Hazel.  What a delightfully old-fashioned name.  At least it ought to be an old-fashioned name.  If I were a young whipper-snapper of today, I just might be disgruntled if my parents had named me Hazel.  Hazel.

However, Hazel is a great name for your personal secretary.  Especially a personal secretary in the form of a website where you can get your photos transformed into a postcard and stamped and mailed out to grandchildren.

I’ve recently decided that my wee bit of traveling will help my children learn geography, climatology, technology and math. And HazelMail can help me bring that geography to life. (I guess I’d better be respectful because the site is named after the site owner’s mother.)

Here’s how HazelMail works. You take a picture. You upload it to HazelMail.  HazelMail creates a postcard, prints it up, licks a stamp and puts it on your card, walks down to the local post office, and sends it off to whomever you choose.  (I would assume that the whomever for readers of this site would naturally be grandchildren.  Naturally.)

Just imagine.  You and grandpa are standing in front of the Iguassu Falls.  (That is a place on my bucket list that I plan on visiting.) You grab a nearby person. She snaps your photo. You send it off to HazelMail and your grandchild gets a valuable postcard (of her two most favorite people in the world) to put on her fridge, tape to the mirror in her bedroom, or keep in her locker at school. She will keep this postcard for-e-ver.  Much longer than any ol’ t-shirt that says “Grandma went to Eureka, Utah, and all I got was this t-shirt.”

I’m not getting any kick-back for sharing this information with you.  (Rats . . . ) I’m just saying, this is a cool site.  It does cool things.  It would be cool to use it to send a postcard to your grandchild. And if you are one of those uber cool grannies that created a mailbox for your grandkids, this would be fun mail for them to get in their box! (Even if you’re like me and you don’t rank very high on the creative cool-o-meter, this is still a great idea.)

If you have a BlackBerry phone, there is a HazelMail app where you can send photos from your phone’s camera. Neat-o keen-o! (Get with it, Apple . . . )

And if you are a collector of Delta SkyMiles, you’ll be glad to know that you can earn 10 SkyMiles for every full-price postcard that you send.  Every little bit of SkyMiles helps, you know! (My goal is to get enough miles that I can fly to New Zealand for free . . . Hopefully, I’ll reach my goal in one-and-a-half years!)

My children think I’m a geek.  When compared to my friends and peers of the female persuasion, I have to admit that yes, indeedy, I am rather geekish.  So, what’s a body to do when she comes across a site that converts pictures into ASCII code? Why, give it a whirl, of course!

Take a look.  What do you think?  I think the ASCII code pictures are rather charming, if I do say so myself!

Isn’t this totally cool? It’s amazing how you can recognize the picture even though it is programming code instead of picture pixels.

(This is so radical I think that the next time I wake up at 2:00 a.m. and can’t go back to sleep, I’ll ponder how this all works. I might even wake up Grandpa to have an in-depth conversation about it. What do you say about that, Grandpa?  Huh?  What’s that?  You know, if you’d stop grumbling in your beard, I’d be able to understand you better . . .)

You don’t have to be a tech whizzard to do this.  You don’t need to be moderately geeky.  (Is there any such thing as moderately geeky, I ask you?)  If you are reading this, you have ample technology skill to create some ASCII pictures yourself.  (See, a website does all of the work for you.)

Photo2Text.com is where you go to create these types of pictures.  You simple browse to the picture you want to upload and click submit. You’ll need to enter in a nickname.  (You’ll see why in a moment.)

Then, you have the option of downloading a text file that can be opened in TextEdit on a Mac or Notepad on a Windows machine.  You’ll also have the URL that you can share with others to see what you have created.  (The URL has your personal nickname that you selected — so that people will see YOUR picture and not somebody else’s.)

