Yay! One order arrived…

I ordered a few things from phoophie.com the other day.  I got some correction tape, a really nifty five sided roller stamp thingy and I finally got some deco tape.  My items arrived today and I’m so very excited.  I was hoping to get either that order or my order from lettersets in today.  Hopefully lettersets will be comming on Monday.  They ship from Canada so I must give them an extra day or so to arrive.

Since it was Valentines Day today, I wasn’t able to do much with my mail.  I got a letter from Oky with more pictures in it.  I still have about 4 letters to reply to.  I hope to get caught up soon.  I have 4 days off this comming week so I should be able to get things accomplished, not only on my penpalling front, but also around the house.  I am in dire need of some cleaning.  lol.

My dear friend Oky in S. Korea has an interesting situation.  She is moving soon so I am not to be writing her back untill she lets me know.  This is going to be very hard for me.  I think I am still going to write her, but I will not mail the letters.  I don’t want to miss out on updating her on my life.  I have one letter that I never sent, pus, I have gotten 2 letters that I am not to reply to right away.  I can’t just sit on them.  I must reply.  lol.  So I’m trying to think of some little housewarming gifts I can send to her and I’ll just send her a large package of all her letters and the gifts.  We’ll see what happens.

Anywho, I suppose I should be heading to bed.  I must work early tomorrow morning, opening the cafe all by myself yet again.  Fun fun.

Yay more shopping…

So, I spent more money last night on stationery.  I bought a few more lettersets and my first ever letterpad.  It’s like a notepad but it has varied types of stationery designs for writing letters.  I have gotten a few letters like this from my penpals and I want to utilize this cool thing.  I have thought about just mixing and matching my current stationery, but it is all so different.  The paper sizes are all greatly different and that is the one thing that deters me the most.  

On a more down note, I checked the mail today when i got home and nothing was in it.  I’m hoping that my boyfriend checked the mail before he went to work and that he took the mail to work with him.  We have not had a completely empty mailbox in ages.  I dearly hope this is not a trend.  I miss recieving letters already.

I am quite exited to remember that as I write this post, I have one letter that I still need to respond to.  I hope to get to it tomorrow when I get home from work.  I am very tired tonite and plan to go cuddle up in bed and put a movie in and work on knitting my first pair of socks.  Very exciting stuff for me.  Hehe.  

I got my hair cut almost a week ago and I love it.  I had no style previously and I got just a bit more than a trim.  There are two things I want to fix and my hair will be nearly perfect for a little while longer.

While I am in the shopping plaza to get my hair cut, I will be venturing to joanns again to get more sock yarn and possibly even another set of needles so I can work on two different pairs of socks at the same time to keep myself interested and not as bored.

Untill next time…

Wow, I got a lot of mail…

The package of mail from my parents house arrived yesterday.  I must say it is much more mail than I expected in a week.  I got a few long awaited responses from a penpal or two that I had writting a bit ago.  Very exciting.  Also, one of my pals sent me some birthday presents.  She is sooo sweet.  I mailed her a bracelet I made but the stupid thing was broken when she got it.  I’ll have to try and figure out how to keep that from happening next time.

I can’t write much more at the moment.  I must get ready to go get my hair cut!  Woot.  I’m excited.  Plus, I have a lot of letters to try and write and send out for tomorrow.  I would really hope to get them out then because I am very late replying to some of my friends and it upsets me.  I was never this late in replying.

Yay! Mail again…

I finally recieved a letter back at my own house in town yesterday.  It was from Bo-hye.  I was her first snail mail penpal.  She is another one of my girls from Busan South Korea.  She has emailed, I believe, but she wanted to be my friend very badly and I only snail mail so she decided that she would try it out with me, ofcourse I had to write first.  I did and yesterday, her reply came to me.  She writes well and writes surprisingly long for what I’ve seen so far of my Korean friends.  I assume that they do not know exactly how to go into detail about things, don’t feel the need to or just don’t want to.  I am quite allright with any of those reasons, it is just refreshing to me that I now have an almost long letter pal in Korea.

