I received the most exciting box in the mail last week. A package full of GORGEOUS cards – holiday and otherwise – from Geraldine at Haute Note. Haute Note: A Modern Paperie is a company dedicated to the lost art of card- or letter-writing – in fact, their website says it perfectly:
“Long ago, in a world without email, e-vites, and instant messaging – before a few hurried lines of type zapped through cyberspace became a socially acceptable way to express deep sentiment – people sent cards. Tangible, ink and paper cards that could be displayed on a fridge or mantelpiece before getting tucked away somewhere to special to mark a moment in time.
Haute Note is a modern take on this centuries-old tradition, offering stylish stationery for every reason and season.”
I had a moment a few years ago, when I was changing email accounts, where I realized that the initial correspondence between me and my husband-to-be would be lost as soon as I deactivated the email address. I feverishly printed out every email and have them tucked away so that our grandchildren will be able to say to their friends, “I have the first emails my grandmother and grandfather sent to each other.” It doesn’t have the same ring as “I have the letters…” but there’s something to be said for paper. There’s something to be said for re-reading creased letters that live in your wallet or your favourite book. Now, I’m not saying print every email you’ve ever received…but maybe print the special ones so they aren’t forever lost to cyberspace should an email hacker break into your account. So they aren’t handwritten – the words don’t mean any less.
I think letters fit into the crafty category – be it intricately folded letters from high school (of which I have an entire box) or letters from a long-time pen pal. Or, if you followed the Globe and Mail’s ‘Dear Sweetheart’ letters last fall, a lifeline to the person you love most in the world.
So, in honour of Haute Note and my love of the lost art of letter writing, here’s the giveaway: Tell me about the best piece of mail you ever received. It can be a letter, a postcard, a package. It can be one word or a fifteen pages. To the best five answers on this post will go a beautiful package of Haute Note cards. I’ll help you bring back the letter for the holidays.
You have one week. Ready, set, COMMENT!
15 Responses to “ The hautest giveaway on the web ”
I suspect that I have become a bit of an anachronism as, in the last three years, I have become a letter-writer. I am a wired woman, but when my Mother died, I inherited her pen pals: one in Scotland and one in London, Ontario. My Mother had maintained a correspondence with these two women for near eighty years — I could not let that disappear, so I began writing to Jean and Margie. Jean from Scotland writes several times a year, but Margie writes at least once a week. It is a connection with a dying generation.
Now to that special letter: about a year after my Mom’s passing, Margie mailed to me a letter that my Mother had written to Margie twenty years earlier. It was the very essence of my Mother, full of happiness, complaints (one of them about me) and comments about day-to-day living. It was a gift to me: I was able to visit with my Mom once again. It really was like sitting down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and my Mom.
Kathryn
Toronto
By Kathryn on Nov 18, 2009
A few years ago, a close friend of mine moved to Japan to teach English.
She was gone for 3 years and while she was there she travelled to some truly exotic places. When she sent her beautiful hand-written snail mail (as she did not belive in the group email updates)I could always spot her pieces in the mailbox from a mile away. The stationary was so bright and colourful and covered in cartoon Japanime characters smiling, laughing or dancing with funny little sayings next to them that made no sense. Sayings like, “I dance you fun like candy.” You couldn’t miss their neon flmaboyance amongst the boring stacks of bills and junk mail. Seeing it there was like a bright beacon and it made me giddy to anticipate opening it.
I still keep the letters and often read over them remembering what it must have been like to visit those places in the far east, what the people must have been like and how she ever went back to writing on standard stationary after that.
