Mug Swap!!!!

I've obviously been on a bit of a blogging break. This is mostly because I was in New Orleans for the last two and a half weeks, and if you know anything about New Orleans, you know that time and care and things you're supposed to do tend to slip to the wayside there. I was on vacation. It was amazing. More on that later, though.

I returned home today anxious to see if I had a package waiting, and sure enough, there was a little pink slip with my name on it! Thankfully, I live really close to the post office, and by some miracle today's package pickup line wasn't that long (I had been on a plane and some trains for several hours and really just wanted to sit down, but I didn't want to miss out on seeing what was waiting for me at the post office!).

To my surprise, I received my package, only to realize it wasn't from the same person I had sent my package to! I guess I misunderstood things, so I was super excited that I got to meet ANOTHER blog friend through this exchange. I'm currently involved in a snail mail collective too and we were paired up so that you sent mail to the same person who sent mail to you. I guess I got confused.

Being the goofball that I am, I totally forgot to take a picture of the mug I  mailed to my assigned person, Emily at Naptime is My Time. Emily is an awesome crafty mama in the Cape Cod area who described herself as a minimalist at heart, so I didn't want to send her anything too outrageous. Being that I was in New Orleans, I went with a mug from a certain famous coffee & beignet stand.  It was their newest mug in their collection, so I could be pretty well assured she didn't have one already from any trips of her own to my city. I also threw in some Southern Candymakers pralines.

So now, back to the awesome mug I received today. Amber over at The Butterfly Effect was assigned to me.  I could tell the second I opened the package that she had really put thought into it, as purple streamers came bursting out of the box.

Check out the fun polka dot tape!! So excited!

Purple paper!!!!

Amber knew that my favorite color combo was purple and green, but I'm not sure how she also knew that I like to throw blue in there now and then too (maybe I put this in my info for the mug swap... but probably not.  I got a beautiful green mug with a set of green and blue pencils and some cool green sticky notes!

Adorable!!

And also TEA!!!! HERBAL TEA!!! THAT TASTES LIKE BERRIES!! I am so excited to sip this down as I do my reading this semester :) 

The note she wrote along with it so was encouraging, and it was so fun to know that she'd been reading my blog and really putting thought into what to get me, despite the fact that we'd never even communicated! I'm really looking forward to following her blog and keeping up with her! She's located in Texas, making this the third package I've received from Texas in the past month.... Including my snail mail collective partner (I'll post about that soon too... I'm a few days behind on that one), and from Ashley, who is just awesome and sent me something awesome because that's the kind of person she is (you should totally read her blog too).  

I hope to do this mug swap thing again next year. It's so much fun getting a surprise gift in the mail from a total stranger - and not in the creepy unibomber kind of way, obviously....