JoJoSwaps

I have been scrapbooking for a little over 10 years. Then I found love and unexpectedly after we were married the baby carriage followed quite quickly - not the 3-4 years like we thought!! Along with the baby, my body became very sick and I was on bedrest for all of the pregnancy but had a very healthy baby boy and I came through okay also. The disease has never faded away so when I am not running around the country looking for answers over the last ten years(and my doctors have had me on bed rest which I have followed more like house arrest) I have learned to get into a bunch of crafty things. I became obsessed with rubber stamping greeting cards in 2003 and when I am not swapping handmade cards and card fronts, I have gone back to my childhold love of swapping postcards. I always collected postcards since I was a LITTLE girl(5 or 6) and then I ran across 3 different websites that actually swapped them and I thought I had found heaven!!!!! That has lead me into an interest of postage stamps now because I was getting such a high volume of postcards from around the world it made me realize that I really had no idea about postal stamps and how they are really art forms in themselves!! My hands are very crippled up with my rheumatoid arthritis that I started getting at just 19 years old and I learned that I have to cross stitch or write everyday to keep them from going totally stiff. It is so hard somedays to push myself to do it, but everyday I do-but I have always been a letter writer...it would be fun to have some swaps to write for! Really with life the way it is as we look for the cure to all the illnesses we have, I am very much at home and so I have learned that being involved in a group of swappers is the greatest way to keep my spirits up and make me feel like I am surronded by friends - it also gives me a reason I need to get up each day and not sleep in on the slow mornings. I have found that this is very therapeutic for me and it keeps you accountable because people are counting on you so you can't just not do it!

I really enjoy music of all kinds except heavy rock or rap. I really enjoy listening to music in different languages and dreaming of traveling to all of those places in the world - I so long to travel the world - I think that is why I am so drawn to collecting postcards or anything from other parts of the world! My 8 yr old son is sitting here and saying that I like to listen to "smooth or soft jazz - calm with no words". I like to be able to do anything with music in the background but not just noise crashing around. I am a broadway and old movie musical music nut!!! That I can not hide - I have to have a record player just to find the good old songs and soundtracks! Honestly,just so it isn't rap or too much rock - I'm listening to it! I love having music going and I can switch to most any radio station and be okay with it!

Can you really pick one? I started with scrapbooking which turned into rubber stamping and making greeting cards and scrapbook pages and since then I have been interested in everything ever since. Quilling with long strips of paper is fun to do but it seems like very few people do it! I have lots of beads and have watched people do it(my husband and son are awesome jewelry makers!)yet I just haven't had the courage to join them because they are SO good. But I need to just get on the horse and do it. Right now I am trying to learn how to knit(it is going pretty okay) and I am totally intrigued with ATC's and want to get into that - I have looked at ATC books in the library and I can't quite figure out the rhyme or reason for it(and I think that is exactly the thing - there is no rhyme or reason)but I am someone who likes to see it done first. I think I would love it with my card and scrapbook background.

The years of being in bed and having nothing but reading to do has cultivated a very immense love for books and now I am always going through novels. I am wanting to try new authors a lot but have found that I really like Belva Plain and Mary Higgins Clark, along with James Patterson. I have to keep myself away from extreme violent or scary books as my memory is so strong and when I am reading it truly feels as if I am at a movie theater and I scare easily. Silly,huh? :)

My husband last year decided to get me cable since we have only had 3 stations on our television for all these years I have been on bed rest and I will tell you - it is like a whole world opened up!!! Granted we got basic cable....60 channels with only maybe 5 channels that I found interesting but WOW, they were interesting. I am an ANIMAL FANATIC - check out Animal Plannet(made just for me since I didn't get to be a vet like planned!) and then you have the TRAVEL CHANNEL - that is incredible and awful at the same time. The travel channel is like this is the world aren't you glad you are seeing it - it makes me sad that if the Dr.s are right, which they aren't very often,but if they are in this case then I will NEVER see those places for myself - but then I have to remember all that I have and the fact that I am even available to see the world in this way!!! Oh, another show we love is the AMAZING RACE...I would so love to be on that show(again it revolves around travel). So the shows that are travel oriented, seems to be reality based ones, we sometimes check into but I am not much of a television person. I have to check out Law & Order every so often and there are a few others but it is a rare night that the tv is playing in our house. If I'm not at home the TV would be playing more as my husband likes the TV on just to have it on - for me that makes my head hurt!

