Christmas Mail!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year folks!

 May the Force Be With You!

I've had a kind of crazy fall semester. I got a new job, 9-5, and I taught a three hour ESL class two nights a week, so I was tired out!  But I'm not teaching in the new year, and so I'll have lots more time for cooking dinner and pies and posting on a blog and mail art and dare I say it, going to the gym (!!).

This Christmas was really wonderful and I did a ton of cookie baking, most notably my grandmothers gingerbread recipe. This is maybe 2/5ths of the gingerbread cookies we made... the batch is doubled and so enormous but the cookies go so quickly!!

(The picture looks a little wonky in spots because I used the panorama option!)

The tree we got this year was different than any other I've had. The needles were much longer and softer.

 

The university library had a big giveaway of dust jackets of childrens books, so I took a bunch and we cut them up to make ornaments and I also used them for my mail art. We also bought a bunch of cheap children's books at the public library's second hand book shop and made ornaments out of them. I particularly love the frog.

All through the house...

My Christmas card to my little niece. Love her so much.C

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Turns out when you are a cheese-monger in training around the holidays, you don't have much spare time.

But I did manage to watch the LWA social two days late on my day off and write a few Christmas cards.

I've mostly been using washi tape and stickers to decorate my envelopes this Christmas, but I hope maybe after the holidays that I can make some more collages or drawings.

What have you all been up to?

Oh, I've also been feeding my pie addiction. More on that later.

Last Year, winter mail

I've been looking through my photos and found some that I think I haven't posted before.

Here are some Christmas cards I received last year:

This photo below is of Olive, my niece-puppy! She graduated from training. 

And here are a few wintery things I sent last year:

Christmas Festivities

Christmas 2014 - White Elephant / Ugly Sweater party

 

The tree was  trimmed with a cigarette garland and decorated with beer cans. The healthiest of lives for our friends.

The gift I brought to the White Elephant exchange.

 Edward Gorey is one of my very favorite artists. I had Christmas cards with this image too! But I bought a poster book when I visited his house two years ago, and I framed several images and gave them away as gifts this Christmas.


In case you didn't hear... The LWA did a live video for the last letter writing social. It happened the night of my White Elephant party, but I watched it the next day and caught up on some mail. You can watch it here : http://16sparrows.typepad.com/letterwritersalliance/2014/12/virtual-social-live-video.html

It was so much fun. The video is 2 hours long and at first I thought, man, I don't know if I can do this that long. But then the time flies when you are writing letters. There's a lot of quiet time, which is good, because I can't write letters while being constantly talked at.

Donovan and Cathy are planning to do this again, which I am super happy about.

Christmas decorations.

 :)

My friends and I have started canning things this past fall, and we got together one Saturday for a major canning session. We made all this, and it only took us 7 hours! hah!

Dilly beans (pickled greenbeans), spicy radishes, and bourbon mustard.  My share was given away as Christmas gifts.

Gingerbread man at the big family Christmas party this year. 

 

I also make gingerbread cookies from the same recipe- my grandmother's, but mine turn out a little different. Thicker, and I didn't have time this year to decorate them with icing and sprinkles. Still delicious!

And finally, I'll leave you with a photo of the cutest Christmas pup that ever was:

 

 

 

Holiday Mail

 Here are some of the Christmas letters that I sent out. I love theme-ing my mail to the holidays and Christmas is no exception. I mainly decorated these envelopes with labels, stickers and my 4 Christmas washi tapes. Some of the images are from those sample cards that people get sent... like the back has information on it about ordering the cards, but the front is the design? Anyway, I cut those up and use those too.

I've blurred out the names on these because I think I sent them most recently and I don't want to spoil any surprises.

I have a TON of Christmas cards and things. I have a large shoebox worth that last year I taped shut because it was overflowing. I believe that last year I bought one pack of cards because they were just so darn cute, but this year I didn't buy any new, just used what I already have. That has been my practice basically all year.

 Above and below is a sort of postcard I made from some junk mail. I think the image below was used to sell eyeglasses or something. And now it's mail again! Better mail! :) The top image was from a Cricket catalog I think. They have lovely illustrations. I no longer get the magazine, but I will occasionally get mini catalogs trying to sell different things from them.

 

These two were made in November, before I broke out my Christmas stamps, but they are sufficiently wintery enough to be put in here too.

I don't send out Christmas cards, per se... in the method of sending one to all my family and friends and penpals.  Mostly I just reply to letters I receive with Christmas stationary. I enjoy doing this, but it always means that those boxes of Christmas cards never dwindle as fast as I think they will.

Merry Christmas Eve everybody! I'm going to spend at least a little time today writing more letters.
And happy holidays if you celebrate something else!

Mail of Holidays Past

I've been using my phone to take a lot of my mail photos lately, but I just used my real camera and realized I had quite a few photos on there too.
So without further ado...

Thanksgiving mail!

And when I got back from visiting family for Christmas, I had a lot of lovely mail waiting for me!

 mail, delicious mail!

Some awesome Star Wars stickers and a cool card from Tara

I love the Grinch!

Dana gave me this really cute Christmas tree card.
On the back was this sticker...

It's so perfect because her puppy's name is Olive. I think the sticker is from a book called "Olive, the other reindeer". And the photo is of Olive at her puppy school graduation! So cute!

 Not one, but two cards from Tenzin were waiting for me when I got home.

From guess who? StoneZebra of course!

A really fun envelope! I love bright envelopes! And a cool Dickens card from Becky

A horsey!! Christmas card from Alison (fellow LEP member) in South Africa.

I currently have 3 cards from Danielle that I need to respond to!

I've got a lot of writing to do! I can't wait to send everyone pink and red envelopes for Valentine's Day!