Tag: mail

a mailbox collection

it’s not a secret that we love mail, so sometimes when friends find postal-themed items for sale, they send them our way — and this is how we’ve ended up with a small collection of cute mailboxes from around the world.

the first one was a yellow “piggy bank” from correos, offered to us by maike and wiebke who were on holidays in spain at the time:

a chinese one followed some months later, given to us by jifeng in china. it’s also a coin container, but a much heavier one. it brought such nice memories of our time there!

some years later, our friend cecília found this cute tin mailbox, and thought of us:

and the latest specimen to enter our collection is a hand-carved mailbox from canada. alida is a postcrosser, and her husband fred does woodwork, so he carved this tiny mailbox for us. it’s adorable!

and so the accidental collection grows… :)

postcards

a postcard a day

doing a month of letters (and documenting it) was another thing on my latest 101 list… and last april, i’ve done it! :)

the experience went really well. there’s plenty to celebrate and be thankful for in the world, and it’s nice to stop for a few minutes and think about that — and then put those thoughts into words and send them out. i’ve written at home and in-between places, on cars and planes and trains, early in the morning and late at night, to friends and strangers… somehow, i managed to keep it up, always taking photos of the result.

and then, the 30th day suddenly came, and i just kept writing — turns out, there’s plenty more to say! today marks the 70th day of writing one letter or postcard a day. honestly i’m not sure how far i’ll take it… we’ll just have to see what happens! :)

just life

lynda’s care package

our canadian friend lynda, whom we hosted late last year, sent us a lovely care package for christmas. with the inevitable delay in portuguese customs, the parcel arrived only in february… and suddenly, it was christmas all over again! :) this was the bounty:

lots of pretty stationery, tea, chocolate coins and balls, pecan nuts, maple syrup, toffee, and even a beautiful stained glass ornament she made herself!

oh, and a mountain of crispy crunch, probably one of the best candies out there! peanut butter and salt flakes, folded in crispy pillows of goodness and covered in chocolate… so, so good! plus, these are tiny, so you don’t feel like you’re over-indulging when you reach out for one. we’ve been rationing them so that they don’t end too soon…

thank you so much lynda — it was perfect, all of it! :)

stationery sundays

stationery in prague: papelote

though it definitely has its perks, living in a quiet little village in the south does present some challenges… like the complete lack of nice stationery shops nearby. this might be a blessing for my wallet, but it’s also a curse for a paper-and-mail aficionado like me. which is why these days, i tend to go a bit overboard on the paper purchases when we find ourselves interesting places! :) i wanted to write about a few of the things we brought back from our recent trips, because some of these make me really happy, and maybe some of you will enjoy them as well.

so, first off, prague! on our last day in town, we walked by papelote, a small stationery studio and shop, which turned out to be a highlight of the trip. far from being an ordinary stationery shop, these guys take paper to a whole other level, designing products that are familiar but with a twist, making you take a second look and wonder.

anyway, enough of the poetry… off to the bounty!

their mail-related items were some of my favourite. i’m a big fan of aerogrammes and other small mail formats, and was quite happy to discover they have a whole line of beautiful photographic aerogrammes, with different black-and-white motives. (why are the normal aerogrammes so boring?)

these were part of their writing set, which also included cartographic postcards, a brilliant island-letter (which i liked so much, i ended up using before i got the chance to photograph it!), as well as a pencil, writing paper and a letter opener.

we also couldn’t resist their spiral notebooks, and ended up bringing back a couple, plus a very handy elastic band which has been a comforting addition to my traveling kit. i can never pick just one writing utensil to travel with me, so it’s nice to have something which can hold a few of them simultaneously — but not toooo many.

the little dots à la leuchturm and the pleasing texture of the paper on the notebooks made me very happy indeed.

papelote’s love for paper is obvious in all the things they do, so i’m looking forward to our next trip to prague, and to see what they will come up with next! :)

Post author By ana
Post date October 11, 2015
1 Comment on stationery in prague: papelote