Smiles Sent Saturday~12/19/15~Christmas packages & mail

Here's some Christmas themed mail I've sent lately:

 This paper had a horn on it, so I decided to go with musical stamps.

Smiles Sent Saturday ~ 12/12/15 ~ Christmas Cards

Here's our Christmas Card envelopes for this year.

This was our main one-the card was navy blue with a silver town of Bethlehem embossed on it.  I had bought them on clearance around last Christmas, and was excited that the stamps released last year matched, but when I went to buy them around the first of the year they were gone, so I had to buy press sheets and cut it apart.

This one I used a different stamp for the same card.  This card is one my sister and I mail to the widow of our childhood mailman.  We were homeschooled, so were always home when the mail came, and when we'd see him coming down the road my mom would let us run out to wait (safely off the road) for him to come and he'd hand the mail to my sister and I.  He retired, and we grew up, but we reconnected a few years ago at the funeral of another mailman who went to church with us-we posed for a photo.  He said ours was the only house he'd hope for junk mail at, so he'd have something to hand to each of us.  We started sending him Christmas cards with a little note/letter updating him on our lives, and after he died, we continue to send them to her.  I thought the stamp was great as it matched the card and was also mail themed which was perfect for how we knew her.

And this is a different card we sent.  It had Christmas lights as the cover.  I tried to copy the image for the envelope and then I saw the Charlie Brown stamps!  I was thrilled-like the movie and the stamps coordinated SO well!

We also did alternate stamps on some of these-this was for a family some of whose children's came to the family through adoption, so the corner stamp was perfect, the rocking horse was cute, and the Tiffany lamp was kind of like colored lights.

I also helped my grandmother get her Christmas cards out.  She's to the point where all she can do is sign them, but I get cards I know she'll like and get the envelopes all addressed and stamped for her-she really liked the pretty stamps!

I think between the cards our family mailed, our family sent through our church to homebound members, and the ones I helped my grandmother send I can account for over 100 cards!  So fun!!!

The name “Smiles Sent Saturday” denotes my hope these things I mailed made the people who got them smile.

Smiles Sent Saturday~12/27/14

Mailing cookies to a few dear, but far off family members has become a tradition the past few years.  This year we went simple-flat rate boxes!  But we jazzed them up a bit with stencils.  We also packed the cookies in oatmeal boxes and cushioned them with pages from Christmas catalogs to make it more festive.

Last year we went all mail themed:

Card and matching tissue paper

This is the general idea of how the box was to look...

Nutcracker Themed Envelope

This is a recent envelope I did.  This stamp from the Vintage Circus Posters set reminded me of a ballerina and one of my aunts is fond of The Nutcracker, so I thought it was a perfect theme for this time of year.  I did a little research and discovered that there are three main sets/scenes, so I divided the envelope into three panes with "Stage curtains" to divide it.  I used highlighters, markers, colored pens, metallic & paint markers and colored pencils as well as a few stickers.  Not perfect, put quite cute I think.

I thought the part that turned out the best was the tree, I've played around with drawing pine trees this year, you may have seen my earlier version in my December 13 Smiles Sent post.  I finally settled on giving a light background with a highlighter, drawing random branch bases with a fine tipped brown marker, then came back with a green pen and added needles.  Rather easy yet a nice effect.

Also, as it's Christmas day, I thought I'd share a photo of my "mail-able" gifts!  I really like to get this kind of things, you can see from the photo at the bottom of this post from 2012!

Christmas 2014 decorations

Welcome to a quick tour of our house decorated for Christmas

Just inside the front door.

Greeting card display.

Smiles Sent Saturday~October 19

This week’s post is a little different. It’s not about mail I send someone, but sending someone the tools to write for themselves.   For years my family has enjoyed sending shoeboxes to needy children world wide through Operation Christmas Child.  We always include school supplies: paper, pens, etc.  This year, for the plain paper (I always like to put in plain paper for then to draw) I used free paper and cheap report covers from Office Max to make a booklet.  I got thinking, maybe I should put in some of my extra sheets of stationery paper in the front and back pockets for them to use:

I looked through my stash and was able to find quite a few kinds of paper from my stash that I had enough to share, plus some envelopes, each of the three boxes I did this for got something a little different.

I even had stickers to put in this one:

I think it turned out well, and is a gift I’d enjoy getting!  I was really glad I thought of doing it as my mom had read a story somewhere about kids in an orphanage being really happy about the paper in their shoeboxes as they could then write their siblings in another orphanage!

 

EDIT:  Added these photos to show how it fit in the shoebox.   The first is how it is when the shoebox is open, the second is how it fits with the lid down and rubber banded.  I found it bent better when the open side was up.  If the shoebox was a little shorter the long way I guess you could cut it down some.

 

The name “Smiles Sent Saturday” denotes my hope these things I mailed made the people who got them smile.

Outgoing Mail

I’ve been meaning to post photos of some of my decorated envelopes/outgoing mail, maybe with some instructions or commentary.  But I never seem to get time to write it up, so I decided to just post some them without much text as I get a chance, as time goes on I may post some older ones mixed in with more recent ones. At the left is the front and back of an envelope I made featuring some old stamps I received as a gift.

House for Christmas 2012

I'm still around, but have been too busy to post, so I thought I'd show so random photos of our house decorated for Christmas.

Christmas Envelope

I didn’t decorated most of my Christmas card envelopes (since I couldn’t figure out a way to match) but I did write a letter last week, and found a fun way to decorate the envelope.  The tree was a stencil, but I free handed the rest, I just used a pack of gel pens.  I think it turned out pretty cute, and was quite easy.  I ended up extending the snowflakes up to the address which I wrote in a matching pen.  Below you can see how it matched the paper.  I just think doing something like this really dresses up a letter almost like wrapping a present or decorating the inside of a mailbox.

