Cool M A I L

I've got some groovy mail pictures to show you!

Beautiful holiday stamps from my packages from Finland.  Thank you, An-Ca!

A parcel I received from Great Britain was cheerfully illustrated by the sender, Gemma!  xoxoxo

Imagine my excitement when I pulled an envelope out of the mailbox...from THE PALACE!  As my friend Pamela says, "To get a letter, send a letter!" 

I did a swap with a lovely Brit named Laura, whose husband is a sports writer and his favorite American football team is the Arizona Cardinals.  I sent her some fan memorabilia and she sent me Royal Wedding souvenirs and later I received this pencil case packed with London souvenirs!  How cool is it to use the pencil case as the envelope?! She even stitched it to keep it closed.  I love it all -- thanks so much, Laura!

 Just one decorated outgoing envelope to show at the moment; heading to Finland:

 

Happy New Year!

 

Whew! It's been awhile since my last post and I'm happy to report that all is well.  I bought myself a new Apple computer that I definitely have not mastered yet.  I traveled a lot for work the last quarter of 2011, back and forth to North Carolina.  I traveled up until December 22, so it felt like a short holiday season for me, which I didn't like.  I really miss the Christmas lights.  Then we took a short holiday to Las Vegas in between Christmas and New Year's and we went back to Minus 5 Ice Lounge:

Then my birthday comes right after the first of the year, and I always enjoy getting spoiled by my family!

My favorite vintage New Year's greeting:

Some (older) news:  Here is a photo of our last garden harvest.  We discovered termites (!) so we had to lose the garden, as the chemicals/termite killer was very close to the garden.

Mum and I went to a flea market in the parking lot at our favorite antique mall.  Here she is, digging through vintage hankies:

Always beautiful glass and sometimes tools can be found!

I left with some nice vintage ephemera that day.


I won a kitty-naming contest for Julie, the talented artist behind the Penpal of the Week blog.  I named one of her hairless Sphinx cats as Augustin.  She let me pick a stationery set from her store, La Papierre and I chose the "Dear Jeanne" set.  If it looks familiar, it is because the image is also featured on her business cards.  It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of her stationery and postcards!  Thanks, Julie!

On Swap-bot, I tried making my first ATC's (Artist Trading Cards), golden on front and then back images:

And here are some ATC's that I received:

I'm in no big hurry to make more as I was criticized for not making them the correct size.  Apparently I used the wrong size playing card as the base!  Oh well, live and learn!  Hope your new year is off to a *b*a*n*g*