Posts Tagged With: Cards

End of the school year cards (Or: One of these doesn’t quite belong…)

I made a quick trip to Albert Heijn to pick up some broccoli. (If you had told me five years ago that I would willingly buy broccoli, I would have laughed. Hard.) Anyway, it was rather busy when I went so I had plenty of time to stare at the items for sale around the cash register, especially the “Congrats! You survived the hell that is school!” cards.

And then I noticed one of them isn’t quite the same as the others. You don’t even need to know Dutchย to guess which.

End of year school cards at Albert Heijn

For your information, geslaagd means that you passed. Gezakt, with the sad looking smiley above on the right? Bummer. You failed. I took a peek inside – blank.

Advertisement
Categories: Amersfoort, Everyday purchases | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Red glitter (Or: Christmas wishes)

The first Christmas card of the season has arrived from one of mom’s friends. This particular friend always sends out her Christmas cards the day before Thanksgiving, so that people in the local area (Chicago) get the card two days later on Friday.

Legend goes, she only missed that goal once, when she was down vacationing in Florida and everyone’s card didn’t arrive until Saturday… But otherwise, a perfect record.

red glitter Christmas card

Those specks of light you see should make it clear that the entire front of the card is covered in glitter of the red variety, minus the letters and decorations themselves. It does make me remember my childhood, when I absolutely adored glitter cards. I remember my parents finally got me a card much like this one…

But I am wiser now. I can hear the telltale scraping before I even open it, letting me know that glitter is in our midst, waiting to strike.

It’s a fun card to look at. And the few bits of stray glitter do match my red couch.

Categories: Holidays | Tags: , | 5 Comments

Greeting cards (Or: Marco’s response)

As I wrote last week, I had sent Marco 13 greeting cards in the last two months leading up to his birthday.

Well… his response came last night! Happily it came in the middle of one of our videochats, so he got to see me open the package. The highlight was four cards.

Four cards from random Dutchies… well, not *random*. I do pretend to know them as long as they aren’t acting too crazy… (look’s at Marco’s mom!)

The four cards came from different people.

Upper left card: Roger’s card… thanks for the little fancy card that made me feel special. I was very amused by your handwriting while trying to write on a speeding train way too early in the morning. ๐Ÿ˜‰

Upper right card:ย Marco’s card… apparently he bought it before the first of my seventeen cards arrived. After the third or fourth one arrived, he thought it would look silly to send a card back, so he waited a bit.

Lower right card:ย Marco’s mom’s card… she definitely knows how to get to my heart. Put anything edible-looking on it and you are good to go!ย Eten, eten, eten!

Lower left card: Marco’s dad and his wife’s card… yes, that butterfly (vlinder) has 3D wings. Very cool and I had to stop myself from moving the wings up and down. All of the cards are homemade and take a while to complete.

Thank you for the cards, everyone! ๐Ÿ™‚ It was an unexpected but welcome surprise.

Also included in the extra large box: a bag of chocolate covered stroopwafels, and another that was labeled as “chewy caramel”. Two boxes of speculaas (regular flavor) and one box of chocolate covered…Mmmm…. and two boxes of pickwick Dutch tea. Good times.

Those treats should last me the 6 weeks or so before Marco comes back in late September… (ha!)

Categories: Friends&Family | Tags: | 3 Comments

Birthday cards (Or: Marco’s viewpoint)

As Niki mentioned she sent me 13 cards in the past few weeks.
It’s hard to explain why that’s so cool.
What I mean is, on one hand it’s sort of cliche to send cards.
But that is probably what makes it so cool.
And then there’s the factor that she didn’t just send one card.
No, she kept a steady stream going. And that’s what makes it awesome! ๐Ÿ™‚

The backs of each of the cards, showing the numbering system.

I live two floors up, and the mailbox is downstairs.
So often I’d get home, get the mail (leaving the spam in there) and when I saw the card from Niki,
there were only two choices. Either RUSH (needs to be capitalized) up the stairs and read it once inside.
Or..and this was usually the case, I’d rip it open while going upstairs, and at least look it over, big grin on my face.

Often I couldn’t help but chuckle because Niki has the tendency to write a LOT on those cards.
One of them was written with such fine print that I think she managed to fit about a thousand words
on that tiny piece of paper. But for the record. I love it. ๐Ÿ™‚

The first 9 cards, non-birthday themed.

I think it took me until card #3 to realize there was a serious pattern developing.
Probably not coincidentally that was the first time I noticed she had numbered the cards.
Of course she denied everything when I brought it up (and sly-ly asked her if I she would be sending more)
It was after card 7 or so that I realized she’d at least keep it up until my birthday.

So last night, during our chat, I actually asked “Do you have any more cards?”
And I got a “There are no more cards in my home” back. Which of course made me laugh.
Since that could mean “I shipped five more this morning…” but we’ll see.
I do know that for the next two-three weeks I’ll sort of eagerly open the mailbox ๐Ÿ™‚

It does remind me of the count down I did when NIki came to the Netherlands two years ago.
I created our own little advent calendar. One picture with a number on it a day ๐Ÿ™‚
Maybe that’s another blog?

Another thing that I’ve mentioned to her is that now I cannot randomly send a card back.
Though this is 99% a joke, it does feel like a cheap trick to send her one.
Maybe I’ll think of something else soon. Send her a candy-gram or something ๐Ÿ™‚

Categories: Marco&Niki | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Birthdays (Or: A flood of cards)

Today is Marco’s birthday! (Well, technically due to the time zone differences it’s already over for him.) But I had some fun with my scheming…

In early June I got the idea to send him lots of cards in advance of his birthday. Someone I knew back in the day mentioned sending cards to a friend of his: one for each of her years (thankfully I think she was only 18-20 years old) to surprise her.

When I first had the idea, I didn’t know how many cards it would end up being. First I went to Shoprite and picked up some cards, with a mix between birthday and non-birthday. That same weekend I went to the mall, and got some more. I ended up with 6 non-birthday cards and 4 birthday cards. About halfway through I went back to Shoprite and supplemented that with another 3 non-birthday cards, for the eventual total of 13. And when I get an idea I try to go all out… each card had both sides filled out with smallish letters to fit more in.

Continue reading

Categories: Marco&Niki | Tags: , | 2 Comments

Blog at WordPress.com.