Seeing as how I got a letter at my house, I gave my dad a call to find out if I got mail at his house yesterday.  He said that yes, I did get mail and that I have a lot of mail there.  I feel terrible because I don’t know how many letters I have waiting for me.  I will have to take some much needed time to reply to those letters once I get them.  I was hoping to meet my dad in the town he works in tomorrow to pick them up, but it is more convinient for him to just mail them to me in a big envelope.  I hope to get them by Saturday so I am able to take that day and reply to all my lovely letters waiting for me.

Bo-hye sent me a 1000 Korean Won bill (note) with her letter.  This was very very cool and my boyfriend had the audacity to ask me if I could ask her to send more so he could have some.  I simply told him to get his own penpals and ask them for currency swaps.  That didn’t go over well.  But I will be creating a swapping ad for him for this exact purpose some time in the future.  Whenever I get some real time to sit down and do these things.  

He is at work untill quite late this evening.  I’m hoping that I can finish up Bo-hye’s letter and find the time to do some things I’ve been wanting to do.  But it seems that I am quite tired and will just want to chill out and do nothing.  I am listening to Harry Potter on my iPod (the audiobooks) so atleast I won’t be cooking my brain on the tv tonite.

We shall see what happens and I’ll post about it sometime in the future if my lazy time amounts to anything.

Not much news today…

Still nothing to report on.  Im still busy with life and my mail forwarding situation is unfortunately not resolved just yet so I’m on a 3 day delay at least on getting my mail. 

I just wanted to make a post because I know a few people out there have taken an interest in my blog.

Long needed update…

I have been terrible with keeping up with this blog lately.  My life has blown itself up and is now starting to repair.  I’ve just had a lot going on.  So, on the penpalling front….

I have gone quite a few days without recieving any letters.  I hate it when that happens.  It’s even harder right now because I mistakenly forwarded all of my mail from my current residence to my parents house, thinking that was the smart thing to do.  It wasn’t and now I can’t get to my letters.   My dad said that he would bring my mail in to his work on Thursday and I could pick up my letters then.  Works for me.  I will have to undo the mail forward at the same time.  Or maybe I’ll just get a po box…  but do I really need to pay for one of those?

My stationery designs were put on hold for a while since my computer was not with me while I was away.  I have to find a good copy of flash somewhere to borrow for a day or two to get some animations drawn up.  See if I can’t find a good art style for my stationery.  I love to create my paper and envelopes, but I am not interested in “borrowing” image and designs rom other people and places.  I want stationery that is entirely my own from concept to print.  I think it would be very very cool.

I’m finding it very frustrating at the moment.  I have over 30 letters out and am waiting for replies on them all.  I’m wondering how long is a fair wait before giving up on a penpal.  I finally have plenty of postage on hand and now I am getting emails from those whom I would really like to write, but my budget is spent.  I have put way too much money into this hobby to keep adding penpals at the moment.  We will see what happens in the final days of January.   I think there are some penpals I will cross off my list then…  I wrote them way back at the beginning of January…  2 months is long enough to wait.

I’m pretty sure that’s all I really have in the world of penpalling.  I’m just sitting here waiting for time to tick by before I must get dressed and ready for work.  Another lovely day at a job that I kinda don’t really like.  lol.  I supposed I have to pay the bills somehow.  I should enjoy today though, tomorrow we are supposed to get something like 10 inches of snow and I am closing down the store.  I have a feeling we will be closing early.  It sounds like a very very bad storm.

Quick post from my mobile phone…

I’ve missed a few days in posting and I really want to not do that anymore. I would post from my phone more often if it were easieer for me to view my blog. I have a Blacberry so it works just fine, but its no iPhone! WordPress even has a mobile version just for iPhone. Pehaps one day I’ll be able to get one. Not on my current salary though.

So, I wanted to post because I was very excited to receive a letter last night from Ms Silvia in Italy. I think that she and I will continue to write to eachother for a long time. She has the same passion for letter paper and pens and books that I do. I think perhaps her passion runs a bit deeper than mine. I have quirks more than passions. Wow. This is a profound train of thought. I can’t think of anything that I am really ‘passionate’ about.

Anyway, I was very glad to hear from her. She has this dream of opening up a cozy little bookstore and coffee/tea shop in Italy somewhere. Its funny because I have always wanted to work in a place like that. It seems like you would run into the most interesting people. I meet some intersting people at my big coffee shop, but the setting is no where near as intimate as it would be there.

Oh well. If dreams came true, what would we dream about?

