Giveaway!

I've decided to have a small giveaway. I'll have a drawing for the package of Mary Engelbreit note cards pictured above.

How do you enter? Just leave me a comment, and I'll put the names of all those who comment between now and noon (Texas time) Monday, Oct. 26, into the drawing. Feel free to leave as many comments as you'd like, but I'll put each name in just once.

Happy letter writing!

Cool notecards

We took a box full of stuff to Goodwill last weekend, and, while we were there, I was looking around to see if there was any good stuff there. I found several vintage books and these great notecards!

Unfortunately, I've looked around on the Internet, and apparently they were only available at retail stores until earlier this year. They aren't available any more.

These Karma Cards by New Leaf Paper are made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper. Additionally, after you write on the inside of the card and mail it to someone, the recipient can then tear off the front of the card and send it as a postcard. Of course, you can do that with any card, I suppose, but this one is pre-printed with a postcard form on the inside of the front of the card, and the center crease of the card is slightly perforated for easy separation.

Maybe you can find some on clearance somewhere, like I did. Or, maybe New Leaf Paper will print some more.

Pens and paper and cards!

One thing that seems to be common among letter writers is our love for all the trappings that go with writing letters...the paper, the pens, the envelopes, the stamps...and the cards, oh my, the cards! It's all just so much fun!

I have my favorite pens, including a silver Parker pen that I gave to my grandmother and then I inherited after she passed away. No one else likes to write with it because it's skinny and slick; they think it's hard to hold, but I never have a problem with it. I don't like rollerball pens; I never can get the ink to flow smoothly. But, I do love a good fountain pen. Problem is, right now, my fountain pen leaks ink, and I haven't figured out out to solve the problem yet.

On the other hand, I also find it hard to pass up fun pens. In my purse, I have the Parker pen and a collection of very inexpensive colored pens. And, just yesterday, I splurged and bought a large package of multi-colored Sharpie brand pens. I don't yet know what I'll do with them, but I couldn't resist the "Limited Edition Cafe Colors"! Who can walk past pens with names like "Earl Gray" "Pomegranate" and "Mocha"?

And, the paper. Oh boy do I have paper! I'm hoping this 365 Letters project will help me whittle down my stationery collection. I have lined paper, plain paper, hotel stationery from places I've never even been, special "onion skin" paper I bought way back in high school when I had all the overseas penpals and needed thin paper to cut down on postage costs. I haven't bought stationery in years, yet, still, my paper and card collection fills to overflowing a large under-the-bed box!

Speaking of cards...who can resist them? I have the standard greeting cards — Happy Birthday, Hope You're Feeling Better, Sorry I Missed Your Birthday, etc. And, then I have notecards, blank cards with pictures or drawings on the front and lots of room to write on the inside. And, just in case I ever run out of decorated notecards, I have plenty of really blank ones that are just waiting for me to decorate.

I'd say envelopes are the least exciting part of my letter-writing paraphernalia. When I was a teenager, I worked for American Greetings, keeping up the card rack at a retail store. When cards were damaged, lost or stolen, the envelopes were left over, so I built up quite a collection of odd-sized envelopes. Nowadays, my daughter and I enjoy making our own envelopes from magazine covers, calendar pages, old books and even yellow legal pad pages.

Hopefully by the end of this year, I'll have used up quite a bit of all this stuff...then I'll go shopping for more!