Happy Christmas 2015!

  Happy Christmas from the Hasegawas! We hope you had a wonderful holiday! 
Xo, 

N, K, and P

Thrifted Treasures 3

The last time I went thrifting with my parents, I scored a fun postal find–this postal truck stamp holder. I’ve been looking for a stamp holder for my roll of one cent bobcat stamps so I was thrilled when my mom found this in the kid’s section at Goodwill. The stamps go in a little drawer in the back of the truck and there’s a little sponge in the front of the truck that pulls out so you could wet your stamps (back before they were stickers.) Sadly, in spite of what I’m showing above, the stamps don’t really fit. Because the truck was made for the rolls of perforated lickable stamps, the adhesive versions with their paper backing don’t fit in the truck. And the roll is too big, too. But I’m determined to make it work, so I cut off twenty stamps from the roll and trimmed the excess paper backing off the top and the bottom, rolled them back into a coil and made them fit! It’s a lame amount of work for a few stamps though. (But I’m not opposed.) 

I have a small collection of mail things and someday they will have a permanent home someplace in our apartment. Right now the truck is on my desk (along with a thousand other things) and it’s the last big thing that needs to be tidied and cleaned and decorated for Christmas. 

I will be back later this week with pictures of the tree…and hopefully the rest of the place if I can finish up a couple of paper projects. 

The LWA Holiday Letter Social

Tomorrow, I’ll be joining Kathy and Donovan for the LWA Holiday Virtual Letter Social. We’ll be writing out our holiday cards and chatting about postal and non-postal topics (the subject of cocktails usually comes up!) So get out your Christmas cards and a cup of tea and join in!

Have you gotten any cards yet? My Aunt Karen was the first this year, closely followed by Ryan, whose card came from the North Pole again!

Thanksgiving Mail

I finally finished my Thanksgiving invitation…about three hours before Thanksgiving. I wasn’t feeling very inspired in November but I really wanted the invitation to include the vellum ledger paper and vintage Avery metallic tape I bought on Instagram. (Note: Vintage paper sales on Instagram are very addictive. And fun.)

I always try to add a quote to our Thanksgiving invitations. (Here’s a list of some favorites.) “Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way” is a Native America saying and I love how optimistic it is. I typed it out on a leaf that I cut from patterned paper and layered it with some other leaves from my stash. I added a strip of the vellum and a bit of the tape and a Japanese stamp. Done, right? Well, no. I had to make a mess of things and try to stamp the year on the top with my giant number stamp. But I didn’t press down hard enough and the numbers were messed up so I had to write over the numbers…anyway…I’m trying not to dwell on the numbers…or the fact that I handed the invitation to my parents when they walked in the door on Thanksgiving Day…I did send some other Thanksgiving mail. A few weeks ago I attended the LWA letter social at my library and there were some vintage books available for mail art. I had too much fun choosing images for mail art. And when I didn’t use vintage paper, I had fun using postage stamps and turkey stickers to jazz things up. (That Write More Letters postcard is from Craftgasm. I added the turkey.)  And now…holiday card season begins. Once I finish decorating, that is.

Have you started your cards yet?