Where Oh Where

I know I have been a bit absent from blogging lately but I have a good reason! I am moving across the country. Again. Nathan & I have decided that Rhode Island is not the place for us and are heading back to an area more familiar and home-like to us, Portland, Oregon. Although I have only been to the city once, it has been the place I have wanted to live since first stepped foot in the Amtrak train station. I will now only be about a 2 hour flight from Las Vegas and that makes me so happy.

We are going to be driving our cars from Rhode Island to Oregon, with a pit stop in Colorado to visit my family out there. I won't have an address for quite some time so please hold off on sending me any mail. 

I can't wait to start receiving mail again! I will have plenty of time to make mail art now with no letters to reply to.

Mail Call

I did not reply to any letters this weekend. Oops. I spent my Saturday in Newport, hanging out with old coworkers and didn't get home until 1 AM! Today has been the laziest of days and I didn't feel like doing anything.

Luckily I didn't receive a lot of letters this week to reply to! A wonderful package was sent to me from Rhiannon. She included a lovely mix cd that kept me company on the drive to and from Newport, as well as a bunch of other nice things.

Back to work tomorrow. I will have to work on writing replies during the week.

Mail Carriers

For being such a fan of mail and the USPS, I do not have any sort of relationship with my mail carriers. The only one I kind of knew was at my mom's house in Las Vegas, even though I never met him. My mom would see him on occasion and he would ask about me & the letters I sent and received. The mail carrier for my apartment complex seems to come quite early in the morning and I have only seen him once. I do try to wave hello to every mail carrier I see though!

When I was living in my old apartment, I received this funny envelope in the mail and it pretty much made my day. I was a little confused but also really excited that the mail carrier (I assume) wrote "TARA dactyl" on the envelope.

I forgot to put postage on an envelope and they returned the envelope to me with this letter. I forget to put postage on a lot of envelopes I send out, its my very bad no good memory! This is the first time I ever received a form letter for postage required and my first USPS envelope address to TARAdactyl. I like to pretend that my mail carrier just wanted to be one of the lucky ones to send me mail so they sent it back to me in their own envelope! I honestly think this might be my favorite piece of mail ever received.

Have you had any weird postal service experiences?

Outgoing

I honestly can't believe it is already April! My birthday is just around the corner and I'm not sure what to do. It's a pretty significant one, the 25th birthday, from what people say. When I was 17 I definitely had a mental list of things that would happen by the time I turned 25. I don't think anything from that list happened but I wouldn't consider that a bad thing! I accomplished my life goal of leaving Las Vegas, what else could I ask for?

I forgot to do a March outgoing/incoming stats post and I'm sure you guys really missed it, maybe even lost sleep over it, so I apologize. I offer some peeks at recent outgoing mail in exchange for your forgiveness. Deal?

 

In other news, my super cheap letter opener bit the dust. It was purple and pretty useful so I am a little sad. I have an equally cheap replacement, it even advertises some medicine. It's not purple though. Maybe I will ask for a lovely, not cheap letter opener for a birthday present.

As a birthday present to myself, I am making a Dr Pepper cake.
My three favorite things:
1 - Purple
2 - Dr Pepper
3 - Pterodactyls

What are three of your favorite things?

Mail Call

A lovely selection of letters received this week. One postcard was sent to me from Janie Davies, the lady who put a call out to save her Vermont post office. I think I sent 8 postcards to her PO box in total and she sent me two back! The second one postcard was received this week and it is a print of her post office that someone drew. It is pretty fantastic.

All letters have been replied to and will be sent out on Tuesday! I am being a bit lazy this weekend and haven't put them in envelopes yet. I made a few envelope collages on Saturday while watching the world's most terrible movie, Cosmopolis. Has anyone seen it? I read a review that said something about how it seems the actors are all doing their own personal monologue and I thought that was spot on. It's a bizarre movie, the script is terrible and the acting is pretty awful as well. At least I had something to do while watching it! 

Today is Easter so Happy Easter to everyone that celebrates it. I am in no way religious but Easter is my favorite holiday. My birthday lands on Easter every so often so that makes it a special of a holiday for me! My 29th birthday will be the next one that lands on Easter. Nathan and I had fun coloring eggs and eating way too much candy today. My work handed out free hams so we had that for dinner.

First Impressions

Envelopes are your first glimpse into your mail friend's personality. Do they like getting their hands dirty, making their own envelopes out of books or magazines? Do they prefer a more simple style, keeping the envelope plain but selecting their favorite pen to write your address or using their favorite postage stamp? Are they a bit more crazy, pasting whatever random paper bits they can find to the front and backs of envelopes?

I love noticing the little details that people put on their envelopes. A quick doodle, a nice stamp (rubber or postage!), beautiful handwriting or a pretty sticker. It's all wonderful.

How would you describe your mail personality?

