337/365 :: Monday 3 December 2018
​it's always a good day when a TWLOHA order arrives.

338/365 :: Tuesday 4 December 2018
the sun came out on Tuesday.

339/365 :: Wednesday 5 December 2018
I love the Little Owl books and their beautiful illustrations, and I was so excited to get to read the sequel to The Five People You Meet in Heaven so soon after finally reading the first one. (the first one is better.)

340/365 :: Thursday 6 December 2018
a few of my favorite vintage Door County postcards.

341/365 :: Friday 7 December 2018
sending more love letters. I had to get these cute notecards from Target!

342/365 :: Saturday 8 December 2018
it's been a while since I've gotten to see the sunrise colors. it has been so cloudy in the mornings lately!

343/365 :: Sunday 9 December 2018
no more black pumpkin, and now some Christmas cheer! (I am forever creeping on the rest of Third Avenue.)

330/365 :: Monday 26 November 2018
​it just keeps growing and growing... I've had this one for over a year and am still surprised that I haven't managed to kill it yet.

331/365 :: Tuesday 27 November 2018
I like sparkle. and new-with-tags dresses from second-hand stores.

332/365 :: Wednesday 28 November 2018
​Wednesdays are for reading the next chapter.

333/365 :: Thursday 29 November 2018
I stole this hat from my dad years ago, and I wear it when it rains or snows because I don't really care for carrying an umbrella or getting water on my glasses.

334/365 :: Friday 30 November 2018
​it's the little things that make a home.

335/365 :: Saturday 1 December 2018
​one day the sun will return.

336/365 :: Sunday 2 December 2018
the clouds couldn't decide if it should rain or if it should snow, and so we got some slush and a little snow.

the sun came out on Tuesday morning. it felt like it had been weeks since the sky was last blue and bright. it's been grey for too long, and I didn't even notice or believe it at first. the sunbeams stretch across my hardwood floors and the rainbows dance on the walls again.

I knew I needed to walk around the corner to the post office anyway to drop off the mail that I had written in the past nineteen hours. there were ten postcards for Postcrossing (eight international - Netherlands, Germany, China, Belgium, Finland, and Taiwan; two domestic - Kansas and Massachusetts), one postcard to New York, and two notes for More Love Letters.

the sun was shining, and after I put on my coat and scarf and sunglasses, I popped in my earbuds so I could continue listening to the TWLOHA podcast. this week it's an interview with Hannah Brencher, the founder of More Love Letters. I've read both of her books, so I knew a lot of the story that she shared, but it was even more incredible to get to hear her speaking the story instead of letting my eyes just read the words from a page.

I often find it hard to speak my mind and tell people how much they mean to me, but there is something so healing about sending handwritten words of hope. some days they're words that I need to hear myself. most days, I add some of my favorite quotes from a journal full of sparklets and I share other people's words too. we have a hope for the future, and a hope for each other. it feels so much better to write them down rather than to just send a text. it's so much more personal. you can hold it in your hands and know that someone took a little extra effort to connect with you.

last year during TWLOHA's suicide prevention campaign, they partnered with More Love Letters one day and you could write a letter to yourself that they would mail back to you a year later. when I received my letter in the mail this September, I cried before I even opened it because I remembered the Teresa from a year ago and her pain, but her hope for future Teresa. "you deserve all the best, but you need to be the one to give it to yourself."

and who knows, maybe if I have your address, you might someday be surprised to find some handwritten hope from me in your mailbox. or maybe you already have.

"you're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. you're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. you're the storyteller and the story told. you are somebody's something, but you're also your you." - Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

"so many of the things you think and want to say to a person never spill out in real life. they stay locked in secret rooms inside of you. they live for tiny lifetimes inside the hearts of people who don't have the courage to say what they meant the whole time. some people leave, and go, and die, and change, without you ever getting to tell them how you truly feel about them." - If You Find This Letter by Hannah Brencher

323/365 :: Monday 19 November 2018
I love vintage ephemera, and this photo is one of my favorite finds.

324/365 :: Tuesday 20 November 2018
you can only reserve twenty-five books from the library, but you can check out one hundred.

325/365 :: Wednesday 21 November 2018
baby aloe is getting bigger!

326/365 :: Thursday 22 November 2018
​hello, my name is spoiled.

327/365 :: Friday 23 November 2018
postage on today's mail.

328/365 :: Saturday 24 November 2018
​LOOK AT THOSE SOCKS.

329/365 :: Sunday 25 November 2018
and now the leaves are about to, um, leave.

316/365 :: Monday 12 November 2018
visiting some family and then just a small wander because I wasn't exactly prepared for the cold.

317/365 :: Tuesday 13 November 2018
sunset bridge walk.

318/365 :: Wednesday 14 November 2018
chasing rainbows.

319/365 :: Thursday 15 November 2018
​how are there dandelions and snow in November?

320/365 :: Friday 16 November 2018
I don't think that that pumpkin is supposed to be black. please throw it away. it's driving me insane.

321/365 :: Saturday 17 November 2018
my favorite part of any parade.

322/365 :: Sunday 18 November 2018
some people know me very well.

309/365 :: Monday 5 November 2018
the leaves are finally turning on Third.

310/365 :: Tuesday 6 November 2018
it rained all day. I only left the apartment to vote and send some mail. I came back home to bake velvet brownies as a reward for voting. (:

311/365 :: Wednesday 7 November 2018
when your vintage suitcase matches one of the rooms at the vintage hotel where you work, you have to get a couple photos!

