that, on it. Won't someone just love to have that!!??