On sunny days

Hello dear readers!

Look at this lovely sky today! 

And it's been so all week long. Great, eh? I'm not a summer and heat fan but I do like it when the sun is shining and the sky is all blue. Winter lasted extremely long this year in France (we got snow in May, can you imagine?!), so I hope it's now gone for good. I'm definitely a winter person, but I don't like it when it's still freezing in the middle of May!

Anyway. I'm not writing this post only to talk about the weather, don't worry. I have some mail to show you. Not much, but still.

I didn't receive any letter this week, but three lovely pieces of mail reached my mailbox though.

First, a adorable box I won from Make my day. Thank you so much, Bubbles, if you happen to read this :)

The "envelope" actually is the wrapping paper!

Look at this wonderful box! Isn't it cute?

A close-up on the stamps that decorates the lid

Obviously it will be used to store... my stamps! :D

Then I received a book. I'm so glad because I've been selected to be a book-reviewer! It basically means that this books has been sent to me by the publishing house for free, and what I have to do to "pay" the book is reading it and writing a review withing one month. I was so happy when I got the email saying I've been selected because I'm pretty new to book reviews writing, but apparently my texts must be good as they chose me!

Eventually, the last piece of mail was from Caddi who sent me some air mail stickers from Germany! I love air mail stickers (as well as all air mail things, actually), but sadly these stickers don't exist in France :(

By the way, she used a lovely envelope! Take a look ;)

So, thank you, Caddi! I shall send you something back soon :)

As for the outgoing mail, well, although I am on holidays I didn't write so much. Only one letter. I am in a writing mood, but I also am in the mood for plenty of other things and 24 hours in a day aren't enough! :P

The letter is to Sara in Italy, and I wrote it on my balcony, enjoying the sun and the summer-ish temperatures :)

That's all! I'll be leaving you with a song from my current favourite band. I've been keeping on listening their songs all the time for a couple of days. Hopefully you'll like it too!

6 weeks of mail

Hello hello!

As I abandoned my blog for 6 weeks, this "weekly mail update" will be a bit special because instead of just showing you what I received and sent the past 7 days, I will show you the incoming mail of the past 6 weeks!  (and the two outgoing letters of the week, too). The unbelievable thing is that although I was owing (and still owe) a letter to almost all my penpals, I still got mail. Okay, less than I would have receive in a "normal" period, but still. I was expecting empty mailbox times, and in fact there was no week when my mailbox remained completely empty. As a consequence, my to-reply folder currently looks like that:

Scary, uh? Buuut... I am on holidays and my writing mood is back, so I should be able to make it through the pile :)

So what did I receive?

Fisrt, 12 letters :)

From Anne Mette, Denmark (someone stole the stamp! D: )

From Ramona, Germany

From Jenny, Netherlands

From Almante, Lithuania (much tea! *-*)

From Laura, USA (tea again ^^)

From Teresa, USA

From Shelby, USA again

From Bree, Malaysia

From Ksenia, Ukraine

From Destiny, USA (it had been one year since her last letter!)

From Tanja, Germany (spring themed, although it's rather Autumn here x_x)

And from Kate, Czech Republic (with many nice extras!)

My mailbox has also been fed with 3 swaps...

Bookmark swap from Tinne, Belgium

Secret Santa swap. My partner for this swap never sent the package so the organizer angeled it. Thanks again to her! (it's a bit weird to receive a Christmas package in May, but still nice ^^)

April surprise Swap from Eva, Lithuania

Aaand... last but not least, I also got two other envelopes...

One was from Aya from "Travel by postcards and letters" who sent me a package because I won her Fumi no hi project (you can read about in on her blog).

I wish I could show you every single thing she sent, but I won't, this post is long enough already! So just two pics ;)

Random little things

Envelopes, letter papers and more deco-tape

Thanks again, Aya, for all this lovely stuff! ♥

The last piece of mail, eventually, arrived today: bookmarks I received from the owner of the online bookclub I'm part of. Aren't they lovely? And she made them herself!

Now for the outgoing mail... As you know, I was on a letter break these past weeks and I only started writing again last week-end, so I only have two letters to show:

To Michi, Poland

To Audrey, Germany

You made it through this post? Hehe, congrats!! I hope I didn't bore you to death will all these pics ;) 

Have a lovely week-end and see you soon

Love, Tári

PS: Just a little reminder that from July Google Friend Connect will stop working, so if you want to continue being updated of what's happening on my blog, don't forget to follow me with Bloglovin'! 

I'm alive!

