michst74

My current passion is collecting postcards! I'm interested in clever, thought provoking & travel postcards, among other types from the cities &/or countries of the sender. There are so many GREAT postcards out there. I am active with exchanges on Postcrossing.com, in addition to Swap-bot. I'm a retired school teacher & married mother of two adult sons, who loves to read, craft, knit, and travel. My favorite color is purple and I love heart shapes & arranging flowers of all types. I met my husband when we both attended Michigan State University and both of our sons also attended Michigan State University. We are all proud to be Spartans!

I enjoy all styles of music from popular performers like Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, U2, Michael Buble, Glee "covers", Eminem, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Bon Jovi & Elvis Costello to show tunes and classical music. It just depends on what mood I'm in.

Some of my all time favorite books include To Kill a Mockingbird, Gone With the Wind, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, Hawaii, The Shadow of the Wind, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Loving Frank, The Help, and the ENTIRE Harry Potter series of books. Two books that I particularly enjoyed reading aloud to 5th graders were A Long Way to Chicago & A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck. Since I retired from teaching, I continue reading the Newbery Award books and have to recommend When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.

One of my all time favorite movies is Casablanca. There are others that I could watch over and over again for various reasons...

The Sting, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, Dirty Dancing, Top Gun, A League of Their Own, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future.

Some classic television shows that I could watch again & again would be: 30 Rock The West Wing, Pushing Daisies, Law & Order, Homicide: Life on the Street, Flashpoint, Damages, In Plain Sight, & Moonlighting.

Without a doubt, my favorite current tv show is Mad Men. But Downton Abbey is a close second. Others that I enjoy are:

The Newsroom, Community, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, The Daily Show, The Good Wife, Hawaii 5-0, NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles, Grey's Anatomy, Royal Pains, & Burn Notice.

Knitting, Playing with paper, Scrapbooking/mini-books, Art journaling, Handmade envelopes, Mail art, ATCs, Zines & Collecting 52 different playing cards to create a 2nd unique deck of cards...a special thanks to @VioletFaye who generously completed my first set. My second misc. deck could use: Clubs ~ K Diamonds ~ A, 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, J Spades ~ A, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K Hearts ~ 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, K {but I'll be happy with any + I always ♥♥♥ JOKERS ♥♥♥}

We have set the goal of traveling to all 50 states and have made a significant dent in that goal (including both Alaska & Hawaii) ... less than 20 remain for us to visit. Love traveling! Have been to a number of Canadian provinces, Mexico and the Western and Eastern Caribbean. Need to get to the A(ruba), B(onaire), C(uracao) Islands in the South Caribbean and South America to have visited places in the entire Western Hemisphere... next up --> Europe, Asia & Australia!

Decided that in January 2012, I'd try to finish my collection of postcards from all 50 states... and thanks to many of you, I accomplished this goal by the end of June 2012! Thanks to all of you who helped. Still LOVE map postcards, so if you have any of cities or areas or provinces or countries, I'd love to add them to my collection.