312/365 :: Thursday 8 November 2018
new aloe, officially dead jade. (whoops.)

313/365 :: Friday 9 November 2018
​...and it's snowing.

314/365 :: Saturday 10 November 2018
​I hate winter.

315/365 :: Sunday 11 November 2018
I like the snow from this viewpoint when it looks like frosting.

295/365 :: Monday 22 October 2018
the beginnings of a beautiful song. trust the bottle.

296/365 :: Tuesday 23 October 2018
almost full moon. but it was the hunter's moon, not the harvest moon as my brain decided it was. you would think that I would know that the harvest moon is in September like the Harvest Fest in Sturgeon Bay, but alas, my brain hasn't worked for a long time now.

297/365 :: Wednesday 24 October 2018
boots are just leg pockets.

298/365 :: Thursday 25 October 2018
visiting guitar in a lobby of locals.

299/365 :: Friday 26 October 2018
I can't even type the chorus to this song because it will be stuck in my head.

300/365 :: Saturday 27 October 2018
​finale. Step into the Light.

301/365 :: Sunday 28 October 2018
​souvenirs of a wonderful week.

302/365 :: Monday 29 October 2018
​this sunset reminds me of a crown.

303/365 :: Tuesday 30 October 2018
I almost dropped the glass on the upper left while washing dishes. it was kind of a miracle that I caught it because there were quite a few other breakable things in the sink where it would have landed, and that would have been a mess.

304/365 :: Wednesday 31 October 2018
happy Halloween, witches! (;
I actually kind of got lost in this cemetery in Green Bay. it's the biggest one I've been to thus far and rather enjoyed my hour-long photography hike and will probably be back.

305/365 :: Thursday 1 November 2018
I spent so much of my time on editing photos (only 1200-some from two shows at TAP...) that it took me far too long to get through reading these picture books as a pre-screen for my preschoolers. I didn't even realize that the top one was in Spanish and therefore of no use to someone whose Spanish is limited to greetings, counting to ten, a few basic phrases, and "pimp daddy." thank you, ten days in Ecuador.
the book on the bottom is more of a coffee table book from my favorite illustrator, and I am enjoying taking the time to look through and read about his processes.

306/365 :: Friday 2 November 2018
altered view. please don't ask me why I currently own three copies of this book. if we're counting audiobooks too, I actually have five copies...

307/365 :: Saturday 3 November 2018
the trees are changing downtown, and the gas price has dropped nearly a quarter. honestly, if I didn't live this close to a gas station, I would never know how much gasoline costs.

308/365 :: Sunday 4 November 2018
fallen leaves are my favorite.

288/365 :: Monday 15 October 2018
​fun things!!! I look forward to my Pipsticks delivery every month!

289/365 :: Tuesday 16 October 2018
just around the curve, more leaves that are just a couple days past peak so you think that they look horrible on the trees since they're drier than you were hoping they would be.

290/365 :: Wednesday 17 October 2018
​another cemetery visit.

291/365 :: Thursday 18 October 2018
my very favorite illustrator came out with another new book!

292/365 :: Friday 19 October 2018
​morning light.

293/365 :: Saturday 20 October 2018
it's the cat's pajamas. (do people still say that?)

294/365 :: Sunday 21 October 2018
​wham. a new Holiday Motelecaster.

281/365 :: Monday 8 October 2018
a quick cemetery visit. I think that the leaves are prettier when they're on the ground rather than on the trees.

282/365 :: Tuesday 9 October 2018
my spider friends are okay as long as they stay on the outside of my windows.

283/365 :: Wednesday 10 October 2018
​dusty purple sunrise.

284/365 :: Thursday 11 October 2018
​finally, blue skies and white clouds instead of all grey all day.

285/365 :: Friday 12 October 2018
feeling like an autumnal basic bitch since my momager bought me a giant caramel apple.

286/365 :: Saturday 13 October 2018
last week, I rescued thirteen books at Goodwill (for sixty-five dollars). the first two Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children were two of those books (and six of the other eleven were Harry Potter books), which I started reading this week. the first one hundred pages or so were pretty slow, but I'm really enjoying the story now. (and the vintage photos are crazy cool.)

287/365 :: Sunday 14 October 2018
​I love watching the leaves appear all shiny and new.

274/365 :: Monday 1 October 2018
the last time I bought candles, Bath & Body Works didn't have the scent that I was looking for, but they had some horoscope ones and my sign (Leo) had the scent that was actually pretty close to what I was looking for. I often had this one burning while watching Six Feet Under, so that's what the scent now reminds me of. (my mom is going to be so annoyed that I ended the last two sentences with prepositions.)

275/365 :: Tuesday 2 October 2018
​a new journal for writing lists.

276/365 :: Wednesday 3 October 2018
early morning wasp was hanging out on the outside of my window for at least an hour.

277/365 :: Thursday 4 October 2018
I just really love old postcards for places like restaurants, hotels, schools, hospitals, and churches. some of those places just seem like odd places to have a postcard for, but I kind of which that it was still a thing that happened today.

278/365 :: Friday 5 October 2018
​a tiny coloring project.

279/365 :: Saturday 6 October 2018
this cheerful chinchilla came in an Etsy order. isn't he cute?

280/365 :: Sunday 7 October 2018
October, the one month a year where quite a bit of the decor in my apartment doesn't seem strange. additionally, six of these seven photos were taken in the same room because I preferred staying in for most of the week.