Glad to know you'll get your Phals, WC8. I can sympathize - I'm leaving for France in a few weeks and don't want to leave new plants at home with my non-orchid growing plant sitter. So I won't get my sanderianum crosses until the end of April. Ditto for a division I've been drooling over for almost a year now which is finally available. And Calvin, it's all about supply and demand. HUGE US market, small Canadian market. The Canadian growers make more of an effort to be able to export than the US growers do. If you want to do it legally, PM me. A friend and I ordered from Andy's this past summer, got our import and CITES certificates ourselves, picked up the plants in Watertown (I think) at a shipping depot type of place, barerooted them (a pain in the you know where since they're all mounted with tons of roots), had them inspected ourselves in Syracuse for the phyto and then brought them back across the border, completely legally and without confiscations. The cost of all certificates/inspections was probably around $150. We did have to order enough plants to make that and the effort worth it. Or that's our rationalization at least. And boy, are the plants we got gorgeous! [Another evil, enabling grin] Julie

I do the same with Pentel RSVP pens. The instructions are on the same page that you linked. But those pens are a bit more expensive than the Bics. I cover inexpensive composition book covers with pretty scrapbook paper and embellish with ribbons and prima flowers. Then you can make a pen to match with scraps of the same paper. It makes a nice gift! I did not personally make the items in this link, but I love the site for fantastic cards, scrapbook and other craft ideas. Here is a link that might be useful: altered mini composition book & pen

What fascinating stories, natesgram! What a wonderful thing to reconnect with your pen-pal from Micronesia after so many years. That's quite a gift! And what a sweet, sweet story about your father-in-law and how he met the love of his life. :-) My mother really inspired my interest in pen-pals. She had a pen-pal when she was a young girl in the 40s - a girl her own age who lived in Scotland. Mom saved several things that the girl had sent her, and over the years as I was growing up, I used to love to dig out those items and dream about a little girl from long ago and far away. I had my first pen-pal when I was a pre-teen. Her name was Barbara and she was an Italian beauty who lived in New Jersey. She was extremely boy crazy, and quite precocious for an 11 or 12-year old, and I remember being somewhat "scandalized" by her letters in which she told me of kissing (and petting with) boys. Shocking! ;-) When I was an older teenager I briefly had a young man as a pen-pal. His name was Christopher and he lived in England, and was very handsome. I definitely had a crush, but I also had a boyfriend who was jealous of my long-distance letter writing, so I stopped communicating with Christopher. I've wondered a few times over the years whatever happened to him. Thanks to magazines such as Country Decorating Ideas and Country Almanac, I've had quite a few pen-pals, several that I grew very close to throughout the years, even meeting in person and developing a relationship with their families as well. I reconnected with several of them on Facebook (but I no longer have an account there, so have kinda lost track of them again). Back in the early 90s, I probably had 5 or 6 very active pen-pal relationships with women who, like me, had a passion for decorating, collecting, and homemaking. We regularly sent each other "swap boxes" of goodies that we either handcrafted or picked up for one another in various antique shops or even at yard sales, and that was so much fun. Looking back to that time in my life, I wasn't working - I was a full-time homemaker - and the letter writing definitely filled a void and made my days at home more interesting. I still can't quite believe all of those pages and pages that I hand wrote! I just wrote a brief thank-you note to a work contact, and my handwriting has become just atrocious throughout the years. I know it wasn't this bad when I was regularly writing to my pen-pals! Fun topic! It made me stop and remember some really neat people from my past.

You are so right! I bought one months ago and then couldn't find it, and thought no big deal, until last week, I got mayo on my shirt at a restaurant and my friend had a tide stick with her. When I got home I thought I would have to pretreat and wash, I couldn't even find the spot. I hunted for my tide stick for two hrs and found it in my end table. It is now in my pocketbook.