Christmas House Tour

Well, it’s time to give an overview of our house decorated for Christmas (Note: the bold, colored text will take you to a photo & post about it).  Last year I started the tour in the kitchen, well, I’ve already covered the kitchen as a whole, the top of the china cabinet, and the hutch, so I’ll skip it and you can see it in the links.  I also did a post about our table, but now for what  I haven’t posted yet.  You can see our tree at right and below, I didn’t do a separate tree post this year since it is almost the same as the tree we did last year, actually it just had less ornaments…

Kitchen for Christmas

Here’s how our kitchen is decorated for Christmas.  You can see the hutch just inside the door, and more details on the top of the china cabinet/tall hutch in my posts on them.  I also posted about our table that is in another room.  But here’s an overview of our kitchen all decked.  Here you see the corner inside our door where we lay things like purses and keys when we’re getting ready to go out.  The cookie jar belonged to my great grandmother.  We use a modified sugar cookie recipe of her husband’s which we bake on cookies sheets from another great grandmother’s. Well, let’s get on to the rest of the kitchen…

Metallic Christmas Table

So, here’s our Christmas table.  I decorated it a little later, I’d done something simple, but then I decided to ratchet up the decorating. My grandmother gave me the trays and we had some balls left over.  Since the table runners I already had on, and our china from my great grandmother had silver on the rim, so I decided to go with a metallic look.  One great thing about this table is I just used things I had on hand, so it didn’t cost me anything, yet I think it worked out well.

 

Top of China Cabinet

Well, I don’t have a mantel in my house.  We live in a farm house, parts of which are 100+ years old, but there are no longer any fireplaces.  So I have a couple substitutes: this China Cabinet/hutch and the other hutch in the kitchen. The other hutch has a more refined-fancy look, but with this I decided to go for a more classic colors and look on this one with a focus on children.  Ice-cream doesn’t really make me think of Christmas, but that’s where the churn stays, and children enjoy ice-cream, so I thought I’d leave it. I hope to post about the rest of the cabinet later, and if I do I’ll add

Christmas Hutch

In the past I’ve looked at the date for Christmas linkys I’ve thought, “But I’m not all decorated by then”.  Well, this year since we didn’t get to make the trip to visit family for Thanksgiving, and wanted to be ready early since I had my wisdom teeth out last week, we were almost completely decorated before December came around.  This is the hutch just inside our main door.  It’s supposed to be a staging area, but I’ve been keeping it pretty decorated for holidays this year (Valentines Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Summer, & Thanksgiving) so that hasn’t worked out to well.  The runner is the same one I used for Valentines (it’s the back of the one I used for Thanksgiving.). The sleigh is where we put the cards we receive until they are open and hung in their place (we tend to open the cards together as a family).  This is the nativity scene is one I picked up a few

Good mail month

I’ve seen some blogs that put on a report of their daily or weekly mail.  I thought I’d put on a tally for November.

My family:

Sent: Thanksgiving cards-8, Christmas Cards-42

Received:  Thanksgiving cards-4, Christmas cards-1

PERSONAL:

Sent: Thank you cards-1

Received:  Birthday Cards-6

Off they go…

Well, we’ve sent our shoeboxes off to Operation Christmas Child again this year.  This is a program of Samaritan’s Purse where people in a number of countries fill shoeboxes with various items like toys, school supplies, candy, hygiene supplies, etc. then they send them to needy children worldwide. I believe it started in the early 90’s in response the Bosnian crisis.  Over the years these shoeboxes have brightened the Christmases of a number of children all around the world who otherwise wouldn’t have had any other presents or celebrations in hospitals, orphanages, refugee camps, and other dreary spots around the world.  Over the years my family’s boxes have gone to eastern Europe and Africa (that we know of either from letters, or through their

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

Yes, I know Christmas is still over two months away, and personally I like to avoid decorating  or listening to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving (although my entire holiday schedule is off since The Game [Ohio State vs Michigan] is now after Thanksgiving, instead of before, totally changes the whole feel).  But, we are still starting to work on Christmas. 

I’m getting our Christmas card list together and beginning to embellish the envelopes and address them.  This is taking a little more planning than normal since when we bought our cards on clearance last year we picked 3 different kinds, and are picking which one is best for which person/family.  I’m actually a little behind on this, since my goal is to have all my envelopes return addressed by now, but hopefully I’ll be able to

Update on our tree

Here's an update on my main theme tree. I mentioned in my earlier post about this tree, I wanted to add some ornaments reflecting on Christ and in keeping with the color theme. Here is how the tree looks now that I've added those ornaments and most of the gifts are under the tree:

Some of the ornaments that tie in with the theme are balls. For instance, this one,

Our Home for Christmas

Here is an overview of how our house is decorated for Christmas. If I have more time, I may add more details on the different parts, if so, I'll add links to the bottom of this post.

Most of our friends come in our back door, so that is where I will start the tour, in the kitchen/dining room:

Our table:

My great aunt gave my mother this nativity scene when my parents were

Christmas Card Holder Craft

I don't know about you, but cards, both sending and receiving, are one of my favorite parts of the holiday season. I even put a poll to the right about when you send cards. For years I've been trying to decide how to display the Christmas cards we get. I've tried hanging taping them up, which didn't look that nice. I've tried sitting them around, but they like to fall down. I don't want to do anything that would harm the cards like punching holes in it, because I like to save at least the ones with notes in them. So, this year I'm trying something new this year.

My Grandmother and sister were shopping at Kmart and got these cunning clips