By Erin on Nov 18, 2009
I was the youngest of five children, so my sisters were always challenged to keep me “out of the loop” so to speak, on all the secrets of the holidays. I remember watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” one year and decided to write the Great Pumpkin a letter. Everyone got a chuckle out of that and I did receive some teasing. A few years ago my mother gave me my Baby Book for Christmas, and in it was the letter from the Great Pumpkin. In fact, I even have the envelope it came in. It has a 7 cent stamp on it. The letter is 3 1/2 pages long and mentions how the Great Pumpkin hopes my sister isn’t still mad at me because I got to be the gypsy that year. I recognize the printing now, but at the time I was so excited!! Like Linus, I remember shouting, “It’s him, it’s really him!” I love that someone in my family took me seriously and wrote me back. I love that my mother realized it was important enough to save it in my baby book. And I love how it makes my kids smile every Hallowe’en when I pull it out.
By Bernadette Bloom on Nov 18, 2009
I have a letter that I recieved from my soon-to-be husband when we were teenagers – I was about 16 I think. We had met online in a chat room and sent a few emails back and forth, and for whatever reason we decided to send eachother a letter – maybe it’s the reality that seeing someone’s handwriting brings. This was at an age when I certainly was not allowed to make long distance phone calls to strangers – nor did I feel the need to. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember receiving this letter. Nearly ten years later we both ended up in the same part of the country and decided to meet up for curiousity’s sake. We hit it off right away and have been together ever since. It was some months after meeting that I discovered the old letter from him in an old box of keepsakes, and he discovered one from me in an old box of his. We had both talked about school and bands we liked, and doodled little images in the margins… That was the moment receiving that letter became special and I realized how long we had been in contact. I hate the idea of “fate” – but it really felt as if it were meant to be! It’s been five years and we’re getting married in January!
By Melanie on Nov 19, 2009
My mom decided to downsize to condo living. So when her townhome was finally sold, the huge task of moving fell upon all of us. Who knew that she had kept everything. Among the “treasures” was my old childhood suitcase, a bit worn and tattered filled with my childhood letters and birthday cards. In my journey down memory lane, there was one letter from my best friend Jina (aged 9 or 10 at the time) who had moved to the big city, telling me that she missed me, she had made new friends, asked about her yucky cousin Steve, all in her neatest handwriting attempt. Now, we are adults with kids of our own, including Steve who had 2 boys but what a sweet trip down memory lane to a more carefree time when we had no worries or cares but writing in our best penmanship.
By Sunny on Nov 19, 2009
My best friend and I moved away from each other after college. Just before moving to Japan for a year, we went on a long hike, which was supposed to be only a short one…we ended up getting lost on a 25km trail with no food or water, the day before my flight! It definitely is a memory I will keep forever, as we ran into wildlife and even an owl swooping down to pick up a snake. When I arrived in Japan one of my first pieces of mail was a little handmade booklet entitled, The Adventures of K & A. and it contained the story and illustrations of our hiking adventure. Since then we have taken turns making “Adventure…” booklets, updating our lives for each other and mailing them, titling them with the latest version number! I can’t wait for the next one to arrive, but I also love when it’s my turn to create!
By kay on Nov 19, 2009
I still remember snail mail and the excitment of getting something in the mail. When I was 16 my best friend was moving to Africa because her Father was transferred there for work. So, that started a 2 year letter writing campaign between Scarborough, ON and Kenya. All of our letters were always bordered by lady bugs crawling along (which we drew ourselves). It was years later and I went to the mail box to find a box. Inside that box was a nightshirt with lady bugs on it. More recently, this past summer, I saw my old friend at a reunion and what did she have for me but a lady bug dish for me. Our letter writing started almost 40 years ago but I will never forget the joy of receiving her letters.
By Karen on Nov 19, 2009
As I was going through things trying to make room for an upcoming second baby, I unearthed a thick stack of letters written to me by my mom. More than one stack, actually.
I was living overseas, as a young woman of 20, going to school in Paris, France. In those blue airmail pages, not the slightest bit faded, my mom recounted the events of the week, good and bad, and the activities of my siblings. Nothing sensational, just solid connection to a life and a family on another continent.