Growing up we always watched movies when my dad was working for a full weekend and my sister,my mom, and I would watch old 50's and 60's musicals like "Singing in the Rain", "Kiss Me Kate", "Fiddler on the Roof" or "White Christmas". During my teenage years I enjoyed movies like "Ghost", "Bed of Roses" with Christian Slater, "Only You" with Marisa Tomei, and "Fools Rush In" with Matthew Perry. I loved the Indiana Jones movies from those years as Harrison Ford was who I really liked then.

I really liked "Moulin Rouge" after I forced myself to just sit there regardless of the crazy green fairy and wild dancing - it was wonderfuly,sadly sweet at the end. "Chicago" was fun-lots of fun scenes and great music. "Big Fish" with Ewan McGregor(main lead in Moulin Rouge). The first "Pirates of the Caribbean" was fabulous! But just like television I truly do not just let myself sit down and enjoy a good movie or a show if it is television. I always have to have busy hands and sometimes if you are working on more intricate crafts such as quilling you just can't do anything but pay attention to what you are doing. I think I really should relax more and not feel so pushed to always be getting something accomplished - but when you've spent over 10 years basically on bed rest you really over compensate in some areas like being busy with your hands and thus turning out lots of different works with them. But the doctor is always telling me I need balance to truly heal and laying around "resting" just doesn't feel right after so much of my youth has been spent this way. So, what are some good movies I need to check out?

My dad was a B-52 pilot in the Air Force. I was born at Ellsworth AFB in Rapid City, South Dakota followed by my sister two and a half years later. My dad left the active duty military when I was close to 4 yrs old and we moved to Colorado Springs,CO where I lived until after I got married and followed my husband to his place of work. I met my husband,who was a graduate from the Air Force Academy, and was just waiting for his orders to go to pilot training to be an Air Force pilot- at church when I joined my friend one Sunday. We dated 3-4 times in person and then he moved to Wichita Falls,TX. I stayed in Colorado Springs and finished high school - I had been very ahead in my studies and was just going to graduate my junior year but the district asked me to stay and graduate with my class and said if I would then they would pay for me to go to college all of my senior high school year - that worked for me! :) Kevin actually graduated from the Academy(college) a year before I graduated from high school so we always tease him of being a cradle robber and the poor guy has just been taking care of sick beds for the whole marriage. He is such a treasure!! He came back a month and a half into pilot training to see me graduate from high school and then back to pilot training in TX he had to go. It was SO hard. We knew we were going to marry but the date kept creeping closer and closer - finally we got married 10 January 1998 - about 10 months from meeting(and about 8 or 9 dates). We had the wedding, the next day we had to fly back to TX because Monday morning he had to be at pilot training at 4:00 a.m. Not exactly the honeymoon a girl always dreams of but it has so worked out over time!!! The doctors told me my body was going to be sick in a couple of months anyways and we would never have had any kids if we had not been given a SURPRISE 2 months into our marriage.
Life without a child would have been very lonely vs being newlyweds with a chaperone! :)

My son is wonderfully sweet and creative. We are now stationed in San Antonio,TX so that I can be closer to a better hospital so that has improved too. There is a lot more crafting stores here :)

That is all I can think of for now......

Here is the stuff that will make swapping with me easier if you know this sort of stuff:

• getting to know people -- getting involoved in swaps! It's a way to get to know someone and also a chance to stay involved socially since I am and have been on bed rest for 10 years. I swap to stay connected to the world!

