Package from Finland!

   Back in March (?), my friend Johanna in Finland sent me a package which got absorbed by the international post somewhere. So, she was kind enough to send me another package, which arrived today. She knows I like Moomins, which are Finnish characters that I wrote a little bit about in my first ever blog post.  Here is what she sent me:

 Look at all these glorious stamps! David was so excited to see the Angry Bird stamps.

 Yum! Fazer chocolates :) I can'r wait to try them, especially the chili chocolate. I've never had that before.

 My favorite strawberry soup. She sent 2 packages. (Now I don't have to hoard the remaining packets from my last Finnish package. lol)

 More Moomin tea! I got tea from the same brand in my other package, but they were different flavors. These are all roobois tea. I look forward to trying them. Johanna, I know that you usually do your devotions in the morning over breakfast. This summer I have started being more disciplined about spending time in devotions so I have been reading at breakfast too. I have often thought of you and prayed for your family at this time. Maybe I'll add some of your tea into my breakfast time. It's nice to have a sister in Christ all the way on the other side of the world.

 Moomin tote bag.

 Cute Moomin notepad. I plan to bring this to school and stick it to my desk. It will be fun explaining what Moomins are to all the middle school students who look perplexed.

 Postcards! There are 2 super cute cards in the bag at the top.

 Don't I wish?
    This is my other mail from today. This is from Germany.  What's up with me and blimps this week? ;)

    In other news, we tried the spicy licorice lollipops from the last Finnish package. We did NOT like them. lol. The lollipops from China were a hit though.

Package from Finland

    I was so excited to arrive home from work yesterday and find a bright yellow package from my new friend Satu. Another friend in Finland sent me a package in January but it never got here, so I was slightly worried about the arrival of this one. I sent her my package today. I won't tell you the contents in case Satu checks in here and wants to be surprised. Here are the things I received from Finland:

 Package with all kinds of cool stamps. Our post office clerk today was not as accommodating. I got a $19.99 stamp, a few $5, a $2 and then a .15 label.

 Moomins! Do you know about Moomins? I wrote a bit about them in this post a long time ago

 The loot. I forgot to take a picture of the cool card. It was a painting by Risto Toivanen, an artist who has learned to paint with his feet due to being born with cerebral palsy. It was a picture of Tunturiporot- Hill reindeers.  Very cool.

 Tea! I didn't notice before I took the pictures but the "flavor" of the teas are: Go For It (black tea with blueberry muffin flavoring- I'm trying this one in a few minutes!!!!), I Should Know (black tea with lemon), Sweetheart (Black tea with strawberry), Moominmamma's Magic Potion.(Black tea with strawberry and rhubarb)

  Black licorice. I HATE black licorice- except this black licorice apparently. I have gotten this before in another package. I had some and gave the rest to Matt, who loves black licorice. I'm sharing this one too but I had a good amount. The licorice in this is much softer than the US and it is filled with some other... stuff. :) It also doesn't taste like soap or perfume like it does here.

    I think this is mustard.

 Bandaids,

Hallelujah!!!! My favorite :) Strawberry vanilla soup. She sent a whole box plus a few more packets.

 Cookies I think.

 Haven't tried these  yet. I'm guessing gum?

 Also gum?

 Gummy candies

 Also gummies- a little less squishy than our gummy candies.

 Moomin potholder!

 Beautiful paper napkins. Marimekko, Ivana Helsinki and Arabia collections.

More candy- hot licorice lollipops, the striped ones are similar to candy here (white, minty, hard candies with chocolate inside) and the other ones taste a bit like Werther's caramel- but soft. 

   Thanks Satu for your wonderful package. I hope you like mine as much!
    In other news, the sunburns and freckles are appearing. Welcome to baseball season.

Mail art card and received postcrossing cards. Anyone from Finland?

    The past few days we had a mailman who was not our normal postal worker. I got no mail. Not even bills, fliers, etc. Today my mailbox had some treats. Here are 2 postcrossing cards I received. This one is from Finland, a country I have decided I would eventually like to visit.

Those curious little creatures are called Moomins. They're well known in Finland and I have written about them before on the blog. I also liked the stamp and her Postcrossing sticker. I love getting stuff with Postcrossing on it. 

     This card came from Germany. It says "Where is the wrong note?" Can you find it?

 I got this card the other day. I especially loved the Titanic stamp. I hadn't seen that one before.

