Inspiration: While the kids are away, the parents are out to play (part 1)

After the holidays were over, the kids were out staying with their grandparents. And for the first time in about 12 months we had the whole weekend to ourselves! I didn't even have to work since I work every other weekend. What a joy and what to do? A whole weekend without kids! The only thing we knew, was that we definitely would go to a restaurant! Going to a restaurant without kids, is kind of a forbidden joy for parents and we were going to take advantage of that! I also wanted to take this oppurtunity to find some nice paper.
The first day we went to Nijmegen to the Valkhof museum. It's a museum located in a park on the riverside in Nijmegen, the oldest city of the Netherlands. And that was such a beautiful museum! I loved it! Full of Roman artefacts that were found in and around Nijmegen. There was a lovely view from the museum looking over the bridge over the river. Roman glassware on the foreground.

I love these medieval books. The beautiful illustrations and calligraphy. Luckily this was behind glass, I wouldn't be able to control myself to feel the thick pages.

The modern art section was very light and full of great stuff. I don't know who those people are on this picture by the way. I was looking for my boyfriend as we always drift into different directions in a museum. But then we always end up looking for each other. We are not very efficient at that.
I'm definitely going back to this museum though, but then with the kids. They would love the Roman section! I'm sure of it!

And the great thing about museums is, they have a shop! I love museum shops! Full of postcards and books. I bought some postcards as a always do, but I also found this really funny note holder! It's only small and whatever you write on a note will be visible inside the telly frame. Vintage hoarder as I am, I just needed this! Like it was a life necessity.

After our museum visit, we payed a visit to Flying Tiger. It's a store with lots of cheap home-ware stuff. I was a bit disappointed with their collection though. It's not that cheap as I expected. I found some paper-ware though.

And right across the street was a thrift shop! There's no stopping me at a thrift shop! I found some music books I can use for some paper craft or make envelopes amongst other things. And this swan thing. It turns out it's a ringholder.

And what a lovely day it was. After wandering through the city centre we ended up in a restaurant. With a glass of wine, and a 4 course meal. How lovely, and how strange without kids.

Outgoing: dutch mail to Foreign Geek

This mail went out to Wina from Foreign Geek. She has such a great blog! She writes in a humouristic way about her life and travels, just love her writing style. Anyway, she had contacted me on my blog last year (that seems like forever away now) and sent me this parcel with Indonesian goodies. Although Kalwina is a Singapore resident nowadays, she's originally from Indonesia. Well, to cut a long story short, I've sent her a dutch parcel in return.

Okay, I may have been gone a bit overboard with this, but once I get going, there is no stopping. I went for the Dutch colours: red, white and blue, although it's mainly blue and white like Delfts blue table ware (which I love!)

At the DIY store at the wallpaper section I've found these samples of a sort of Dutch style wallpaper. Although I needed six pieces of it, I felt a bit greedy though. So I tackled the kids to pretend they needed samples for their room or something. And as good citizens we left the store with each two samples. So mummy would have enough for her mailthing. And it sort of felt like a little victory. How silly is that, a victorious feeling of 6 samples of wallpaper. Anyway. I've sewn them together (as wallpaper can only be glued to walls, and believe you me, I've tried it! Glueing wallpaper together, it just doesn't work). I've perforated some holes, and tied a blue and white ribbon in. That does work though!

This was inside the wallpaper bags. Sticky tape with Dutch houses on them (well, they could have been Dutch) and a really Dutch Delft blue earthenware magnet. The magnet (yes another) with the saying on it, I found really appropriate since Wina was doing an E-course in happiness. Although happiness can not be learned, most of the time it's just right in front of you, we just need to see it. (oh my God! I've turned into a Zen master, which I'm not of course. I'm always the one who looks at the horizon instead of in front of me, until I sort of stumble upon a little happiness in the place where I wasn't expecting it)

This is my favourite winter tea this year! A lovely mix of redbush and vanilla. It smells really homely, really good for cold weather.

I even got a bit crafty and made this! An envelope with a Dutch texture! To be true, it was a placemat, but you can never tell now. The Dutch ribbon is from a plastic "I'm a winner" award from the kids, which I found somewhere lying around the house. The plastic medal wasn't really nice, so I didn't mind cutting that of to use the ribbon it was tied to. And vintage buttons I thrifted.

