This week in postcards

Incoming mail:

Mail from China and Mexico via postcrossing. This is the Mexican one, very colourful!

Exotic stamps from China and Mexico.

Postcards from neighbour and neighbour! Dutch postcards for charity, they come with charity postage stamps as well. The stamps are quite horrid I think this year. Very gloomy. The postcards though are very colourful!

Outgoing mail:

Mail going out to Marieke, I've found sticky notes in shape of a kiss, and I have found a matching card! How cool is that! I'm also trying to write like a calligrapher, but I keep on trying I think.

Mail to a sick college with some hearts in it, thought that was a sweet thing to do. That would be a nice surprise when she's opening the envelope!

And some more outgoing mail, but about that later.

Postcards and time synchronicity

A few postcards made it to my mailbox this week. With this one as my weekly favourite! I just love vintage postcards! This one is an original old postcard, how cool is that!

Three postcards via Postcrossing, from Belgium, India (my first ever!) and the Netherlands. The vintage black and white, the temple and the cute retro style bear are all favourites! And then there is this time synchronicity thing..... At the exact day I posted a mail to Nicolette, a few hours later I received a card from her from Tanzania! And the next day I made a quick Halloween mail for Marieke and she has written two cards to us at that same day. How weird is that!...... Spooky.......

Check out these really cool postagestamps! Those Indian ones are so damn wonderful!

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.

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

Postcrossing mini-meeting

Marieke and I decided on having a postcrossing mini meeting. She is like the postcrossing Queen! We thought it would be really fun to sent and write postcards all over the world together. She brought me a present and a card! How sweet is that! I love the card with vintage nurses on it she wrote me. It's actually a get well soon card, and I'm not sick or anything, but she knew I would love this! And I do! I'm just a sucker for vintage and since I am a nurse this is perfect! In the present were loads of postcards! Some were really wonderful (birds, a cat doing yoga), maybe I am just not going to send the cool ones off, but hang them on my wall :-)

So we got our stuff together, made some fresh mint tea and off we went! It turned out really chaotic since we got chatting and lost track of time, so when we finally got down to write cards, the kids decided to join in, which even made it more chaotic. We ended up with a table full of markers, postage stamps, stamps, pens, ink, stickers, books, etc. A total chaos! I will save you the photo, but believe me, it was a mess.... When the kids got to bed, and I cleared to table I sat down and looked at all the cards we wrote. Marieke has great stamps from Miss Honeybird (they are on my bucketlist!) which we used on the cards, some stamps are mine by the way, the typewriter stamp is mine for instance. My son has drawn some cute little drawings on the cards, I love this tiny crocodile! And although we ended up in chaos, Marieke and I decided to do this again some day, it was so much fun!

Birthdayboy

It was my husbands birthday yesterday, and a few cards came his way. A real ugly one (drawn football shoes), a funny one (picture taken at a funny moment at work) and a real pretty one (from me and the kids). Birthday cards always tend to appear on our piano for some reason. Our piano who is very very out of tune, but we sort of got used to it just being there and never being used anymore. Well we use it to stack toys that are in the way and for birthdaycards. And for our vintage recordplayer which we still use when we are in a vintage mood! We still own lots of albums from our teens we never got rid off. Just because the feeling of vinyl is so much better than a glossy cd. And the feeling of putting a record on it, turn back the arm thing and the record starts spinning, and then at the right moment and the right place you have to put the needle on the spinning record, and then you sigh from relief when you managed it without a scratch on the record. Well, that feeling.

I really like this card, the intricate cutting of the paper, I would never manage that with a pen knife, I wish I could though. I would make such great and wonderful papercutting pictures, but I'm a bit to impatient for that though. My husband thought it was a cool card anyway. And that's why I love him, he appreciates I got it specifically for him and likes the picture.

Since my husband is not to keen on celebrating his birthday we went out to town! Since we live in a small village in the countryside we've been to shops we never seem to have in our neighbor towns. And I got some craft stuff for myself! Also a real cutting knife, still dreaming that one day I will make something like that card. Untill now I always used an old scalpel from my old job in the hospital, sharp as hell, but very wobbly. Time to use a "real" one. Hopefully it will work.

Comfort pictures

After yet another difficult day at work I needed some cheering up. My car sort of took itself to the tiny, but ever so cute shop in a small cute old town nearby. The owner sells stuff I never seem to find somewhere else. And a lot of great postcards! Nothing makes my day more than beautiful pictures! We got chatting about mail. How some people don't appreciate handwritten beautiful cards and even throw them away! And the sheer pleasure when good mail arrives and how different that feeling is from email or Facebook. This was just what I needed!

Sweet and sad postcards

My sweet colleague sent me a smile! I'm experiencing a bit of a difficult time at work, but my sweet colleague was very thoughtful! Isn't that just sweet! It definitely made me smile.

Sad news from a colleague, she suffered from breastcancer a long time ago. And now it has returned. Very sad. And what to write on a postcard? Words don't seem enough. And what kind of card to choose, I decided on this flower in the end.

Railwaymuseum

We took the kids to the railwaymuseum today. Stacks of postcards in the shop ofcourse! I found this postcard full of old railway tickets. And tucked away in a little corner of the museumshop I've found a bunch of real oldfashioned railwaytickets! I think they're cool!

Autumn postcards

I ordered a whole bunch of autumn postcards from www.natuurlijkefoto.nl.
Why? Just because I thought I treat myself to beautiful glossy postcards.

Postcards from around the world

This week I received postcards from all over the world! From Siberia a lovely sunny "be happy" beach, from Germany a picture of a palace in Andy Warhol style and a sweet plant postcard from Japan. From Taiwan an antique map card. Postcards written by a chemist, a man, a woman who lives in the city where Toyota's are build and a woman from former east Germany. I don't know these people, but we all love receiving postcards from around the world. It's a joy!