In: from Hungary

This colourful postcard was sent to me by Micu from Hungary. Micu has a great mail art project, named Mail A Smile. You can join until the end of this year, as it will stop per 1-1-2016. Well, when you read the last challenge, you know you don't need to send a smile only this month, but you can send a smile any time!
Fortunately there are plans for making a sequel to this lovely mail art project and I am looking forward to seeing what will be next.

The painting is named 'Ballet on the table' (1982) and has been created by the Russian-Hungarian painter El Kazovszkij (1948-2008).

On the back side a great mail-related stamp:



Thank you very much, Micu!

In: Season's greetings

In December we usually send and receive nice season's wishes from and to family and friends. Via snail mail, but it is little by little replaced by email and other electronic message ways.
Of course stubborn snail mailers (like me) will keep on sending tangible cards.

Also dear mail friends - people who I've never met 'in real' but who are so familiar thanks to the postal services and our persistence to keep on using these services - made me happy by sending kind and beautiful christmas and new year's wishes.



Above you can see the christmas tree John has sent to me. And I had to look twice to see that the baubles are special ones, very suitable to this blog: mailboxes! Pillar boxes to be exact.



Also the stamps are matching. Above a winter stamp, and below... Pillar boxes! On both the stamp and the postmark.



Eva sent me a beautiful, nostalgic scene. As a child I used to play with tiny farm animals like these, and also Eva has good memories to this scene.



On the back side Eva added a Spanish christmas stamp with glow-in-the-dark stars.



From Alvin I received this postcard with kind wishes from a snowy Utrecht.
A beautiful scene, however this year it can't be true, as this christmas there is no snow at all in our country. Even not any chance: with temperatures over 13 degrees Celsius it is the warmest christmas day ever in the Netherlands, or at least since people started to measure it in 1901!



On the back side Alvin added one of the present December stamps. I think it a nice serie.



Thank you very much, Eva, John and Alvin!

Finally there's a card which I received for a short period of time only:



This holidays/christmas/december themed 'chaincard' is traveling from Philippines via Hong Kong, Scotland and me in the Netherlands back to the sender in Philippines. So I'll forward this card to the first sender soon, and meanwhile my own card is traveling in the same countries, where similar season's stamps are / will be added!

In: from the United Kingdom

I had seen the 'Man posting / cauliflower' postcard before on Eva's website. I really loved that picture, and I am grateful that I can see and feel this postcard in real: the sender - John - has sent this card recently me!

On the back John sticked great mail related postage stamps, showing different stages of the mail process:



Some weeks earlier this interesting historical postcard arrived at my place:



On the back a lovely mail transport stamp, and information about the postmarks on the front side (click picture to enlarge).



Thank you very much, John!

Sunday Stamps: toys or games

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Toys or games'.

And today - 6th of December - also happens to be the day after 'Pakjesavond' ('gifts eve', Saint Nicholas' Eve), in the Netherlands the main evening in the Sinterklaas celebration. In this evening people give each other presents, accompanied by a personal poem and sometimes packed in a funny, mostly personalized way.
To be short: today in the Netherlands many children are playing with their new toys and/or games. An excellent day for this choice of theme!

I'll start with an older Europe (CEPT) stamp from Belgium.
Lucky me, I got it from a kind colleague, who had cut-out some stamps years before to give one day to someone interested, and apparently I was one of a few interested.



The stamps, issued in 1989, show marbles ('knikker' in Dutch :-) ) and remind me of playing with marbles in my childhood time. Nowadays marbles still are sold in toy stores, but I hardly (or: never) see children play with them... We have marbles at home but also my kids ignore them...

Talking about Europe, this year (2015) the Europa stamps' theme was 'old toys', so many countries have issued stamps on this theme!
See this website for all countries' contributions.

I received the Spanish stamp, a wooden train pictured, which in real smells a bit after wood:



The Dutch stamp was part of this stamp sheet, of which the other stamp shows the board game 'Mens-erger-je-niet!' ('man, don't feel annoyed!', in English better known as Ludo):



Meanwhile Dutch PostNL also has issued a stamp sheet on toys of today. Well, the Rubik's cube has celebrated his 40th birthday last year, and the game console might have newer versions nowadays :-)



In contrary to marbles, at least our son didn't ignore the cube, fortunately. And did you know that there even are international Rubik's cube (and other cubes) competitions?

See more great toys stamps on and via the Sunday Stamps blog post of today.