Snail mail week: Lovely letters, longtime friendships

Ever since I was a teenager I always had many penpals. I loved writing about my life and loved even more to read about other people and cultures. Some of these penpals are still very good friends of mine, and they don't even live close to me. I had the privilige of meeting some of them over the years, which I will tell more about through these pictures.
This letter is from a dear friend from the UK, Katie. We have been writing for year and years. Last year I visited her in Bristol, England and had an amazing time! She showed me around her town and I got to meet her lovely boyfriend, who took lots of pictures for us. Katie also visited Holland and stayed at my home for a week! At the time we baked lembas bread (we both love Lord of the Rings!), visited the beach, rode bikes and basically had a ton of fun. I am happy she is still in my life as a good friend. And isn't that postage stamp amazingly pretty?!

Katie and me in Bristol

These totally cute drawings are made by my friend from Russia; Zhenya. I always loved receiving letters from her. Although our contact now is mostly through internet, I still treasure her letters alot. It always took a while for our letters to arrive, as Russia is huge! And the mail is quite slow there, but letters did arrive mostly. In 2010, after a long penpalfriendship, I finally got to meet my Russian friend. She lives in Madrid, Spain now and that is where I met her. It was such a joy to meet her and give her a hug! Had a great week with her in the heat of Spain and saw many beautiful things in Madrid. Hopefully I can meet her again soon, maybe in Holland?!

Me and Zhenya in Madrid

One of the best thing that has happened this year; reconnecting with my penpal from the Phillipines, Katrina! On the picture you can see two letters, one from 2002 and one from this week. I was super thrilled to find Katrina again on FaceBook. After sending her a message, she replied so lovely and could not wait to start writing again. And so we picked it back up, as if we had never been apart. It was so cool to find a letter of hers in my mailbox again! Katrina is hoping to visit me in Holland soon, and I can't wait!

Do you have lots of penpals? And have you ever met them? I would love to hear your stories, my friends!

Snail mail week!!

Hi my friends! I have some very exciting things coming up for this week. It's is all dedicated to the wonderful thing that is snail mail!

 



I will have posts about snail mail all week, including pretty letters and pretty postage stamps. A post on how to prettyfie your enveloppe and ofcourse I end this week with my snail mail exchange! The previous snail mail exchange was a great succes, so I cannot wait to see how this one goes. But that is for later this week! First many beautiful posts to hopefully inspire you to write a letter to a friend!

Paper goods in the mail!

 A while ago me and my friend Kelsea from Pink Wonderland decided to hold our own little exchange through snail mail. I sent her a set of Alice in Wonderland stamps, a vintage stickerset and a glitterstickerset in a tin. Not too long ago I received the package Kelsea sent me. It was a surpirse what she got me, so that made it even more exciting! And boy, she did not let me down one bit! I love every single item she got me.

The package included: A smashjournal (yay! We don't have these here in Holland) and a smashpad and smashtabs. A supercute set of three mini journals. Booklabels with vegetables on them and a lovely pad with scrappingpaper! As an little added bonus, she added a totally cute heart ring that Kelsea made herself. I am a happy lady! That's for sure, paper makes me happy.

Creative challenge #2: Photograph fall

Hi my friends! It's friday, so that means it is time for a new creative challenge. Last week I premiered this series of challenges with a draw your day challenge. Which was alot of fun for me! This week I would love to take a look at fall and use our photocamera to capture it. So the challenge is photograph fall!

Rules? Capture the essence of what fall means to you in no more then four pictures. So that could be anything from a tree that is losing it's leafs or a cup of hot chocolate.

 Want to participate? All you have to do is: be a follower of this blog and leave a comment saying you're in!

The challenge starts today and ends on thursday 26th oct (next week!) I will post my result on thursday and you are welcome to share yours too. Leave me a link to your blogpost and I would love to take a look at your result. I hope that you will join me again and remember, these challenges are for us to be creative and mostly to have fun!!

Draw your day result!

Last week I premiered the start of creative challenges on my blog. Draw you day was the challenge of last week. And today is the day I share my result with you all! As you may know by now, I am not great at drawing at all, but I had fun anyway! I drew my tuesday, where I had some fun baking at the icecreamshop. I hope that those who had joined me in this challenge will post a link in the comments so I can see your results too! Tomorrow I will post a new creative challenge, so stay tuned for that.

Switzerland in pictures: Bern city

Last time around I showed you pictures of the zoo in Bern, but we also visited the old city centre. It is very beautiful with old buildings, many flowers and gorgeous fountains. You can just feel the history when you walk there.We even saw the house where Einstein has lived for two years. Bern is German for the word bears, and the bear is symbol for the city. A bear graces their flag and a fountain is dedicated to the bear. I love bears so much, so I couldn't wait to visit this city! I hope you enjoy these pictures and even more so, I hope you all get to go to this impressive city someday!

Help A Heart!

Hi my friends. Today I want to share something about a wonderful cause and a wonderful friend. Kelsea of the blog Pink Wonderland has openly shared her story about Help A Heart, a fundraiser for the American Heart Association and why this is so very important to her. On oktober 20 Kelsea will take part in the Heart Walk to help raise more money for this foundation. But ofcourse, any money or spreading of the word is welcome! Please take a look at this page to see how you can help. Donate a small amount, or you can even buy something cute from Kelsea's Etsy shop. 

 I hope you can help in any way possible. If you can't donate, please help spread the word! Thank so much!