Postcards for the Weekend: Happiness, joy

This Postcards for the Weekend's theme is 'Happiness / Joy'.

This postcard show an object which brings a lot of joy:



As a mail lover you immediately know why :-)

In case of doubt: see what joyful Postcrossing stamps on the back side this postcard returned to me, after having traveled to Malaysia, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and back to my country:



A person who brings much joy and happiness, too, is Krtek, or Molletje (Little Mole) as we name him in Dutch. Created by Czech animator Zdeněk Miler, Little Mole shows us how to live happy, with friends and in harmony with nature:



I see DawnTreader has chosen a happy Krtek postcard for this weekend, too, and I think one never will get enough of this friendly and smart mole. The Mole always gets nice solutions to everyday's problems. And even to big problems, as my favourite Little Mole movie proofs (Mole in the city - Molletje in de stad - Krtek ve městě). The Little Mole in the City movie follows the adventures of Krtek and his sidekicks Hedgehog and Rabbit as they head to the city after the forest, their home, has been taken over by industrialization.

Last but not least, there are two women who exactly know how to keep up happiness and joy, even at an elder age. Created by Finnish illustrator Inge Löök, they showed up on this postcard which landed in my mailbox yesterday and which caused a smile from ear to ear on my face, also for the back side.



I received it from Eva, and she suggested matching names for the two. Thanks a lot, Eva! I think I agree with you - be sure that a proper reply will be sent as soon as possible!

See more happy postcards at and via Maria's Postcards for the Weekend!

Sunday Stamps: New Year

This week, on 16 February, the Chinese New Year will start: the year of the Dog.

That means, we'll say goodbye to the Year of the Rooster..
Dutch PostNL issued a stamp sheet on which you can see this change. 'Vaarwel jaar van de Haan' means 'goodbye / farewell to the year of the rooster', and 'welkom jaar van de hond' means 'welcome year of the dog':



Via Instagram I got to know several mail loving people from all over the world. And some of them are starting a so-called 'chaincard' themed 'Year of the Dog'. We are just about to start, so I haven't received any of the stamps yet, but some of them showed the stamps they'll going to use already in the instagram groups, and I like to share the print-screens of these stamp pictures with you!

On alphabetic order:

From Australia / Christmas Island:



From China:





From Indonesia:



From Japan:



From Korea:





From Malaysia:





From Singapore:



From Taiwan:



From Thailand:



On my turn, I'll add the Dutch Year of the Dog stamp to their cards. Dutch PostNL officially will issue this stamp sheet on 16 February, but to my surprise my order arrived already last week :-)



See more stamps of this coming New Year at and via Sunday Stamps.

Postcards for the Weekend: December holidays

This 'Postcards for the Weekend' theme is 'December holidays'.
Nowadays here in the Netherlands many people send x-mas and new year's wishes via email, whatsapp or other social media. However, still (folded) cards are sent, fortunately, too.

And fortunately people from other countries are sending nice wishes, too. I am happy to have received some from abroad recently:

From Shufen from Malaysia:



I think it funny that the card shows a horse, because the Dutch word for horse ('paard') rhymes with the Dutch word for card ('kaart'), and this way it is a christmas paard-kaart.




Elena from Belarus created the following pretty card. As I love music, I am happy she chose this music notes background:



On the colourful envelope an also colourful December stamp:




Also Hana Ehagaki creates wonderful cards. From Japan she sent me this Happy New Year wish, brought to us by this ウォッチドッグ, watchdog:



On the back a special postmark and an other interesting stamp print:




In our half of the world we think the 1st of January marks the New Year. You can ask yourself if that is a logical day. In other parts of the world there are other first-day-of-the-new-year-days. And I think some of them more logical. Like the first day in spring, the day of the vernal equinox. Or, as the following postcard has been dedicated to, the new moon of the first lunar month.



The (Chinese) New Year of the Dog will start on 16 February 2018. So although not celebrated in December (thus not really matching this Postcards for the Weekend's theme), I post it today, because it is a New Year's card, and I received it last week, thanks to ChenHuei from Taiwan.
She had added a special and matching pictoral postmark:



And on the back side of the card she added this, er, cat, or dog?




Find more season's greeting-cards at and via Postcards for the Weekend!

Sunday Stamps: 'H' is for haai and haan

Today's Sunday Stamps is about the letter 'H'.

First I'll share this stamp, showing a haai:



Guessed right! 'Haai' means 'shark'. The Dutch word 'Haai' is pronounced as a kind of loooong 'Hi!'. And although most Dutch don't say 'hi' as a greeting (instead we say 'hoi' or 'hallo', plus some more formal words), there is some silly joke about the word haai, the 'haai!... walvis!' joke. One person saying 'haai!', in the meaning of 'hello!'. The other person hears a long 'hi' in it, thinking the first person says 'shark', thus replies 'whale'.


From haai to haan it is just one letter. The amount of stamps I can share here, showing hanen (plural of 'haan'), however, is a lot larger than the amount of haai stamps in my collection. The reason is that this year is the Jaar van de Haan, the Year of the Rooster, and I happened to have been involved in several chaincards on this theme.

