Bouquet of Flowers Thank You Card

Hello Friends!  I can't believe it's almost the weekend.  Since retiring, the days seem to go by faster than when I was working.  I thought it would go by slower. I am now 60 years old.  My birthday was 2 weeks ago and I decided to retire earlier than the typical retirement age because I wanted to be able to be free to do things while I'm physically able to, such as traveling, go on mini adventures, do some home improvement projects, etc.  Before retiring I researched information about retirement, not only the financial aspects of retirement but quality of life information.  I read that many retired people experience isolation, boredom, and loneliness because for most of their lives, their workplace was not only a source of income but many built their social network at work.  Their coworkers were their main source of social interaction and friendships.  

I worked remotely for the past 7 years since COVID so I am accustomed to the "isolation" and lack of workplace social interaction other than through Teams messaging and meetings.  I never considered my coworkers as "friends".  Maybe when I was younger I did consider some of my coworkers as friends.  It was a time when socializing with coworkers outside of the workplace was a more common experience for me.  In fact, I am still friends with a few of them.  We mainly communicate through Facebook because I no longer live in Hawaii and a few moved to different parts of the US.   As I grew older, I learned to separate "workplace friends" from friends outside of my job.  Other than the occasional Friday happy hour get togethers or team building activities, I did not socialize with my coworkers outside of the workplace.  I don't think I'll experience the isolation, boredom, and loneliness that some retirees experience.  Quite honestly, I  have way too many hobbies to worry about becoming bored.

As I stated in yesterday's post, this week I had planned to focus only on crafting.  I have other things I plan to do next week so I wanted to put most of my efforts this week to creating cards.  I worked on a few cards yesterday.  I am trying different design styles.  Many times we have our signature style of cardmaking because it's easier to stick to a certain style.  I would like to experiment a little more and try new techniques of card making.  I am behind on the new card making techniques; a decade worth of new techniques. 

On the most part card making, especially with rubber stamping, hasn't changed much since I started rubber stamping 20 years ago.  I do notice that there has been a major decline with using embellishments on cards such as ribbons and other embellishments that cause bulkiness on cards.  I think the trend to scale down on embellishments is due to the cost of mailing cards.  The cost of stamps has increased considerably.  Unfortunately, I have a lot of embellishments such as brads, ribbons, Prima flowers, etc., but it's okay because I'll be using them to design my mini scrap albums.  They come in handy with scrapbooking.  

With this card, I piled on a bunch of stamped floral images.  I had mentioned in my previous post that I had a stock pile of stamped images that I had stamped in the past few years but never created cards for them.  I originally intended to use them on my mini scrapbook albums but I have so many of them, way too many in fact.  Now that I'm making cards again, they have come in very handy.  

Drop me a comment below.  I would love to hear from you.  If you are retired, tell me your experience as a retired person. What experiences surprised you, do you have any regrets, did your retirement meet your expectations, what does your typical day look like?  I am still trying to navigate this new chapter of my life so it would be nice to hear your perspectives on retirement.  Anyway, until next time hope you all have a wonderful day 💖

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