Tag Archives: Postcards

Hometown Cards

When I travel I love to buy postcards and send them to our family. When we were in Mexico, I even got Hubby to send a postcard to his parents.

While I am fairly consistent about sending postcards from abroad, I’ve never really thought about sending postcards from home. In all of my places of residence (Ohio, South Carolina, New York, and California), I’ve never once sent Mom and Dad a postcard from my hometown. So I’ve decided to break that trend now that we are in Oklahoma and bring a global habit home with me.

Unfortunately in the suburbs of Oklahoma City, postcards are not easily found so I had to make my own. With a stack of Oklahoma brochures I picked up at our hotel from when we first arrived, some blank cards, scissors, and clear packing tape, I made some notes worthy of my new city.

The goal was to use what I had…glue stick would be fine too

I cut out pictures from the brochures that represented OKC

Then I placed the pictures where I wanted them and used the packing tape to secure them in place

This one is m favorite – love the wind mills

Fun and free Oklahoma cards to send home!

First Postcard through Postcrossing

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A few weeks ago a student introduced me to www.postcrossing.com after I told her about my love for postcards. (I shamelessly try to bribe students to send me postcards from abroad.) Postcrossing is a postcard swap, unlike regular pen pals. There is no reciprocation between members (unless desired). It allows you to mail your postcards all over the world and receive postcards from all over the world. In the past two weeks, I’ve sent postcards to the Netherlands, Russia, Taiwan, Japan, Germany, and Canada. But yesterday, I received my first one from New Zealand. If you are a stamp collector, love to give/get mail, or just interested in an international exchange, this is a great way to do it. Check out a few of my postcards that I’ve sent and my first arrival!

This is the one I just got!

Start sending your own postcards by signing up for an account at www.postcrossing.com

Reliving My Travels through Postcards to Grandma

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When I began traveling, I started a tradition of sending postcards from whatever country I was in to my grandma. I would describe my grandma as a real country woman. She never moved outside a 20 mile radius of where she was born; she married at 16; lived in the same house for 70 years; and made the BEST apple pie and chicken and dumpling ever. The thing I admired most about her though was just how much she loved her family. At the age of 97, she passed away this last January. While I was helping clean out her 1000 sqf. house in Southern Illinois, I found every postcard I had ever sent her. She saved every last one. Staring at all those postcards, I felt truly loved.

A few nights ago I decided to go back through those postcards and see what I wrote. They range from when I was 18 years old on a mission trip to South Africa through my honeymoon to Puerto Rico in 2010. Reading through them brought back so many good memories of my travels. They also served as a timeline of my own development – the style of writing changed, the topics that were important changed. In a way, I felt like getting those postcards was like unearthing my own travel time capsule.

Do you have old journals from your travels? Blogs you wrote that you haven’t reread in awhile? Sometimes one of the best ways to stay connected with the world is to remember what we’ve already experienced.

Here are some of my old postcards and the wonderful woman who saved them all. Love you, Grandma.