My lovely ATC ... and other goodies

This week has been very difficult  and it was so nice to get some lovely post to cheer me up. I entered the  material ATC swap at Very Berry Handmade and my lovely Home Sweet Home ATC arrived in my post box yesterday. It came all the way from England and was made from a Victorian quilt with some lovely embellishments.









I have also quite a few postcards from Postcrossings as well as some from penpals.

 As you can see the theme was very British as all these postcards were from Britain.  I am also sending a postcard of the Union Buildings in Pretoria for the Random PC swap at Swapbot. Sorry for the blurry picture but I am still working on my photography skills. 

I am also sending off this fairy bookmark for a Swapbot swap. The front has a a fairy on a the back is full of butterflies. I hope my partner likes it as I had fun making it. My paper skills are still a work in progress as I have mainly worked in thread, yarn and material up until now. Making anything in paper is still quite a challenge but I am enjoying it.

I have had great fun putting together my parcel for the first swap I have organised on Swapbot. It is a colour swap with blue as the theme.The brief was to put together five blue things from your partners profile. I love putting together a parcel that I know someone will like and I only wish that I could see her face when she opens it.

I have also received my partner for the Chaotic Goddess favourite colour swap and cannot wait to start putting her parcel together. I think it will be so much fun to put together a parcel for someone in their favourite colour with their favourite goodies.

Are there any particular swaps you have enjoyed receiving or putting together this week?

Happy swapping

Favourite Colour swap

Hi there from a rather less than sunny South Africa. Winter appears to have arrived and we are hauling out our jackets and jerseys.  We seem to be having rather more load shedding than earlier this season and are regulalry coming home to a house that is dark and cold. On a brighter note ( sorry)I am so excited to share with you that I am participating in the Chaotic Goddess's Favourite Colour Swap. This looks as if it is going to be a fun swap. The idea is that your partner chooses 5 things in your favourite colour and sends them to you. I cannot imagine a nicer gift than opening up my post box and receiving a lovely parcel full of PURPLE, which is my favourite colour.With winter rearing it's freezing head here in South Africa and the nights being colder and days being shorter a bright colour swap is just the thing to cheer me up. I cannot wait to put together a parcel for my partner.

Quiet week

It has been a quiet week in my post box. I received a card from Kyiv in the Ukraine of a beautiful old church. I love old buildings, especially old churches and this postcard is definitely a favourite. I also received a lovely long letter, as well as some sticker sheets and a postcard from a pen pal in North Dakota.

I have decided that I need to get back into letter writing again and have been looking for new pen pals but have not yet written any letters. Between load shedding ( two nights this week) and a very busy work week, not to mention fighting off the last of a very nasty dose of flu, I have not really had the energy to contact a new pen pal or write a letter.

I have sent off two postcards for a personal swap and two for Postcrossing, as well as two small parcels for one-to-one swaps on Swap-bot.  I have also sent off a number of swaps that got lost in the post the first time around, so hopefully they will reach their destination safely this time and not end up in someone else’s pocket. I am trying to make amends on Swap-bot as I made a very stupid mistake last year. I joined Swap-bot about three weeks before our postal service went on a four month long strike. Nine of my swaps never arrived and I am still waiting for eight swaps that I never received. Given that I am still waiting for a present for my son's first birthday and he turns seven this year, I should not be too surprised.

I have discovered two awesome new sites that I would like to share with you. The one is called Postpals. It is an organisation in the UK that brightens the lives of sick children by organising letters,cards and small gifts for seriously ill children and their siblings. I think this is a wonderful idea and will definitely be putting a few cards in the post.

The other organisation I discovered is called Adopt a US soldier. One can “adopt” a soldier for his or her term of duty and send letters and care parcels to encourage them. I am not American but I feel that these men and women are doing an awesome job making the world a little bit safer for all of us. I have adopted a soldier and feel really privileged to be able to give support, even if it is just a letter or a few chocolate bars.

Well , so long till next week and happy swapping