Blogging Archives - Postcard Jar Blog

Welcome to Postcard Jar (and 2024)

Ann — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 15:52:35 +0000

Welcome to Postcard Jar and happy new year! Whether you’ve been reading our blog for years, follow us on social media, or are brand new, we’re glad you’re here. Sharing our best tips for living and traveling well and helping you to take stress-free vacations brings us so much joy. Note: Postcard Jar is a reader supported blog and we have partnered with EF Go Ahead Tours. If you make a purchase through links in this post, we may earn a commission. This month, we returned from our biggest trip yet. It was a nearly two-month long vacation around the world. We drove from our home in Nebraska to Minneapolis. From there, we flew to Dubai, then cruised from the Middle East all the way to New Zealand and back to Australia. It was truly the trip of a lifetime. Stay tuned, as we’ll be sharing more about our adventures abroad very soon. For now, have a look at (below) at this postcard-perfect view of Whitehaven Beach in the Whitsundays. Absolutely spectacular! PIN FOR LATER What’s in store for 2024 Following the success our our first Postcard Jar Friends Cruise to the Caribbean in 2023, we’ve decided to host more […]

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It’s Postcard Jar’s fifth blogiversary!

Ann — Sat, 23 Mar 2019 13:47:14 +0000

Five years ago today, we sat in a lounge at the Doubletree Hotel in Rochester, Minnesota, and published our first-ever blog post on postcardjar.com. It was the day before I would undergo a procedure at the Mayo Clinic that would eventually diagnose me with a chronic inflammatory disease. Steve was still working as a middle school principal and we needed a little inspiration distraction in our lives. To date, that post has only been read 290 times. Yet five years later, our blog is garnering tens of thousands of page views each month, we are traveling to places we’ve never been, and we are making the most of midlife, despite my health challenges. We cannot thank all of our readers enough for following along on our journey and being so engaged with our blog. We love reading your comments, answering your questions, and getting your postcards in the mail. In case you’re new here or missed something along the way, here’s a look back at some of the highlights of our fifth year of blogging. Our trip to Italy We spent about a month in Italy and Greece last Summer, learning about wine production, eating pasta and spanakopita, and immersing ourselves […]

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Yes, our marriage survived a 5,000 mile road trip

Steve — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 15:01:23 +0000

When we returned from our 5,000 mile road trip through the Southeast, we told you that we’d be locking ourselves into our house in Nebraska so we could write all about it. And, with the exception of a seven course whole-hog Valentine’s Day dinner at The Pioneer Woman Mercantile in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, (read about that HERE) we’ve been pretty good about staying on task. After seeing that meal, can you blame us for getting a little off course? PIN THIS FOR LATER Anyway, we returned to Crete, and have since been barricaded in our home, mostly because it keeps snowing. But, after taking the snowblower for a walk every morning, we’ve been working away on stories for our blog. We can’t wait to share some of the highlights from our trip with you. Our 5,000 mile road trip The journey began when we left our Nebraska home and spent a few days in Oklahoma with our daughter, Meghan. A couple days after Christmas, we set out from Pawhuska (Handy’s pops in hand) and pointed the car southeast. Because of Ann’s achy joints and our desire to stop and see some things along the way, we only drove 4-5 hours a […]

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It’s National Plan for Vacation Day!

Steve — Tue, 29 Jan 2019 14:49:32 +0000

For more than 20 years, I didn’t have any choice on when I’d take a vacation. The school board granted my days when they approved the yearly calendar every February. And even though I did have some time off in summers, there were always more meetings, more planning sessions, and more work to do which made it hard to get away. I suspect it’s the same for most people. We live at a time where, for some strange reason, people think it’s good to be a work martyr. In fact, in 2017, Americans left about 705 MILLION vacation days unused. But did you know that people who take their vacation days are actually happier and get more raises and promotions at work?* Last year Ann wrote a whole blog post about it, including all the positive effects of plannning vacations. Today is National Plan for Vacation Day. It’s a day dedicated to the idea that in order to take a vacation, and reap the benefits of it, you have to first make some plans. I wish I’d known about it years ago before I quit my job as a middle school principal, as I would definitely have put some time […]

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Woo-hoo! Our updated travel blog is here!

Steve — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 15:46:30 +0000

After weeks of editing, cropping, categorizing and designing, our updated travel blog is here! So, what do you think? If you’ve been a reader of our blog, you’ll notice it looks a little different. If you’re new here – welcome to Postcard Jar. Why the change? Over the past few months, we noticed that some functions of our blog weren’t working quite right. Nothing major, but there was a hiccup every now and again. Our “theme” was old and couldn’t be updated anymore. We’d also compiled a growing list of things we couldn’t figure out how to do and we didn’t have a logo. But we do now! What do you think? Back in 2014 when we started this blog, we enlisted the help of a good friend who does web design to get us started. We did our best to update the posts and pages ourselves. We were amateurs, and we knew it. That was okay because blogging was simply a hobby we started as something to do between doctor appointments and surgeries when Ann had become ill and was unable to work. Over time however, our blog and interest in it have grown. In addition to traveling more places […]

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