incoming post catch-up

I've been a lazy blogger for the last few days, but now it's time to catch up on incoming post!

This beautiful field of flowers (the Fraser Valley in British Columbia) came via the SwapBot 'Just a Postcard to Canada 17' swap. Pretty!



I love mapcards so was particularly pleased when this Colorado one turned up in my mailbox (SwapBot Places/Locations PC swap)!





...and this spectacular one of the Oregon Coast was for the same swap.



And these two wonderful black and white cards were for 'Vintage Image postcard' swap on SwapBot. The one of the little boy is a portrait taken by American photographer Gertrude Kasebier (1852-1934) and the other one is, of course, a very young Marilyn Monroe.

Thanks for your cards, everyone!

Incoming post

There've only been two postal deliveries so far this week as Monday was a public holiday here but yesterday and today my mailbox has been bursting with lovely postcards!




These two are from Cecile in South Africa (a private swap), and show views from the Garden Route area...beautiful!



This PostCrossing card came from Finland and shows some characters from the Moomins! It also had a brilliant Moomin stamp which my camera didn't do justice to; take a look at the whole Moomin stamp series here: http://www.stampnews.com/stamps/stamps_2009/stamp_1239354381_140012.html
Aren't Moomins the best?!





Two more PostCrossing cards now, the first from the Czech Republic and the second from Germany. This nice PostCrosser from the Czech Republic was kind enough to write me out some phrases in Czech too!



Now another private swap, from Vaso in Corfu. Just looking at this makes me want to jump on a plane to Greece right away!

Thanks for all your cards!

In my mailbox...

This beautiful postcard from Australia with a matching stamp came to me via PostCrossing; it shows the Blue Mountains - spectacular!



This one also came via PostCrossing, all the way from Taiwan, and shows Penghu Inter-Island Bridge - the longest inter-island bridge in the Far East. My first ever piece of post from Taiwan, and pretty impressive that it only took 10 days to arrive from the other side of the world!



And my first PostCrossing card from South America was also via PostCrossing - muchas gracias, Ramiro! There are two really great stamps on the envelope this came in; hopefully the detail comes out here. The bottom one is so cute - two people riding a hair-raising rollercoaster!





And look at this wonderful vintage card showing everything typically Dutch - thanks Linda!



And now for an extremely fun delivery! This came from Karen, a SwapBot swap - Random Envie. The idea was to send your swap partner random items that would fit into a size 10 business envelope, and what fantastic things I got here! Karen sent me some wonderful Halloween stickers, cute recipe cards, pressed pennies and a cute notelet - can you see the cheeky pumpkin stamp on the envelope too? Karen was sweet enough to match her envie to my liking for everything Halloween-y! Of course, I forgot to photograph the envelopes I sent out for this swap, but can only hope they'll be as well-received as Karen's!

Winging their way to my swap partners...

As soon as I saw a vintage postcard swap on SwapBot, I had to sign up straight away! Vintage pictures and adverts are my favourite type of postcard (or maybe... well, I have so many favourites, it's hard to say, but they are high up on the list) so I had lots of fun choosing cards for my swap partners. The two I sent show a shopping street in Quebec in 1947 - the old cars and shop fronts were what appealed to me about this, and a picture of George Rodrigue's garage, in the main street of Valcourt, Quebec in about 1935. I'm betting the main street doesn't look much like that now!

Thanks for reading - hope the postman brings you something nice!

Postcards for me!

This week has been pretty good so far post-wise so here I am, to share the joy!



These two were both PostCrossing cards. The one at the top is from Portugal, showing women in the fishing village of Nazaré wearing their traditional outfit of seven skirts (representing seven days of the week). The second one shows the Old Post Office in Hartington, Derbyshire - although sadly, the back of the card tells us, the postbox has been removed since the photo was taken and the Post Office is now a private home. The decline of the Post Office continues...




These are just so great I had to share! Purchased from Etsy store PrairiePeasant‏, these envelopes are made from a reclaimed copy of Raymond Briggs' 'The Snowman'. Hopefully the detail is visible as they are just beautiful - I might just have to hoard them!







Next are two cards from SwapBot postcard swaps, the first one a map and pictures from around Indiana, the second showing Hank Greenberg (1911-1986), who played for the Detroit Tigers and is considered one of the best ever right-handed batters. That told me, as my ignorance of baseball is second to none. The third card is from a private swap, and shows Turin at dusk - thanks Anna!








Today's post brought me this wonderful picture of Lviv, in Ukraine (via PostCrossing). I was pretty excited about this, as it's definitely my first post from Ukraine. The next two are SwapBot swaps, the first showing a lovely view of San Francisco's Golden Gate, and the last one with some highly exotic tree frogs. Definitely my friends in high places!

Thanks for reading - and for all the cards (o:

And what was in my mailbox last week...

Apart from a lovely penpal letter, I also received these two postcards. The Canadian Rockies one is for SwapBot swap 'Just a Postcard to Canada 16' - thanks Linda! The LAX one is a real mystery - no name, no swap name... I'm stumped! My theory is that it's a PostCrossing one but sadly I can't register it.

Catch-up on last week's outgoing post!

Last saw quite a few postal ins and outs but I stupidly forgot to photograph some of them before mailing, which doesn't make interesting blog reading. Silly me. Anyway...



These 5 went out in SwapBot swap 'Quick 5 postcard swap #2'. I particularly liked the Quebec wildlife one - cuteness overload! Although maybe not so cute to bump into some of those guys in a dark street.



This winter wonderland scene went out for SwapBot swap 'Just a Postcard to Canada 17'. It shows the Montmorency Falls near Quebec. That's more snow than I've ever seen in one go!

Now for some private swaps via PostCrossing... going to Greece, South Africa and the Netherlands respectively.