Halloween

Yesterday I was shopping for groceries and I found some cheap Halloween stuff, the kids would just love this, so I selected some paper tableware. And suddenly it hit me! Perfect mailbox size! So I made a quick package for Marieke. Real quick, since I was supposed to take my son to his swimminglesson. I forgot to photograph the wrapped package, but this I'd what I have put inside: a card, a napkin and two paperplates, some halloweencandy and (already wrapped in a napkin) some catfood! (for the cat ofcourse)

The card was just quickly put together, but because I didn't have time to think about it, it turned out quite nice I thought. I have no idea if Marieke has received it today on halloween, hope so :-) Update: she did receive it on Halloween!

I also carved a pumpkin last night. My first ever! Well what's halloween without a pumpkin hey!

And although we don't actually celebrate halloween, my daughter thought it would be fun to dress up for dinner as a witch! Including the black lipstick!

As dinner we even had halloween style sausages ;-) which came in handy today since I didn't have time to cook. I had spent my day at a big craftfair, spent way to much money at craftmaterial i decised i could not live without, but got some good deals!

Autumn purse

My big plan was to make an envelope out of fabric for Mischa. I had some fabric lying around, but I was actually lacking a real "plan". So I just went along in what I had and what I thought I could do with it, without really measuring anything. Well, that turned out like this sort of purse.

I used scraps from the lining of an old wintercoat, a hat (well, I think it used to be a hat) and a babydress from my daughter. I thought these colours matched the autumcolours outside. From the babydress I removed the straps to use them on the purse, the fabric of the dress I have used for the lining. On the dress was this little belt band which I sewed in the middle. That made it into a holder for a pen and a pencil. On the back I have embroidered a deer. Although it looked more christmassy than autumn in the end.

This is what I have put inside. Two autumn postcards, some craft paper tied together, two craft mushrooms, post-it memos in a tag shape, a squirrel, some autumn craft stuff, two cards from a memorygame, a pen and pencil, a leaf made of MDF, a bird on a piece of wood and a long letter.

The letter maybe didn't look like a long letter, but I have folded an A4 size paper into three and I have written small this time. Used both sides and you end up with a letter of 6 pages! And that just on 1 sheet of paper. Real mail efficiency :-)

I just love mushrooms, they are kinda magical.

Autumncraft stuff is great! It's small but with endless possibilities! Some tiny leafs, a crocheted mushroom (i totally did NOT do that myself, I suck at crochet), some small gold sparkly deer and an apple. You can stick it on cards or in a journal or on stationary or whatever! Kids love this kind of stuff aswell!

I found a whole bunch of these wooden cuttings at the DIY store. I thought it would be really good to make a hanger out of it. They were a bit whitewashed already, perfect for a drawing! So I drew a bird on it and drilled a hole in it, tied a rope through it, and there you go! Hopefully the contents of the purse make up for my badly sawn purse. Next time me and my sewingmachine are going haywire, I'm going to make a plan first. I promise.

Pink and green snailmail box

Last week I have received this really cute small package from Bianca. I really like the stamps! The label with my name on it is also really cute.

After unwrapping, this is what I have found! Wow! That's a really cute little box!

After carefully removing the elastic band, I could open it.

Check this out! Yet another wow! I just love boxes and tins! Seems I am spoiled lately on that point!

And this was all inside the box! Colour coordinated in pink and green. Some hearts made with paperweaving, my daughter makes these aswell sometimes, simple and cute and with two different kinds of paper it looks different everytime (always like a bit of papercrafting). Some craft material: wobbly eyes, tiny pompoms, a tiny garland made of washi tape, ribbon, beads and really cute splitpins. But there is even more! A few tiny notebooks, and a melon post it and a shoppinglist post it! A teabag and two party umbrella's. Also two arms with hands, wasn't quite sure what they are used for. First I thought they were to scratch my back, but then I thought that was maybe a bit silly. I think they are for a slice of lemon in a glass of lemonade! To squeeze the juice out! Well, I think they are. They are funny anyway. And ofcourse a letter! And last but not least a really tiny and ever so cute little hedgehog! How cute is that!

After some family arguments (the kids wanted the hedgehog, but I wanted it to) we decided to place this ever so sweet tiny crocheted hedgehog in our autumn bowl full of chestnuts and acorns on top of a leaf. And everytime I walk by, I can't help but smile. So cute!

Such funky and colourful splitpins! And that tiny garland is so funny, maybe I am going to put that in one of my plants, or on a shelf somewhere. Just because I can!

An edelweiss button on the elastic band. This was a really colourful and fun mail! Like!

Good mailday

And then you come home from work, tired, bouncing kids in the back of the car, thinking about what to cook that takes only 5 minutes to make (there's really nothing you can cook in just 5 minutes, not even Jamie Oliver can manage a whole meal in 5 minutes), a quick glance at my mailbox and really good mail in there! That just lifted my mood in an instant! Check out these really nice envelopes

Mail from Marieke and from Leuke Post! I treated myself to mail from Leuke Post. You can choose a theme, and I chose art&kitsch and I get send (and don't know when) 5 times mail! How cool is that! !

Surpisemail! Love these glassine bags by the way. Inside two vintage style collages, like! And a stickercard from Marieke, another big like!

Superhero mail

Check out this really cool and funky superhero mail Marloes (Tante tee) has sent me! She was in the process of making it, but didn't know who to send it when she mentioned it on a Facebook page. I replied that I found it a brilliant theme as I was wearing my Superman tshirt at that time and she sent it to me!

