Crafting Letters ~ Snail Mail

I started this tradition before we moved and had almost forgotten how much fun it was for the kids, simply sending cards.

One day I was cleaning out a closet and I found the box of blank thank you cards that were left over from my wedding.  Just simple white ones, and knowing I would never use them I threw them into the kids craft box.  Little did I know it would turn into one of the most anticipated activities of the day.  The time of day that mom says “Okay, time to make letters!”  You may be wondering what time of day that is.  Well for me it is that time about an hour before our naps when the kids have exhausted all other avenues of self entertainment and have begun to drive me insane.  Just before my voice hits an octave I would regret later I simply say “It’s time to make letters!”  and they go scrambling to the table in utter excitement.  If only we could entertain a teenager so easily :)

So here is what we do:

I get out two of those little blank thank you notes and envelopes, stickers, stamps, markers, crayons and whatever else I dare give them and lay it all out in front of them.

Then I walk away.

And they just have at it.  They always end up stamping the table of coarse, and my little girl always ends up with ink on her lips.  But they are content and quite.  And at “that time of day”, that’s all I can ask for.

See, this is me taking a picture from the sink where I was attempting to do the dishes while they fought at my feet twenty minutes earlier.  Still happy.  And I finished the dishes :)

When they are all done they look a little something like this.  Then we put them in the envelope, stick a stamp on them….

and off to the mailbox we go with letters and blankie in tow.

Then they put them in the box, knowing that somehow, someway by doing this, it will end up at grandma’s…or whoever the lucky recipient may be for the day.

The funnest part of this has been the mail we get in return.  We have received some equally colorful mail, and sometimes little treasures from people the kids may not even know.   Old friends, distant relatives and even cousins have been good to play along.  I just open my address book and point to someone, and like to think it will put a smile on their face to get a little snail mail.

What do you do at “that time of day”?

Tagged as: boredom buster, Snail Mail