Thanksgiving mail sent

Here's the card inside...

 this envelope!

For my cousin Aaron. When we had family Christmas parties at the log cabin where I grew up, my dad would sometimes use the tractor to pull us in a hayride. That was so much fun.

A Trader Joe's sticker saved from last year! :-D

I love Winnie the Pooh. The books are just so so funny. Actually I recently picked up a tiny rubber stamp from the Salvation Army of Pooh and Piglet hand in hand walking away. It was 35 cents. YES!

Maybe I'll be able to show you the Christmas cards I sent before we get to Valentine's Day. 

haha

Christmas Time!

First Christmas card of the season! from my mama

This is my first Christmas tree as an adult!! It's a fake tree that the previous tenant of our house left in the garage, along with a string of white Christmas lights.

I put the white Christmas lights up on our front window, but I'll wait to show you a photo of that because we want to put up our last string of lights, those big old fashioned ones, around the front door.




















Some Christmas-y mail I've sent:

A note about Christmas cards

Hello everyone,

The Missive Maven has a posting every year about how she doesn't do Christmas cards because she is Jewish and I wanted to share my stance.

I love Christmas and I enjoy sending Christmas cards, and I have a ton because it's easy to find them for sale in thrift stores.

If I correspond with you, PLEASE forgive me if I send you a Christmas card if you don't want one. I want to respect everybody's beliefs, but I'm kind of bad at keeping things straight and I write to a lot of people. So please forgive me if you don't want me to write to you on a Christmas card. Also with a lot of my newer penpals the subject hasn't even come up yet. Feel free to comment and tell me now.

That said, I won't send you a Christmas card with just my name signed, it'll be a letter. As happy as I am that people send more mail at this time of year, I do find it a bit disappointing that many people don't write anything in their cards!

Also, I'd be thrilled to receive any kind of holiday card from you, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid, Happy New Year, or Festivus for the Rest of Us! :)

Okay, and now here are a few letters from Rusty that I don't think I've blogged yet.

Chicago Trip

I recently headed to Chicago with a couple friends to go to the Renegade Holiday Craft Fair and then to the Field Museum to see the dinosaurs.  On the way there we stopped at a rest stop that had these awesome posters.  The first one really caught me off guard.

Here's a view looking down on one room of the craft fair. There were about five rooms. It was amazing and I did get a few Christmas gifts there.  And I got to meet Donovan and Cathy from the LWA!!! Their table was actually the first one I saw.  

One of the greatest parts of the craft fair was what we ate.  I split two donuts with Caitlin- one was with chocolate icing and sprinkles, the other one.... oh my, was glazed with maple syrup and covered with crumbled bacon.  INCREDIBLE.

After the craft fair we took the 'L' over to the field museum and saw the dinosaurs. I got to see a complete parasaurolophus for the first time. This is my favorite dinosaur. It was overwhelmingly wonderful.

Quickie post

Hey there! I just sent out my first Christmasy packages! But I forgot to take photos of them. I've finally gotten back into the swing of letter writing. I was in a big slump for a while.

Just recently got a lovely note from Limner.

2013 Stamps!

Hey everyone, 

I completely forgot that in addition to all the wonderful Christmas-y things happening at this time of year, the USPS announces their 2013 stamps!

I'm so excited. As of today they have revealed two.

Visit Beyond the Perf 2013 Preview to see them.

I'm pretty thrilled that the Valentine's Day stamp is mail related!

Recent incoming

from Laura, quite close to where I grew up!

from my good friend from grad school

such cute kitty stickers!

and this was one of the awesome things I got in the Elevated Envelope swap!

Elevated Envelopes- Malicious Surprise

I finally joined in on the Elevated Envelope this time around for a "Malicious Surprise".  Halloween is almost my favorite holiday, so I was really excited. This is what I made:

For the special something inside I made artistamps using a skeleton stamp Clay gave me, a typewriter, a sewing machine for perforation, and washi tape.

I put one strip in a glassine envelope with a few other stickers.

here's the front of the card

and the inside--- I made a stencil of the tree and another of the crows, then used guache paint to fill them in. The crows are slightly purply.

then you add a crow!

and stuff it all in a black envelope

YAY!

There was a nice coincidence with the theme "murder of crows".  After I had started these I read a book from the library called Wildwood. I picked it up because it was just such a beautiful book. And then I read the inside flap. It was written by Colin Meloy who is in the band The Decemberists (a band that I like) and illustrated beautifully by his wife, Carson Ellis. Where is the coincidence? At the beginning of the book the protagonist's younger brother is kidnapped by a murder of crows!!  This event is the beginning of an adventure into the "Impassable Wilderness" to rescue her brother.  

In & Out

bought washi tape for myself for the first time! fun :D

Marijane went to a singalong of The Sound of Music. She mailed me the props they were given!

my first time using my LWA stationery!