Friday, October 24, 2014

The Care Package Project: October

Emboldened by the success of my (rather late, who cares) September CPP, I got right on securing the contents of our October package. I had a rather lovely hour-long lunch a couple of weeks ago, which I spent at our local stationary store.

Because Abby and I had already decided in September that Mara, my best friend from high school, was going to be our October CPP, I knew just what I was looking for. Except Abby got me in trouble after this little exchange at the end of my first September Care Package post:
  1. oooooh, I want to be on your CCP list! Even if you just send me something like a stick of gum and some smiley face stickers. :)


    Spoiler alert: You're October. For reals. :)
Abby did not find it necessary for me to spill the beans. In my defense, I'm kind of terrible at surprises.

Also: A stick of gum and some smiley face stickers?! We can do much, much better than that, my friend.

Well, anyway. Mara has had a busy year -- she's self-published not one but two novels (both will be released Nov. 1!), she's started a Facebook and Twitter account (that's enough to send a person over the edge right there), and she's putting up really thoughtful (and often hilarious) posts (about writing!) on her new blog, The Writing Life. What this girl needs is some cute stationary to keep track of all that writing and posting and publishing, don't you think?

So imagine my joy when I found this:

WANT.

That's not even the best part -- inside there are QUOTES. About WRITING:

"It could be that there's only one word and it's all we need. It's here in this
pencil. Every pencil in the world is like this. --W.S. Merwin."

So yeah, I scooped this up pretty damn fast. And added a pen and corrector ribbon (because mistakes happen, yo, and: It's SO STINKING CUTE. I cannot resist these things). And then I had to toss in a pack of gum and some smiley-face stickers, except I couldn't find true smiley face stickers so I got smiley vegetables instead:

Those vegetables are kind of alarming
now that I study them.

Oh, and a Curly Girl Design card, 'cause they're my favorites:

I have this on a magnet on the fridge. The girls don't get it.

Here's what our package looked like in its entirety:

Hooray!

Ahem. If I may be so bold, this might be my new favorite package o' the project yet. (I say that every month, though.) Writing packages are such a blast to put together. Who else out there needs some stationary? You let me know.

I am getting older and wiser during the CPP, so this time I actually loaded in my package tracking number from the U.S. Postal Service and signed up for a text when the package was delivered. So yay, I can report we've had delivery success! In case you're keeping track, this makes us 6 wins, 4 losses, so we've clearly tipped the scales on the side of positive. That deserves another yay.

Next month, we're going to do something a little different on the CPP front. The girls will be more involved in the process, and I won't actually be shipping it at all. But you'll have to wait to hear about that. :)

P.S. Congratulations on your books, Mara! Seriously, I am ever so excited and proud. You rock!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, first things first, this CCP was a TOTAL surprise for me because I never saw Trish's comment that I was next! So let Abby know it was a surprise. Secondly, this was the most amazing and thoughtful thing any one has done for me for a long while, and it made my day. It also was wonderfully timely, because my day had been pretty craptacular (until I got the care package). I think Trish and Abby could go into a business. Really. You hire them to put together packages...much nicer than s plain bouquet of flowers or something...and they would use their skill in shopping and compiling goodies to delight your loved ones!

Trisha Walker said...

I'm so glad you were surprised after all, and that it came on just the right day, and that you enjoyed the contents. The writing packages are my favorites to put together!