    One of the cards I was asked to send this week is headed to Canada. The woman likes to make mail art and with my new gelli plate I thought maybe I should make her a card!  So, I did. Here it is:

The colors are more vivid in person. I gelli rolled the background of the card and used bubble wrap to add texture. It looked like a giraffe to me. I added the flower from a Marimekko napkin. (Marimekko is a Finnish design company "renown for its original prints and colours since 1951." Thanks marimekko.com  Apparently it's a Finland day today. While I'm at it- I once had strawberry vanilla soup from Finland. It was instant soup and it was delicious and creamy. If anyone from Finland is reading, I'd love to do a swap for some soup.) Then I made the tiny house with scraps from gelli printing, a Sharpie, white chalk pen and the heart is made from nail polish. I got the house idea from this incredibly talented mixed media artist. She wrote a blog post about it here.  I hope the woman I sent it to likes it. It's simple compared to some of the things I see that get mailed but I liked it. 

     

     In other news, Timmy starts another baseball tournament tomorrow. Woot woot! Hope they have a great time and play well. Some of the boys are meeting for breakfast before the game. Very cute. (He's 8, they're still cute.) 

    Alright, off to do my devotionals and tidy up the kitchen a little bit. 

     Welcome to my first attempt at blogging! This year I made a resolution to write and (hopefully) receive 366 letters; one for each day of the year. Well, frankly, I'm failing miserably so I wanted to start this blog to motivate me to keep going. I also have many friends and family who don't understand my obsession to snail mail yet they frequently ask me about it. I thought it would be nice to share my progress on my project, show off some of the postcards/letters/packages I receive, keep everyone updated with life in general and get to know some other random people across the world.  So here goes...

The 366 project:
It's the 171st day of the year so I should have 171 letters received and letters outgoing, right? Wrong. The good thing is that I'm a teacher and I have decided to take this summer "off" from classes and working full-time. I'm out of school now so I have plenty of time to try to catch up.  (I'm hoping blogging will also give me a few creative ideas as I work on lesson plans over the summer. I might be getting a Smart Board in my classroom this year.)  Sadly, my real numbers are:

Received: 12

Sent: 23
    I'm only counting letters in my project. I'm also trying to make sure that the letters I send out are letters of quality, not just something mailed across the world for the sake of adding a number to my tally.  I get my letters from many pen pals that I have both in the United States and abroad. I also sometimes receive letters through the Postcrossing forum. If you've never heard of Postcrossing; it is a site designed to allow people to receive postcards from all over the world. Basically, you send a postcard to someone (and if you're nice  you check their preferences) and then you receive one from another random user. It's a great surprise to see what people send, what they write and where they are from.  Check it out: www.postcrossing.com.
Here is what I sent and received today for mail.

Mail out:

  Some of these postcards are rather strange. I like the Peep one the best. These cards went to Russia (3), China, Finland, The Netherlands (2), Germany, and the United States (specifically Maryland and Missouri).  next time I add postcard images I will link it with the Postcrossing number in case any of my Postcrossing friends stop by!
    I also sent a package with a few small gifts to one of my penpals, Miera, in Malaysia.

Mail in:
     I am part of the Mystery Envelope Round Robin on the Postcrossing forums. For people who aren't usually snail mailers, a round robin is when participate in something that will come to you and then be sent on to other people. In this round robin, 10 items are put in an envelope and then the envelope is mailed to the second person. This person can then take out any items they would like to keep, put in items to replace the ones they've taken and then sends it out to the third person. This particular envelope is traveling between seven people. The last person who gets it will return it to the person who started the envelope.  This envelope was started by verlustangst in Malaysia (she always puts awesome stuff in her swaps!) and continued to The Netherlands. I will send it to Jamaica tomorrow.  Here's the loot!:

 8 postcards from the new Avengers movie...

 Scrapbooking materials for Christmas; a tartan wallet that I will soon be using; a notebook; a vitamin E face mask; Winnie the Pooh origami paper, and a variety of stickers. The butterfly stickers are 3D.

Lastly, there are 2 Moomin tote bags. What is a moomin you ask? Moomin are characters from a series of books and comic strips by Tove Jansson.They are apparently trolls but they look a little like hippos.  My friends from Finland are usually the people who send me Moomins. I once got a sheet of Moomin stickers and used them at school. It was pretty humorous to watch the middle schoolers trying to analyze what a Moomin was. It was a nice opportunity for me to talk to them about having penpals, art and Finland.
     I am keeping the blue Moomin bag (David loved it!), the butterfly stickers and the wallet. I am unsure what I'm going to replace them with.