I did manage to write something in the last day or two so I will end this here.

Some new purchases…

I had been on my boyfriends bed the otherday penpalling away.  He came home from work and pointed out to me that I had his whole bed taken up with penpalling stuff.  All my envelopes, papers, address book, stikers, FB’s…  it all takes up a ton of space.

I went out and picked up a crafting tote that was perfect for keeping all my stuff in one space.  I’m so glad to have it now.  It keeps everything all nice and neat, plus I can travel with it fairly easily.  It’s very very nice to have.  I just need to make sure that I don’t decide I have to buy something new to put in each pocket and space, lol.

I also got my order from lettersets.com yesterday.  Very exciting.  I got a hello kitty letterset, a Simon Art set and some Simon Art envelopes.  It wasn’t much, but I like having the new and different type of stuff.  I don’t like writing on the same paper ever day or for every letter to a penpal.  It isn’t that exciting to me.  It actually makes writing a bit more difficult for me.  So I’m glad.  Payment processing was quick. Shipping to the US from Canada took about a week wich is just about right for Ontario to me.  It’s good.

Well, I must run off to finish a letter and take a shower so I can leave early and get my assortment of stamps I am so in need of.

What is very very American?

I have a penpal that keeps sending me wonderful things.  Ginseing gum, green tea, even movie flyers all from Korea.  I cannot figure out what to send her in return.  I am making a few things that I think she’ll like very much, but as for American stuff…  I thought maybe the papers inside of DVD’s because those are similar to her flyers, but that seems cheesy to me.

I’m a bit leary about sending food or candy, though I’m sure it would be fine, but what gum or food or candy is very much American?  Remember, this has to be mailed preferably in a letter.  I keep thinking that even if it’s something they have in Korea, it won’t be the same due to the packaging and such.

I know this entry was very short, but my brain is not functioning properly.  I had a terrible day at work and am a bit of a space cadet.  I need to eat something.

I should know better…

This post is comming because I am very very upset with myself.  I went out to a movie with a good friend this past Tuesday and I happened to have left my bag of writing stuff in her car.  In this bag of writing stuff was my address book.  Now, all of my penpals place return addresses on their mail, but my good friend Oky writes her’s in Korean.  Generally that is o.k. but the USPS requires the entire address to be in English.  *sigh*  I now have 2 letters here at home to send to Oky and one big one that will be sent in a parcel to be sent to her as well.

I am noticing a pattern with my writing and mailing habbits.  While it may be out of lazyness, I tend to mass mail out my letters on Mondays and Tuesdays.  I believe that is because I have Thurs and Sat off.  Thursday is my day to get things done around the house and go out shopping if I need to.  Saturdays are my days I get the chance to write.  I also have a lot of time to respond on Sundays because I work so early in the morning.  I think I’ll be less upset about my delay in responding and realize that this is now my new schedule.  It might have been a bit unrealistic for me to believe that I could actually keep up and write a whole letter a day as they came in.  This is only unrealistic because I write so darn much and someties find it hard to concentrate on a letter when I get home from work on some nights.

I have been wanting to buy some deco tape and stamps for ages.  I can’t remember now if I did get a roll of it or not.  It’s rather sad because I honestly am not sure where I ordered from, tho I am pretty sure it was from Lettersets.com.  Anyway, I was at my local craft store last week and found self adhesive scrapbooking ribbon for only $1 a spool.  Not sure how long a spool it, but I think it is a great makeshift spin on having deco tape sealing my letters.  It’s no where near as awesome as the Chip and Dale deco tape I recieved from a wonderful girl in Japan on Christmas eve, but it is still just a nice little decorative accent to my letters.

I also found this great adhesive at the craft store.  It is like the correction tape despenser things, but for glue.  I find it works much easier than a gluestick.  It is more simple to use and does not make as much of a mess.  also, I was finding that my glue from the gluestick would not hold up.  This adhesive stuff is permanent and instant.  Great stuff.

My only other real thing I need to work on is finding some cute little things to include with my letters.  My lovely friends are good at mailing me things.  I have no idea what is very American that they cannot get over there.  I have some little buttons I’ve been using, but I don’t want to send one friend a million of those.  I’ll find something.  I think for now I’ll just worry about getting all of my letters written and mailed out on Monday.

Time to go check the mailbox!