Antique Paris Postcards and more pretty parcels (and breaking into your own apartment)

This heat is really making me brain dead...it's too hot to stay in, too hot to go out and pretty much too hot to do anything. At least the laundry dries up fast - ha!

Speaking of laundry, yesterday we went down with a few bags and of course one of us forgot the keys and by the time the other asked about getting the keys, the door just slammed behind us. And you know what that means? We were locked out in full blast afternoon heat with two huge laundry bags.

After various attempts to break into the apartment, we finally caved in and called the cheaper locksmith for help. We basically paid this guy 60 bucks ( euros! that's like 80$) to open our door with an X-ray.

Now I don't know which is worst - the part about the money or the sudden realization that it's SO easy to break into our place and we absolutely MUST lock the door at all times.

So there you have it. I'll start wearing my keys around my neck from now on, just like when we were kids.

Aside from this (probably) heat-generated anecdote, I've been meaning to photograph the parcels I've been sending from the shop out lately for a long time. I try to recycle as much as possible, so when I'm using old envelopes , instead of pasting tons of paper to cover the old address on the front, I simply wrap the whole thing in a Paris metro map and just paste the new address on top of that.

Looks pretty neat, huh? The ladies from the good post office (the one 4 metro stops away) have been complimenting them a lot.

In the end I think it's cool to get something colorful in the mail.

Of course, I kept the same ribbon+lavender+plain paper wrap for the inside, only now I upped my game a little and finally bought some washi tape and that, my friends, pretty much makes all the difference.

I also invested in a bunch of antique and vintage postcards last time I went to Puces de Clignancourt to send out as thank you notes; they're all from Paris, some are blank, some have the prettiest hand writing and a lot are colorized/hand tinted. A lot of stuff from the '10s and earlier, and what I assume to be re-prints of older stuff.

Pretty much all very old and very cool.

On top of that, for the added cinephile bonus, I've been going to the movies more lately and collecting those cool little poster programs they put out every time they they have a re-release. All those little repertoire cinemas around St. Michel and La Sorbonne (think Le Champo, La Filmotheque, Grand Action, Le Desperado and Action Christine ) who all play classic movies in the original language, either on film or borderline decent DCPs, put out cool A4-sized glossy posters, with little essays about the film on the back.

I always take a few and use them for decorating; my friends from home like getting some as well.

And lately I started sending them out with the orders well; I don't know how much people really appreciate that, but I would love getting local oddities when ordering from Etsy. Maybe I'm too much of a fetishist after all...

Either way, at the moment I have a lot of Jerry Lewis ones ( you how the French love Jerry Lewis), an older Rebel Without a Cause, An American in Paris, La Dolce Vita, Seven Samurai and other cool stuff. Of course, if you would like a specific poster with your order just let me know.

What do you guys like getting in your parcels? Do you have any more cool packaging ideas?