I will fearlessly embrace sounding like Captain Obvious, but in the age of Facebook birthday reminders, we just don't receive enough "snail-mail" postcards. I'm guilty of it too--with a strong penchant of posting images of customized cakes onto people's Timelines (likely causing hunger pains in the rest of the friend list). So, I've decided to single-handedly (I'm pretty sure any superhero, even Captain Obvious, prefers to do things alone) battle this phenomenon and make customized illustrated postcards for those close to me whenever there's spare time. There never is--so the illustrations are very quick, such as this birthday-card image of my basset hound, Roediger, and his Golden-Retriever sidekick, "uncle" Glacier.

The models, Roediger and "uncle" Glacier, at the latter's house. A washed out and poorly framed "Instagrammy" candid shot makes me come across like a "normal girl" who likes shopping and whatever else "normal girls" do.

As I'm about to hit the "publish" button, I'm realizing, to my horror, that my family members might use this blog against me--expecting similar illustrations for all of their events. (Such is the fate of anyone who can decently format documents in Microsoft Word, let alone has any artistic skills!) Perhaps, I should've registered this domain name under an equally applicable "Nina LongRussianLastName" for conspiratorial purposes!