SENTimental

What is a Drop Cap?

If you've ever held an old story book in your hands, you've probably admired a drop cap. It is that big capital letter that extends down three or four lines and is surrounded by fancy decoration. 

I'm going to show you how to do it! It doesn't take long at all, and even though mine is not perfect or the most neat, I'm happy with the result. I think because the details are so small, mess ups don't matter as much and the whole thing looks fabulous no matter what! You'll have to show me your creations, too.

The Find a Pen Pal program continues to grow and bring me lots of fuzzy feelings. While some of you are new, others have already been corresponding for weeks. For those of you that have exchanged letters back and forth a few times, you are probably dealing with the short term memory loss I often suffer from when it comes to pen palling. Remembering what you wrote in your letters. This is something I hope I don't struggle with alone. That's why today I have a hack for you. It doubles as a great memory-keeper...

I have long believed that to make life enjoyable, you must find small, fun, goofy things to do as much as possible. This includes writing fun notes for our loved ones, or for anyone, really! With these four easy steps, you'll be brightening someone's day in no time. 

...Somewhere in the 200 pages of the Girls' Crystal Annual, was an ad for becoming a 12 year old girl's pen pal in Ohio. To another 12 year old girl who had never left her small English city, that seemed like another world. So Nona excitedly wrote and mailed a letter with a picture of herself enclosed, and a few weeks letter got the same back from Alice. 

The girls wrote to each other regularly for years, talking about their social life, their studies, books and movies they liked, and swapping fashion magazines. As they got to their teens and older, they shared with each other in other milestones like new jobs, getting married, having kids, and more.

• Plan your week out on paper. 

Whether you use a bullet journal, single sheet of paper, lined notebook, or a paper towel, make a weekly schedule for yourself to practice spacing (both your letters and evenly dividing up your paper).

• Journal daily, weekly or bi-weekly

Journaling is tough to keep up with if you’re not already in the habit of doing it. If you want to journal more often and you want the habit to stick, it is best to start off doing it once a week, then gradually move up to a few times a week, then daily. 

Since middle school, I would find a cute font I wanted on the computer and use my mom’s printer and scrapbook supplies to print it out and mount it nicely to cardstock. Then, I would put the card in the front of my binder and use it as a reference as I wrote out my assignments all day. After practicing for a while, I could write in that font without looking at the card, and I began to get better and better at writing in different fonts.

You can do the same!