I've been working all week putting the boxes together to ship to El Paso for the early Christmas I'm going to celebrate with Jesse, Diana, and the grandchildren two weeks from now. My goal was to get everything ready for shipping by this Saturday. Last year as I was shopping for gifts I really didn't keep in mind what it would cost to SEND them all the way to Texas, and it ended up costing a lot more than I had ever dreamed. So this year, I decided to be more careful and plan ahead as much as possible.
The Post Office has had Federal Express pre-paid boxes available for a long time, but only a few limited sizes are available. I think it's a good way to go if you have SMALL but HEAVY items to send to someone ... because you can cram as much stuff into these boxes as possible and it's all the same price ... no matter how much it weighs. But the problem is ... the SIZES of these boxes are pretty limited. Anyway, I ended up using just one of these Fed Ex boxes and then for the items that wouldn't fit, I bought a large white box from the Post Office (20 x 15 x 10) and shipped it Parcel Post ~ a huge savings this year ... less than HALF of what I spent last year! I'm so pleased. PLUS, I beat my deadline and mailed everything today ~ a day early!
Also, to help keep the weight of the boxes nice and low, I made my own wrapping paper. Actually, this was not a NEW idea. Last year when Rachel and Nicolas decided to do an Old Fashioned Christmas at their house, they requested the gifts be wrapped either in plain brown paper or some kind of decorated tissue paper ~ it was fun to do this last year for them and I decided to try it with these gifts to El Paso. I just used plain white tissue paper and got out my Christmas themed stamps and ink and went at it! Sabrina has been "stamping" for years. She makes beautiful cards and books for folk ... PLUS she has very fancy stamps. So this is nothing new. I had a lot of fun decorating each gift for each grandchild from these stamps, using markers to color and write personal messages. In this age of trying to be "green" as far as the amount of waste we consume, this is perhaps LESS wasteful than a whole bunch of brightly colored wrapping paper.While I was at the Post Office writing out the mailing labels to El Paso, the customer at the next window was mailing a book to a publishing company. I couldn't help but overhear his conversation with the Postmaster. It turns out this fellow is a writer.When questioned about his book, he responded that it was some drama vignettes he had written from the Bible, specifically the life of Abraham. He said that one of the area churches was going to perform these at a dinner theatre they were hosting this spring. And the church? MY church!
So I reached over to shake his hand and he introduced himself as Steve Trott ~ what?!! This is the same fellow who has written the play our church is doing for Festival of Lights this year: "Christmas at Mac's Diner." So ... how random was that? I just happened to be in the Post Office at the very same moment as this fellow. He does not attend our church, but I got to meet and greet him anyway. I thought that was very fun!
2 comments:
Well, how fun is that! I love when cool {chance} interactions like that happen.
In this post Carol tells of sending packages via Federal Express at the Post Office. I don't know if the USPS has a connection with FED EX, but I do know that Carol gets mixed up sometimes. I have seen the boxes that she used and they are NOT Federal Express but PRIORITY MAIL, you know, the ones that make Christmas shipping easy on all the USPS commercials.
So if you are watching for a package from Carol, don't look for the FED EX van, look for the USPS truck.
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