Hello folks! Do you remember me? It's been a while since I last posted here. The reason is that I decided to take a break from the whole penpalling thing a little over a month ago. I really had too much pressure on my shoulders because of uni work - I had to write my thesis, take all exams, and work on two groups projects. So, as you can guess, much work and much stress, and on top of that, my constantly growing pile of to-reply mail added to the stress I was already feeling. I obliged myself to write every time I had a free minute and in the end I was starting to consider penpalling as a duty, which definitely isn't the way it should be, don't you agree? I therefore came to the conclusion that I'd rather completely stop penpalling until I am in a writing mood again. Luckily, I have very understanding penpals who supported me all way through. Thank you my dear friends, if you ever read these lines. I LOVE YOU!!! *kisses and hugs* ♥

In the meantime I dedicated my free time to what I really felt like dedicating it too : that is reading - I discovered the wonderful world of books forums and online book clubs, I even started to run a blog about my readings (you can find it here, but it's all in French though), which was something I was thinking about for a while but I never went for it before because I thought I wouldn't have time to handle it... because of my penpalling activity.

I also spend much time relaxing and doing nothing, which is the best thing to do in my opinion during stressful periods - just "emptying" your brain and forget everything you still have to do for a couple of hours.

Another thing I did during my non-writing period was crafting. I'm not good at it, really, but I wanted to give my (very poor) skills a new chance. I made bookmarks for all my penpals, and I'm pretty satisfied with how they turned out to be, in fact! ^.^ When the first one has reached it's destination, I'll show you a picture. I'm also starting a new project which will be a present for my mom for Mother's Day (it was yesterday, but I'll give her her present late...) No picture again, because I'm not done with it yet AND I want it to be a complete surprise for my mother. I don't think she reads my blog, but who knows... :D

AND! The great news, the reason for which I'm writing this post, in fact, is that finally, I'm back into letter writing! I spent the week-end writing and realized how much I missed it. Still I don't think I'll become the fast writer I used to be - I don't want to ever consider penpalling as a duty again any more! I have other hobbies and I now have accepted that there's no reason to prioritize letter writing if it's not what I really feel like doing. But I'm back into the penpalling world and I'm happy about it. I couldn't live without my penpals (even when I was in a writing break we still were in contact thanks to Facebook and such social medias), they're my life! ♥

From next Friday on I'll start again with my weekly mail updates. Did you miss them? :)

Love, Tári

Mail call!

Yay, finally I have some letters to show you! It's been a while! Well, mailmen in my district are still on strike (it's been 3 weeks now), but it seems that my maillady has given up on this strike because I got a quite high pile of mail hitting my mailbox today! Well, I know for sure that at least two pieces of mail are missing (a book I've ordered and an envelope from my mother). But let's cross our fingers they will follow tomorrow or on Monday!

Before starting to show off all the letters I have to say that I'm really, really pissed of how mail employees treated my mail while it was patientely waiting in a post office : out of the six envelopes I received, three   (so half of them) were damaged.. First this envelope from Norway got torn :

The letter from Brazil got completely wet (fortunately my penpal had written with a ball pen!)

However now the stickers she enclosed are totally unusable :(

And finally, the worst happened with this envelope, that contained a book I had ordered. Look how torn it is! :O

And look what happened to the book inside. For me who's the fussiest as far as my books are concerned, I was close to tears... Bloody mail people.

Anyway. At least these pieces of mail aren't lost, so I shouldn't complain so much. Let me now show you all the letters :)

First there is a letter on Kawaii paper from Louise in the UK:

Then the wet letter from Bruna in Brazil. Nice to catch up with her news, her last letter was from back in September:

From Heidi in Finland. A long catch-up with her as well, as I hadn't heard of her since October. And she enclosed my first Nordqvist tea! This brand doesn't exist in France, that's why I never had any opportunity to try it before.

The letter with the torn stamp was from Marita in Norway. She included wonderful pictures of snowy Norway (though now that the weather has jumped from winter to summer, it's a bit "weird" to see snow...)

And last but not least, from Andra in Romania. A typed letter, yet I did enjoy it anyway!

Aaand, I even have some outgoing letters to present here! Yes, I did write lately! 

The first letter is to Tanja in Germany. Well, I wrote it more than two weeks ago, but haven't uploaded any pictures on the blog yet because I hadn't any other letters to show.

And eventually I wrote this letter to Ksenia, which took me 15 days. It's not extremely long (usually my letters to her are a bit longer than this one), but I was so very busy lately that I hardly could find enough time and energy to start writing even a paragraph or two.

That's all for today! Hopefully I'll get all my mail back soon and won't have to worry anymore! I know going on strike is French people's favourite sport but c'mon mailmen, 3 weeks of strike are enough now!

Have a lovely weekend, all!

Love, Tári