Inside the envie two small packages, this was all wrapped together nicely, it made me quite curious what was all inside!

I just have a soft spot for vintage style, and this was all in a kinda vintage comic style. Super colourful and full of humor! This is wat was all inside! A superhero mask, a do it yourself superhero, some tags, a card, a doorhanger, some partyflags, some comic tags, stickers and a superhero bracelet!

Coincidental was, when I received the package I was wearing my Superman tshirt! And with this bracelet my outfit was completed! Aren't we all really superhero's?

My son also had a great time with this mail! The superhero mask is making overtime and the "POW" tags are being used for playing superhero! This was such a fun mail!

Superman mail

My friend Marieke needed some cheering up. I've found this really cool Superman tshirt! Perfect for sending off! Well, let's be honest, we all need a Superman in our lives (I got a tshirt for myself aswell). She and her grey cat were moving house, so I've found a card with a grey cat and some playing cards with Dikkie Dik (a character from a children's book).

She told me she wanted a tattoo from a peacock. I had this bead and this small card. Totally coincidental I found this all together and made me think of Marieke. This had to go inside the tshirt package!

So tshirt packages make great postal packages!

Retro snailmail

This week I've received a retro mail from Anne. She was making a retro snailmail and asked who was interested in receiving it. Well, I was! I love retro and vintage style. Unfortunately someone else reacted a bit sooner. Since more people reacted on Anne's Facebook call, she decided to send 6 more people a retro inspired mail. She turned into a small retro style mail making factory! This is the envelope I received.

And this is what was all inside the envie. A small tin, two paperbags which contained a really cool retro tag and the other a letter and her own business card from her blog: Vier Vandaag. A postcard, a bag with really nice vintage stickers and a bag with a paper dress-up doll.

Isn't this a sweet retro style dress-up doll? I think so.

And then there was this tin. In the same pale green colour as the tag (I just like that, colour coordinated)

Inside even more small green things!

And all this inside the little tin: some stickers and stamps, small confetti, a small fluffy green ball, some flowers, a green peg, a paper butterfly, a small paper leaf and a small picture. I just love little tins and boxes. That's definitely my soft spot.

Anne Frank

My daughter has a thing for Anne Frank. She really wanted to visit the Anne Frank house. She wanted that for ages, but I figured she was a bit to young for all the terrible things that happened at that time. She kept insisting though. For her eight birthday she asked her grandmom to give her a book about Anne Frank, especially written for children. In the end she has read it twice and became a bit of an expert. She knew almost all there is to know about what happened to Anne Frank. And then the day finally arrived, we went to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam yesterday. My daughter, my mom and me.

My daughter could even explain some things to us we didn't even know. Her final verdict was "it was very interesting, but also a bit sad". I got a bit sad, it's a sad story from history, which hopefully never will happen again. From the bookshop she selected a huge poster of Anne Frank for her room and two more books. She wants to give a talk about it in class. I got myself some postcards. Even a postcard from her wallpaper with some pictures on it. Now vintage, but then modern ofcourse. I'm not quite sure who I can send a postcard from Anne Frank though, gonna put some in my diary/scrapbook anyway.

Fun with mail

This postcard went to Marieke a while ago. A lot of stamps can make a cool foreground to a drawing! Just to check what would happen in the mail. Well, nothing really happened, it arrived as it was supposed to. Not even all the postage stamps were stamped.

Cycling, a castle and some postcards

Really good autumn cycling weather yesterday! So on we went! Our son had a new bike and he really wanted to cycle a bit further than our normal route to school. We still never visited a castle which is across the river we live nearby. So that was our big sunday plan!

We had to cross the river on the little ferry!

And there it was, Castle Amerongen. Very fancy.

The interior was a bit gloomy though and lots of mixed styles from 1700 all the way to the early twenties.

But check out this postcard from the old inhabitants of this castle. The family Bentinck. I love it! I also bought some flowery postcards, well, you can never have enough postcards

Wonderful mail from Inge

When I got home from work the other day there was an envelope sticking out of my mailbox. Our mailbox is at the front of our hedge, not in our front door as most mailboxes are. It was totally wedged in the mailbox! It took me about five minutes to get out, it was totally stuck but also totally wedged in. When it got loose it made a jump in the air and finally landed some metres away from me. Well, that was an excited envelope I thought! So I made myself a cup of tea and sat down to carefully open it.

I love these butterfly postage stamps from Belgium!

Inside the envelope was a cute metal box. It was clear were it got stuck in my mailbox, right in the middle of the box!

I got really excited! How beautiful! The inside of the lid! How gorgeous! And some silver tissue paper inside the box.

After carefully opening the tissue paper so much to discover!

Check this out! It's all wonderful! A letter in which Inge wrote she liked my secret snailmail book so much, she wanted to send me something special in return. She had found this old sigarbox at her gran's house which she decorated herself. I love all the stuff inside! A small bottle of perfume, a Chocotoff, a felt bird, felt balloons, stickers, a cute tiny envelope, stamps, some tags, a crocheted flower, a windowsticker, three heartshaped buttons and a present.

I noticed something small on the present, first I thought it was a postage stamp.

But it was a tiny envelope! How cute is that!

Inside the tiny envelope a tiny letter. Because she liked my mail so much and I wrote I liked the washi tape she used, she sent me some of that amazing washi tape! I am so happy! Inge rules! This is all so amazing! I feel very grateful to receive this. And its not so much the wonderful box and all the amazing stuff inside, it's the way it makes me feel. That someone made this, especially for me. Wow!