Puzzle Maker

Ever since I've gotten Derek's address, I've tried to be very good at mailing something almost every day. At the end of each day I write about what we've done, how things are going, and the latest news about Jackson. And then I'll send a couple days worth of letters at a time.

But, I don't want to just include a letter on regular notebook paper. So I've tried to come up with fun, different things to send his way. One day last week I sent him the blog posts since he's been gone and another day, my tweets. I've send some cards, pictures, news clips, comics. Sometimes I get tricky and throw in a pop quiz:

"I found an entire roll of toilet paper in the toilet. Any guesses of how it might have gotten there?"

But today I was feeling like I just needed something different, so I visited a website that I had long forgotten, but it's a total favorite! You totally need to visit puzzlemaker.com. It is such a fun easy site to make your own puzzles about whatever you want! The site was introduced to me by a favorite teacher in high school who would always have a cool puzzle as a review of the chapter before a test. His puzzles would include vocab terms or historical events, but I'm partial to sending silly messages or love notes! Once for Derek's birthday, I made a scavenger hunt of sorts for the evening. He'd have to finish a puzzle to determine what was next on the agenda!

So today, I sent him two puzzles. One was a Hidden Message puzzle, which is a word find puzzle that has a hidden message in the left-over letters. It's so much fun and it's the easiest thing in the world. Just type in a message, include the words to find, and click create and you're good to go! I also created a cryptogram, which is a little harder because he has to decipher the code. You can be as generous as you wish with the letters you chose to give away. In my encrypted message, I included our travel plans to come see him in October.

 Derek doesn't love puzzles as much as I do, so I am sure he'll have not nice thoughts about me when he gets his letter sometime next week. But I am just not okay with being predictable and boring. And besides, I had plenty of fun making them. He's just excited to get any mail in general, so I'm kind of banking on his excitement over the mail outweighs the fact that he has to work for the messages!