Ink.

Hey folks!  So, something exciting happened to me yesterday!  It'f funny, I was just telling Megan in my intro letter that my blog so far has been really limited to just mail or food, and I was hoping for something exciting to happen so I could write about it, and I totally forgot about this certain thing going to happen, even though I'd had it planned for about 10 days prior.  Anyway, more on that later.

First, some mail.  After seeing Bianca post about it, I took a look at Cute Tape and couldn't help myself and indulged in 8 different types of Japanese Washi tape.  As you'll see I've been going a bit tape crazy on my recent letters.

 I have been using some tractor envelopes that Patty made and gave me in a recent swap, and decorating them with old receipts and some rub-ons from Patty as well.  I had never seen such a thing before, maybe you all have, but they are really cool!  Basically you cut out whatever piece you want, peel off the backing, and rub it on with [basically] a popsicle stick, and then the image transfers from the paper to whatever you're transferring it to.

Sadly, there was no incoming mail, but I did make a dent in letters needing to be written.  The following two were both intro letters going out for a new pen pals swap on Swap-bot.  The guidelines were to write an intro letter and include some little extras for your partner, so I added in some postcards and/or handmade envelopes into each.  Check 'em out:

and one more...

So, that does it for mail.  Onto the surprise, if you can call it that!  So, here it is:

I got a tattoo yesterday!  I have been thinking about this specific idea for quite a while now, and a few weeks back something just hit me and I realized I was really ready to finally get it done.  I can't quite explain it but it was a definite change of feelings.  I did some final research on fonts, sizing, etc., and came up with pretty much what I wanted.  I had known of a particular tattoo artist through two good friends of mine who knew other people who had also gotten tattoos from this specific woman, and heard nothing but great things about her, so I called her up to see if she would be interested in doing the tattoo for me and she was.  We met and discussed the idea and I told her what I wanted slightly tweaked, and set a date from there.  It's so funny because there was a 10 day gap in between meeting her and the date set for actually doing it, and I was fine up until the day before, when I woke up thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm getting a tattoo tomorrow!"  And then the day of, I woke up at 7:30 on my own, which never happens, and couldn't go back to bed!  I was so restless, I woke up, wrote a letter, cleaned, did an errand or two, etc., etc., etc.  Finally the time came and it was surprisingly less scary once she started setting up and prepping and everything.  The woman who did the tattoo is an amazingly nice person; she puts you at ease immediately, answers any and all questions nicely, and best of all, she was extremely clean and thorough with her procedure which was, of course, of huge importance to me.  Anyway, I'm rambling here, but the point is, I had a wonderful first-time experience and I couldn't be happier.  

So you're probably wondering about what the tattoo means?  Well, to be honest, I never thought I'd want to get a word or phrase tattooed on me, but I eventually saw some people with tattoos like that that I really liked and eventually came to the word 'accept' because I think it just sums up a lot of things that I aspire to do.  I can be very easily annoyed, I get frustrated easily, I can be very hard on myself and others, and to put it bluntly, I am trying to CHILL OUT.  I basically want to accept who I am, who others are, what life throws at me, and deal with things in a little calmer way.  So yeah, there's that, among other things.  Wow, I think that was like, my most personal post yet.  I guess re-reading it it wasn't that crazily personal but like I said earlier, my posts have been pretty much only food and mail-related so this was a stretch for me.  Sorry if it was ramble-icious!  Alright everyone, till next time!  Happy food-ing, fun-ing, and post-ing!  ;)

Aaron