Now that I’m a mother myself I finally understand the bravery, the terror, the confidence she must have felt in me to allow me to spread my wings and fly so far away for so long — in the age before email and video, and when long-distance phone calls were a rarity. I think of the effort it must have taken to squeeze in half an hour every week to dash off a reminder of love to her eldest, with two other kids needing chauffering, homework help, all the household duties on top of her own demanding full-time job. I am amazed.
So it’s the blue airmail paper letters — all of them blurring into one, a solid attachment to home — they are the best letter I’ve ever received.
By Andrea on Nov 19, 2009
When my mother died, came into possession of the letters my dad had written to her after the war. She was waiting in England for him as he had returned to be released from service and to meet the requirements for her and my older sister to join him in Canada. They are not earth shattering poetry but do show a side of my dad I hadn’t seen before. Just as she couldn’t part with them, they are now tucked away safely here.
By Janet on Nov 19, 2009
When my first husband’s job at the Toronto Telegram ended with the paper’s demise in 1971, we realized our dream of travelling to Europe. We spent 49 weeks there and visited 13 countries in all including the tiny Leichenstein and Luxembourg. Every night for that year, I wrote to my mother or my husband’s mother or our best friend in Toronto. Each of them faithfully typed out copies of the letters and sent them along to the other two. I still have every letter I wrote — a journal of a year of adventures and wonderment. Every one of those people in my “diary chain” is gone now but my scrapbooks contain every memory and impression of everywhere we were thanks to the dedication of those wonderful moms and my friend.
By Helen McLean on Nov 20, 2009
I love to write and handwritten notes are simply nostalgic for me. The idea of old love letters is romantic and traditional and emails are just not the same. I find the practice of writing therapeutic for me and I can usually gauge how I am feeling by the my handwriting. My letters are better formed and aligned when I am relaxed and this is one art that I hope does not get entirely lost in the age of technology.
By Sonia on Nov 20, 2009
I love to write and have continued the age old tradition of handwriting letters and notes to both my sons. They on the other hand prefer their “Macs” and their IPhones to communicate everything; so much so that the oldest son bought me a Mac computer to encourage me to “keep in touch”!
Despite all the technology they have each received a special hand written card and letter from myself for very special occasions. The youngest still in University has been sent Valentines cards, Christmas cards and even a few, “just to say hello” cards. Occasionally I will send the oldest son a hand written letter just to remind him how different and nice it is to receive something in the mail.
Both of them have always thanked me swiftly and sincerely for taking the time to send something so personal and “unique’! Clearly it has stirred something in them because in turn they have each taken the time on their first holidays away to send me a good old fashioned post card.
I have both of their post cards posted on my bulletin board in my home office and treasure them just as much as the little “I love you” notes they gave me when they were young children.
It may appear to be a lost art but I believe that generations will continue it in a demonstration of tradition and the love of the written word.
By Ruth Mugford on Nov 22, 2009
I’m not sure if this is the “best” mail I ever received – but in my first year of university I was living in an all-female dorm with a roommate. I wasn’t very popular. In October I started receiving cards from a secret admirer. At first I was flattered but after the 3rd or 4th one (with no reveal) I was a little freaked out. Very creepy! They slowed down into November and I didn’t receive any in December. I thought that whoever liked me obviously didn’t anymore, or was too shy to reveal himself. When I went home for Christmas I told my mom about the cards and how I thought they were very strange and she told me that they were from her! As a joke! WTF mom! Now (almost 10 years later) I find it very amusing but at the time I was not impressed. She even disguised her writing so I wouldn’t know they were from her. Strange sense of humour.
By cali on Nov 23, 2009
The best piece of mail I ever received was the very first love letter my boyfriend (now husband) wrote me. There is nothing like a good love letter to make your heart swell.
By Andrea B on Nov 23, 2009
I graduated this year but couldn’t attend my convocation as I was overseas. When I came back after 5 months, my dad picked me up at the airport and as soon as I stepped in the car, I saw flowers and a gradation card on the seat. It made me teary that even after 5 months, he still wanted to show me, that he was still celebrating it. And this is why we are all daddy’s little girls!
By Mahu on Nov 25, 2009