Here are a couple of ways how you can use this idea with your grandchildren:

• Invite your grandchild over.  Take some simple pictures of the two of you to submit.  Print out the picture from TextEdit or Notepade.
• Have your grandchild bring a couple of digital pictures (of their family, friends, their pet) to turn into ASCII code.  Print up and give to friends or family members.
• Make a photo album of several ASCII pictures.
• Do a ‘through the years’ photo album of your grandchild using their school pictures turned into ASCII pictures.
• Get a mat board that has cut-outs for two pictures and frame a copy of the original photo and the ASCII code.  Or, do a collage of your grandchild using original pictures of family members or  cousins or friends and the ASCII photos.
• YOU create the ASCII picture and then e-mail or snail mail it to your grandchild.
• If your grandchildren live far away, e-mail them the URL.  Then, have them e-mail you a copy of the pictures that they create.
• Turn pictures of you and grandpa into ASCII code and snail mail them to your grandchildren.  Whether or not they live close by or far away, getting a letter in the mail with one of these pictures would be great fun for your grandchildren.

A while back, I received an e-mail from another grandma who suggested that I put my picture on my site.  That was a great suggestion!  So, here’s a picture of me holding sweet Kaylissa on the day that she was born.  Don’t we look lovely? 

The other day, I saw a website that did a ‘Mailbox Monday’ post.  I thought that was a clever catchy title.  I wanted to share that little phrase with you, my Dear Reader.  Maybe you haven’t heard of it before, like I hadn’t.

You can dub your Mondays as Mailbox Monday and make a special effort to send e-mail to your grandchildren that day.

Do you worry that you’ll run out of things to say if you e-mail them every Monday?  Why not send them a joke, a recipe, a photo you took, or a motivating quote?

Share the story about the day your grandchild was born and how you felt — especially when you were first able to hold your newborn bundle of joy.

Send a story about something their parent (your child) did when s/he was your grandchild’s age.

Share an interesting news story that they might not be aware of.

Most importantly, tell them how special they are and that you love them.

Teen-aged grandchildren disdain e-mail.  It’s oh so old-fashioned.  They’re into texting.  So, have a Texting Tuesday for them.  (Ha!  I made that phrase up . . . or at least I’ve never seen or heard anybody using that before . . .)  Do a Texting Tuesday — assuming you have a cell phone AND that you know how to text. 

I’m hoping that you, Dear Reader, have basic technology skills.  You know, simple stuff like clicking on links, typing, clicking on buttons that say ‘generate.’  Got those skills?  Whew.  I’m glad.  Otherwise, you’d be up a creek without a paddle.

The writer in me loves this Newspaper Generator.  (BTW, in pre-historic days, I wrote a column for a loco local newspaper.)  Simply type in what you want your clipping to say and click generate to get your clipping.  Beneath your clipping will be the option to download it.

You can write a newsflash of when your grandson made his first basket when playing basketball with grandpa, or a write-up of the Valentine’s Day party held at your house, or a wild, far-fetched, make believe tale of daring-do featuring your grandchild.  Isn’t this fun?

If you have a grandchild that is enamored with film making, create a clapboard instead.  Create goofy movie titles of times when they have stayed with you or have done something special like won first place in a debate meet.

Make a street sign with your grandchild’s name at Easystreet.  (Maybe make a sign with the name of your grandchild’s pet or favorite cartoon character or her best friend.)

How about making a scrolling text LED light sign?  Signbot helps you out.  (Maybe create one to wish your grandchild happy birthday, happy St. Patrick’s Day, or happy 4th of July.  Whatever.)

You have several options with these sites.  You can make something yourself to share with your grandchild.  Send it to them in an e-mail.  Post it on your blog.  Make it for your grandchild’s blog.  Print up to hang on your fridge when your grandchild comes.  Or, you can print up your creation and send it to those grandchildren who live far, far away.

Or, you can send them the links and let them generate something themselves.  Or, when they come to visit, you can spend one-on-one time on the computer, checking out these sites, and creating something together.

You are so creative, I’m sure you’ll come up with some spectacular way to use these sites with and for your grandchildren.

By the way, you might also be interested in the AutoMotivator site where you can make your own  motivational poster (or de-motivational one) and the TinyTag site where you can make an itsy bitsy tag like those you see on  items for sale in a store.