Inside a package full of sticky notes of apples and pears. We are surrounded by apple and pear orchards over here. Springtime is beautiful! Blossom everywhere (and hay fever too).

A Dutch card with a letter and a little something.

The little something. A necklace with a blue stone.

And a tin! Will tell you in another blogpost about these kind of tins.

I've altered the tin a bit to give it a Dutch feel. Even put a vintage picture inside and some small Dutch gifts.

Red, white and blue gifts inside! A Delft blue wooden shoe (which was not wooden by the way), a keychain with a girl with traditional Marken costume, a Dutch lucky hanger, a funky red hanger and red, white and blue origami crane birds!

It doesn't look it in this picture, but the crane birds were really tiny, but really sweet. And for a bit of luck of course. Or for a bit of Dutch courage. Yeah, that's better, Dutch courage.

Incoming: mail week 1

As a total surprise this lovely mail from Nancy arrived just after Christmas. Love these stamps! She made an envelope which she wrapped in clear plastic. Between the plastic and the envelope was a Christmas cookie and a branch of a Christmas tree. Unfortunately the cookie didn't survive the mail. The envelope smelled lovely though from the crushed cookie!

Inside two small green parcels, a little winter book, which I totally adored, and a letter on lovely stationary.

The little winterbook was full of vintage Christmas cards!

So cute! Quote: "the happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything"

Inside the small green parcels was this wooden hanger.

And a small tin inside the other. It's actually a tin she had received through mail herself, and now she has sent it to me. And I love it!

More incoming mail! A card from Inge and a mail from Christel.

This arrived from Christel. She had contacted me on my blog, and this is what she had sent me. A book of gold!

Once folded open, a booklet full of gold classy fancyness with a  really nice letter (turns out we are the same age!)

A golden garland. What's not to love about a garland!

Gold confetti and gold washi taped party toppers!

And some more incoming mail last week.

A thank you card from Majella with whom I was connected to the adventsmail swap thing.

After carefully dewashitaping the card, this is what was underneath.

Although I liked it more when I took all the washi tape of. The undressed version.

From Inge arrived the big white envelope on the picture above the birds. Inside these lovely wrapped parcels and a small letter. This parcel consisted of 6 brown envelopes full of washi tape and stamps! Really cool!

Inside the brown envelopes were small goodies, most paper goodies. I liked this one the best.

This is what was all inside them all! Check out the lovely shiny magnets in the little white bag on the bottom right.

In the rolled up parcel was this cute poster.

This is the first time that I've blogged about all the incoming mail in one blog. I'm not sure I like it yet. Feels that I'm not doing justice to all the lovely mail. But heck, at least I'm trying something different. Feedback welcome!

Outgoing: The white edition

I've made a totally white mail for Marja. Thought that would be a fun thing to do! I had so much fun hoarding through my stuff! I am a hoarder, a total chaos hoarder. I collect way to much, always think I can use something for something. And as it turns out, I have used a lot of something for something. In this case, a lot of white something! It's hard to see on the picture, but all the white stuff turned out a different kind of white! I was surprised by that aswell!

A letter written with milk, as you iron it with a hot iron the words will appear. At least, that was what supposed to happen. Marja emailed me that it didn't quite work, some words appeared, some didn't. Bugger! I had tried it at home and it did work, but maybe my enthusiasm was catching on onto the iron. I'm such a bad housewife that I never touch the damn thing, well okay, for ironing Hama beads for the kids. So I can imagine that my iron was glooming with joy at that moment! The white letter is on the top left by the way. Try it sometime, so much fun! My friends and I used to write letters to each other when we were young while playing to be a secret agent. I'm going to learn that to my kids some day. I remember having hours of fun with this!

Embossed paper with a floral pattern. I would love to own my own embossing machine some day, it's on my wishlist.