So here's a variety of stamps about the hen's husband, the haan (rooster).
The first card has traveled within Europe and arrived back home with haan stamps from Serbia, Ukraine, Estonia and of course my own country:



And this card traveled through eight, mainly Asian, countries during seven and half month, to finally return home, with stamps from China, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, the USA and the Netherlands:



and a bonus postmark from Malaysia on the back:



The Korean stamp is a nice, shiny one. You can't see it on the scanned card above, but I happened to have made photo of other people's cards, before I forwarded those cards to the next receiver, and you can see two shiny hanen on these stamps:







Finally, on bottom, a UN stamp showing a haan:



Curious to see other 'H' stamps? Please check today's Sunday Stamps and the links mentioned there!

Sunday Stamps: 'D' is for Duif

My contribution for 27th of August's Sunday Stamps came a little later. Nevertheless I like to share with you the 'Duif'.

The Dutch word 'duif' in English is both 'dove' and 'pigeon'. Still it is hard for me to distinguish the difference between these two English translations, as in Dutch we name them both simply 'duif'.

Of course mail lovers will love the Postduif (Mail Pigeon).
Dutch PostNL happened to have issued two shaped stamps in honour of the 'youth philately's day' in 2014. One of these shows the Postduif:



The fact that postduiven ('duiven' is plural of 'duif') have to do with mail, is also shown on the following Europe stamp from Kazachstan. In 2008 the Europe stamps' theme was 'letter writing', and here he/she is: the postduif!



Many more duiven have been issued on stamps.

This (post)duif is from Indonesia:



And an other kind of duif from Malaysia:



Duiven also appear on cancellation stamps. Here is one on an official postmark from Taiwan:



And an unofficial postmark, but real rubberstamp print, from the USA, showing this most well-known bird to deliver mail:



See more stamps on the letter 'D' at and via the 27 August Sunday Stamps.

Postcards for the weekend: December Holidays

This weekend's 'Postcards for the Weekend' theme is 'December Holidays'.

The reason of my crashed computer appeared to be an amount of dust in the desktop's ventilation system. So thanks to our vacuum cleaner I am able to scan and post postcards and stamps again!

The coming period I have some days off from work so I can spend my free time... writing cards! There is a delay in my outgoing season's greetings mail, despite of the fact that my computer didn't function during the past two weeks (by which I should have had more free time), and despite of the important message on the following card (thank you, John!).



The back side of the card shows matching stamps:



What else one can do in the December holidays? When there is snow, one could take a sleigh :



(Although made in Danmark and sent from Spain, I discovered the Fox speaks a nice season's wish in Dutch!.. Thank you, Eva, for the great card and matching stamps!)

One can buy some food and make some music:



Put on your best dress:



And while there still is no snow in the Netherlands, this pretty christmas penguin-in-snow was sent to me from Malaysia (thank you, Shufen):



On the back a nice stamp showing, among others, the Tapir, one of my all-time favourite animals, so it is always a great addition, even to a christmas card.



See more December Holidays postcards at and via this weekend's 'Postcards for the weekend'.

Sunday Stamps: Fruit

This Sunday's theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Fruit and Nuts'. Yummy!

Last month Dutch PostNL happens to have issued a stamp sheet showing 'historic' fruit, older types of apples and pears. Many of them have been decreased, because the high trees had to make place for other purposes. So nowadays the amount of cultivars is limited due to cultivation and economy, and most apple and pear trees in the Netherlands grow at so-called 'laagstam' = 'low trunk' (rootstock) trees. No doubt this has happened in other countries, too.
Alas I don't have this new sheet yet, but you can see it on the internet.

Instead I can show you a stamp sheet, issued in 2004 for children's welfare. Secretly I would love to see our fruits acting this way when we don't watch, but I guess this behaviour will remain imaginary:



Although spring is my favourite season, summer always makes me happy because my favourite fruit is available then: strawberries and cherries (and blueberries and raspberries you can count in, too!).
Strawberries have been pictured on a stamp by Ditch Post in the pre-Euro era. Here they are, along with many strawberry plants, and also there's a stamp showing an apple and (low trunk) apple trees:



More yummy, from Austria:



Other fresh summer fruits are melons. I used to name all of them just 'melon', but only a few years ago I learned that there are various types, easy to distinguish, like the water melon and the cantaloupe. Both have been pictured on pretty stamps, by Greek and US Post respectively:





From Germany come these two 'perfumed' stamps. I've received them many years ago, so the smell has gone, but the images of the apple and lemon still are fresh and fruity:



Thanks to globalization, also 'tropical' fruit reaches our colder country. In real, and fortunately also by stamps. For instance, on the right, this nice rambutan stamp from Malaysia:



The stamp on the left keeps me wondering why we name certain fruits 'vegetables' (like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, pumpkins), while in fact they are the seed-bearing fruit part of a plant!..

See and enjoy more Fruit, and Nuts, on stamps at and via this Sunday's Sunday Stamps!