I am an animal nut - I love animals, big and small! They are my passion in life - I have worked in an animal shelter on days when I could a few years ago but now the disease is too bad to let me do it anymore. My husband says I run a zoo just with the animals we keep at home 2 dogs(1 Great Pyrenees-like a Saint Bernard in size only all white. 1 skiperkee/pomeranian mix-small black dog with the fur coat and tongue of a chow:she is a little lap dog, but we can't let her be or else my 125 lb dog would be too! We have 2 cats- 1 maine coon-the largest breed of cat and one normal mixed breed cat. And 2 rats to round out the family. If we lived on some land there would be more but I have filled up all the space I have so far!

****I adore anything Disney!!! Especially the princesses:) I have so many scrapbooks to make from 2 trips to Disney World in Florida so I am always looking for good scrapbook things-stickers,papers,ribbons,anything you can think of!!! But my love for Disney does not stop there with the scrapbooking at all - I just love Disney! I just saw some cards and envelopes with a mixture of the characters and there are pens,notebooks(I love to journal),calendars, anything that is not a toy I would love to have! I have NEVER BEEN to DISNEYLAND in California so it would be fun to get a brouchure from that park- really I would love any paper work from any of the parks:I just LOVE DISNEY!!!!!!!!

Favorite colors: purple,teal,hot pink

Favorite animals: Otter, Red Panda(part of raccoon family),all small critters:example-prarie dogs,chipmunks,meercats,pikas,ferrets. ***I love ALL animals but I gave you the top 3 - anything animal will delight me. When I say animal I mean mammal so no snakes or insects in particular please!

Favorite season: Autumn / Fall

Collect: I collect POSTCARDS from anywhere! International postcards are really fun to get!
I collect postage stamps from ALL COUNTRIES-I would love to receive any stamps from anywhere. When you get an envelope with postage on it-don't throw it away - cut the corner with the stamp out and keep an envelope going until you have an envelope full to send!! There are so many people who collect and many swaps that you could accomplish effortlessly by doing this!! I especially collect animal postage stamps from anywhere but the US!

I collect: shot glasses, stickers, and pressed pennies,gift cards(ones used to give people money to a store and when it is empty it is just a plastic card: I want those decorated plastic cards that have no money on them they are just plastic cards)

Anything to keep me reading would be great-10 yrs of non stop reading is a lot and you go through material fast! It would be great to get old books or magazines - I have found so many people appreciate a stack of old reading material and so now I always donate it to someone I hear of or to the library. The rate of sickness seems to be going up so people will always need something to take their mind off what is going on. Now I am one that would love to have books to read and I just LOVE magazines but hardly ever get any!

-I would LOVE anything travel -- I love to see and read about new places. With my health, I rarely get to travel, only once a year actually to the same place just 3 hours away, so ANY travel items to help me to experience the world would be treasure to me!

I am starting a travel book with all information I gather from sources(like Swap-bot partners or friends) and will put it all together in a sort of simple scrapbook way. That way on days I hurt terribly I can just go traveling through my book. The neatest part of traveling is always all the people you meet and I can't duplicate that myself....that is why I am hoping that people will read this and in their own way meet me in my travels! I REALLY HOPE that this works for me and people will help me accomplish this!!

I just so long to be healthy and I spend every day totally alone. I love when my son and husband come home yet I also tire so easily - but I used to sleep non stop so this is an improvement. I just want to know so much about the world and where to go and what to see so when I do get better or get a once in a lifetime trip I will be prepared. Or if that day never comes then I will feel like I know a lot about a bunch of the world and that will keep my spirits up and keep me fighting my problem in life.

Send anything travel oriented: ~postcard ~brochures from where you visited ~postage from that country ~a food/candy unique to that place ~a picture that you took while you were there ~be creative-there is always things like cardboard drink coasters or paper napkins with the names of places on it ~a piece of money from the country you are visiting or a chip from a casino if in Vegas ~maps or walking/driving tours ~pressed penny from near the location ~souvenirs would be fun too also to set around my room:I collect the pretty shot glasses of the area of where you are visiting that show some of the attractions or have the name of the city/place - never anything crude as my 8 year old son sees them too.