Mix CD Swaps

I love music. If I am not watching movies, I am listening to music. I don't listen to a lot of new music, I am still listening to my favorite bands from my teenage years. When I was a teenager, I often sent mail friends and strangers mix CDs of my favorite songs. These song selections haven't changed by much, if at all, and I am certainly not bored of them! I've found a lot of neat songs while watching movies but I often forget to look them up after the movie is over. I should to make a new music journal!

I recently send Rhiannon a mix CD that featured a few (okay, a ton) of oldie favorites plus a few new ones. The song list I sent with the CD contained a short blurb about why each song is my favorite. It was a lot of fun to go through the list and figure out why they are my favorite songs and realize how many memories are associated with each one. Looking at the list above, I realized that I have seen most of these bands perform live and every single show I've been to holds a special place in my heart. Since moving to Rhode Island, I haven't been to many shows and I really miss it. I'm not the type of person to go to a show alone and I don't know anyone out here who has the same music tastes I do! 

My lovely typewriter helped out in typing up the song list. Sending mix CDs and using my typewriter take me back to when I first started sending mail to strangers on postcardx. I miss the days of being a teenager, when I didn't have a job and I could spend all day every day writing letters, making envelopes and burning CDs!

If you have any music recommendations, feel free to leave them in the comments!

Mail Call

A nice assortment of letters and postcards received this week. It's always a pleasure to receive an envelope from Julie, she sends the prettiest things and has the best handwriting. The gold envelope in the middle is the one I received from her this week. It has such a beautiful shimmer!

Yesterday I replied to all the letters I received this week. Now that LetterMo is over, I reserve my weekends to reply to letters and send the replies out on Monday. It is a nice system, I think! I keep up with all of my replies and haven't been behind at all, so I'm happy. This week I have to kick my butt in gear and collage envelopes.

I went to sign up for the letterpress class I was looking forward to but the class I wanted to take is sold out! Boo! Well, I will keep an eye out for May. It is kind of a relief because I didn't really want to spend the money!

Mail Call

This week I received one letter and one postcard. Oddly enough, the postcard was from Hawaii so now I have received mail from 2 different people in Hawaii! I didn't receive my first piece of Hawaii mail until this year.

Emilie sent me a lovely letter with an envelope that has me craving a cigarette (and money!). I quit smoking cold turkey when I moved to Rhode Island last year and I don't typically crave cigarettes but this week has been tough! It comes and goes though.

Tomorrow I will be sending out eight letters and one postcard! Buying stationery really helped with my letter writing. I wrote 4 letters on Friday, 1 yesterday and 4 today. I am all caught up, thank goodness!

I also started scanning in some of my collages and made some postcards on Zazzle. I ordered a few of each design and can't wait to see them in person! I hope they turn out alright. I'm not really familiar with the printing quality of the website. Have you ever ordered anything from there? Are there any better online printing websites I should check out?

Hope everyone has a good mail week!

Saturday Adventures

On Wednesday I had to venture into Boston for a work-related meeting. I took the commuter rail into the city from the South Attleboro train station. On my way to the train station, I saw a sign for a flea market that was open on Saturday and Sunday and I made a mental note to check it out this weekend. I haven't had much luck with flea markets ever but I always talk myself into going just in case. Nathan and I went this morning and it wasn't anything special, the usual stalls of people trying to sell new clothes, electronics and jewelry. I'm always on the hunt for old magazines, postage stamps, cameras and anything I can use in my mail art. This flea market didn't have anything I was interested in but I did find some old Saturday Evening Post magazines and I can't wait to cut them up! They have amazing ads and illustrations that will be fun to use in my collages.

After the flea market, Nathan asked if there was anything else I wanted to do while we were out and about. After thinking about it for a bit, I remembered that I am basically out of stationery. Thanks to technological advances, Nathan whipped out his phone and found a paper store on Hope Street that seemed promising. While we were trying to find parking, I saw various stores that I wanted to pop into. We went into Frog and Toad first, a store with a variety of fun things. Chocolate bars that promise weight loss and wrinkle free skin, beautiful jewelery and stationery! After that store we headed into Pippa's Papers. Once inside, the owner greeted us and asked if we were looking for anything specific. I asked if she had some plain stationery and mentioned I wrote letters. She pointed me in the direction of the Verge de France stationery pads she had for sell. We got to talking and she mentioned she was starting a letter writing group that would have meetings in her shop. I was stoked! She even is a member of the LWA. I signed up for the store's newsletter and can't wait to find out when the first meeting will be. Randomly finding this store probably made my week.

 

I am now a proper letter writer again. Stocked up on stationery and postage stamps! My order came the other day. I think my favorite part about ordering stamps online is that I forget exactly what I order so when I get the package it is a surprise! I really am so happy with the 2013 USPS postage stamps. They are coming out with such fantastic designs!