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Saturday, May 28, 2011

Memorial Day Weekend

Ok I'm laughing at my self as I prepare to tell you the story of my weekend thus far.

First off I had Friday off making it a 4 day weekend from work. (Unfortunately it is an unpaid non-voluntary day.)  I make plans with Phazia to go out hunting for boxes in the Brunswick area.  No problem. The first box wasn't too hard to locate, however all of a sudden it got SUPER busy & was hard for us to put it back.  Damn it what the hell do people want ice cream all at once for?

We get to one of the other locations for a box... take the little walk in to the woods... find the clue... and NO box.... we thought maybe with the rain & such it may have been buried a bit deeper than it was before or maybe it had been found by a "muggle" or a furry critter and been moved.  Nope. Just no stinking box.  We spent quite a bit of time there looking for it, trying to be as contentious as possible. On two occasions I had a run in with parts of the tree that were unpleasant & I'm still hurting from today. Hrumph. On the way back we had a little run in with a trash can in a cemetery in Lisbon which basically pushed us over the edge of wrapping it up for the day.

On Saturday I came to realize that I totally TOTALLY wrote the clue wrong for one of my plants.  What the hell am I doing?  I had MissMae give it a test run & she basically told me I was a bit DUH for that one.  So I've fixed the issue and now hopefully people can find the box. On our way to a BBQ we stopped & dropped some boxes at a few locations.  One being a childhood memory of MissMae's, which she had a blast from the past as we trekked up to the area we wanted it planted in.  Easier said than done come to find out.  This one ended up in a tree of all places, not my normal plant. Next one was also a blast from the past for her, however it had changed a LOT since she had been there.  Totally re-done.  It was harder hiding this box because of the new layout but I finally found a place for it and HOPE that little hands don't locate it and move it. Doubtful.

I think I'll be getting those last two elements planted tomorrow.  They seem to be giving me a hard time. Every time I go out to make the drop there's way too many people around for a quiet cemetery. I think I'm just hitting it at the wrong time of the day.  Maybe a mid day drop would be better.  Seems to be a lot of folks in the early mornings going for walks and also late afternoon/dinner time walks.  However I'd have been ok to run in to one of those walkers today considering he was quite hot. :-)

Well that's my adventure so far this weekend, two more days to go.

Adding pictures soon.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Clues

The hardest thing about Letteboxing I have found is writing clues for planted boxes.  I've read some really awesome clues and I find mine are not that great.  I'm not sure if I'm going for quantity or quality, why can't I do both?

That question leads me in to the fact that I need to RE-carve my Great Falls stamp because it SUCKS!  I was in a rush I admit. The effort wasn't there.  I'm disappointed with it.  I'm going to work very hard on the next stamp so maybe people will come back to it to restamp it.  So step one, get an AWESOME photo of the falls. 2) sketch out a better composition. 3) take the time to carve it right & don't rush!. 4) replace current stamp with new stamp.

So I created an addict when I introduced Phazia to Letterboxing.  She's surpassed me in finds all ready.  Brat. Basically every place they go she finds a box. She's also looking in to adopting a RIP series. So we may need to sit down and do some carving to replace some missing stamps. Although RIP#4 should have 2 boxes moved to another RIP series bases on geography, in my opinion.

Here are two ways I put out boxes.  The most recent is I put some camo & brown duct tape on some plastic food containers & added baggies with the log book & stamp to them.  They're a bit harder to hide due to their size.

The time before that I used camo & brown duct tape on freezer bags & added a small plastic container to the bag with the stamp and log book (which I created) in to the bag.  This works if I custom make the log books & have the right size plastic containers.

I still don't know which I like best.  I'm not really fond of the first plant that was a stamp & a small bought log book in a plastic case with clear tape & a note, in a baggie.

I've seen some Lock-n-Locks like the one pictured under the "Stuff" tab. I wonder what other people use and how they create their plants & clues.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Another walk in the woods.

Went out to plant more boxes this Sunday. (no never made it back to the cemetery) It was a nice walk in the woods. 




Saturday, May 14, 2011

Planting

Got two of the 4 boxes planted this morning.  The cemetery seemed to be very busy today with the lawn crew out, dog walkers, and bird watchers. It made it hard to plant the other 2 boxes. I'll have to go back when it's less busy. Maybe on a Sunday morning. You can find the info at AQ for the 4 Elements.

I've discovered that it's way harder to plant a box than it is to find it. You've got to be discreet and quick which don't always work together. 

As I walked through the older parts of the cemetery I was saddened by the vandalism of the stones that were toppled over. Why do people think it's cool or funny to do such a thing?

Ok I couldn't resist. I thought this was amusing. :-)
Then right next to Cullen was LOVE so I had to snap a pic of that one too. :-D
Clue for WATER.












Clue for EARTH
Apparently I need to go back and check on my boxes already because one was unfound & the other was laying out in the open. :-/  Maybe a Friday project.

Friday, May 13, 2011

May 7th boxin' trip

Went out for a long tour around the country side looking for boxes in a series: RIP#4

We stopped off at a cemetery not on the list for another box and while sitting there we heard a LOUD clap of thunder close by, looked up and noticed a big dark cloud.  For the rest of the afternoon we dodged the thunderstorm by winding our way from Lisbon to Dresden to Gardiner & back to Auburn.













Another cemetery we stopped at was in Pittston on a hill.  I climbed up to the top and over the fence and found a spectacular view over the Kennebec river.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Stash-Tastic

I had a special request stamp for a signature stamp... a mustache. One of my girls has a fascination with mustaches.  So I created a hand carved stamp for her of a stash. Totally funny & awesome.

She's known as Stash-Tastic.