Old fashioned handcrafted paper from linen with a watermark of the dutch lion. It's such beautiful paper, it's has a special feel to it. I bought it at the Openlucht museum (open air museum). Our family love that museum! Me and my boyfriend love it because it's full of old dutch buildings and trades, the kids love it because they can catch a ride on the old-fashioned tram (and the vintage candy store of course). There is this farm where they make this kind of paper like they used to, of linen. Such a time consuming process but with all the attention that goes into it, it makes the paper kinda special.

Three small glassine bags with white buttons, paperclips and bows I once got from a friend of my mum.

Outgoing: Mail to Zalifa, the Snailmail Collective

This mail went out to Zalifa. We were paired for the November Snailmail Collective. Sadly this brilliant initiative from "the nectarcollective" has ended. It was so amazing to meet amazing people from around the globe!
Well, Zalifa lives in Singapore and is quite a busybody. She is an accountant but loves to organise events, I suck at organising events, I really do, but Zalifa seems very good at it! Theme of that month was: what are you grateful for. So we emailed a bit about our lives and the theme, turned out we were both grateful for all the little things in life and that we would love to do more of what we love doing. She went backpacking in Japan, and I guess she still is at this moment. So I think it's safe to post what I have sent her.

This is what I've send. A notebook to use for lists,or as a traveljournal, for little notes or a diary. Some Wellness tea, stickers and pagemagnets in clock style, a magnet, a card with a tulip, travel label sticky notes, a vintage card from Paris and a letter in a handmade envelope.

The magnet had this really cool saying on it which summed up our emailing a bit! Maybe I've should have kept it for myself to remind me of this simple but yet brilliant quote.

I've made the envie from a page from an old book with my cool new stamps on it! I just love stamps, can't help myself.

I've wrapped everything in kraft paper. Unwrapping is just part of the fun! Well I think anyway. Hope Zalifa likes it all.

Inspiration: New year resolutions (and a small give away)

Happy new year to you all!!!!!!!
After a bit of a break from blogging I'm back to blog business! Blogging has giving me so much this past year, I've met some really great people through this! But it's also very time consuming. Time I rather use for making mail for instance.So I've decided, while I was on my little blog break, to make some resolutions for 2014.

• First of all I would love to have a really cool blog design, but I know nothing (really nothing, it's all gobbledygook to me) about HTML codes, so this year I'm trying to have a go at this. 
• I also want to take my blogging to the next level (if there is one), blogging 2.0. But I'm not even sure what I mean by that by the way. I'm thinking of doing some tutorials or give aways. But then again, I'm also not sure about that either. What I do know is, that I'm not going to write blogs about all the mail I'm receiving anymore. I will still be writing blogs about what I've sent, don't worry, but maybe do a once a week blog about incoming mail or something, it's just to time consuming otherwise.
• I'm going back to do some journalling! I've just didn't manage to have time last year, and it actually really bothers me that I didn't! It's so balancing to do some journalling. It gives me grip on daily life while it passes so quickly. And also a place to use all this really cool ephemera I've collected these past months.
• I want to learn calligraphy. Well, I want to try it at least. On Instagram I see these really cool calligraphers with beautiful handwritten letters. My handwriting is really bad, I'm always trying to write as fast as I think, and that makes my writing, well, sloppy. Sometimes I have a hard time trying to read what I've written myself.
• I want to do more papercrafting! A lot more! Recycle and upcycle paper. Sometimes I just get tons of ideas from packaging and stuff!
• I going to finish my studio! We are getting there, finally! 2014 will be the year where I will be crafting in my studio instead of trying to find a bit of space in our computer room. 
• I really do want to write more long letters. That is the core of snailmail, and I feel that I have been getting away from that a bit. I love being really crafty, that's just what I love doing, but sometimes I just didn't put enough effort into a letter. So I'm going to turn this around this year, or at least, I'm going to try.

A lot of resolutions I guess, but then again, I have a whole year to try. 

I've managed to send off some new years mail to some special people, with little sparklers inside the envelope. To Marieke I've send a Chinese themed mail with this really cool Chinese calender.

I've got one for myself aswell! Actually, my boyfriend got them from his job where they order a lot of chinese. I think it's such a funky calender! And the good news is, I've got one left! So if you are interested, leave a nice comment and maybe I will be sending it to you.
Also, if you can give me a bit of feedback on my blog, please leave a comment!