SENTimental

I have long believed that to make life enjoyable, you must find small, fun, goofy things to do as much as possible. This includes writing fun notes for our loved ones, or for anyone, really! With these four easy steps, you'll be brightening someone's day in no time. 

...Somewhere in the 200 pages of the Girls' Crystal Annual, was an ad for becoming a 12 year old girl's pen pal in Ohio. To another 12 year old girl who had never left her small English city, that seemed like another world. So Nona excitedly wrote and mailed a letter with a picture of herself enclosed, and a few weeks letter got the same back from Alice. 

The girls wrote to each other regularly for years, talking about their social life, their studies, books and movies they liked, and swapping fashion magazines. As they got to their teens and older, they shared with each other in other milestones like new jobs, getting married, having kids, and more.

• Plan your week out on paper. 

Whether you use a bullet journal, single sheet of paper, lined notebook, or a paper towel, make a weekly schedule for yourself to practice spacing (both your letters and evenly dividing up your paper).

• Journal daily, weekly or bi-weekly

Journaling is tough to keep up with if you’re not already in the habit of doing it. If you want to journal more often and you want the habit to stick, it is best to start off doing it once a week, then gradually move up to a few times a week, then daily. 

Since middle school, I would find a cute font I wanted on the computer and use my mom’s printer and scrapbook supplies to print it out and mount it nicely to cardstock. Then, I would put the card in the front of my binder and use it as a reference as I wrote out my assignments all day. After practicing for a while, I could write in that font without looking at the card, and I began to get better and better at writing in different fonts.

You can do the same!

Pen pal letters can be tricky, because you don’t know a whole lot about the other person and vice versa. It’s difficult to know what they might find interesting.

That’s why I’ve made this post with some pointers, to help you write your first pen pal letter. And hey - maybe you don’t get to all of it in the first go ‘round and you can use it as a springboard for future pen pal letters!

Start by introducing yourself, explaining where you are writing from and what it’s like there. 

Put yourself on a map so the receiver has an idea of where you are in the world.

1. Start the letter by introducing yourself and explaining where you are from
2. Describe what life is like there
3. If you live in a small town or a place that isn't known worldwide, reference the closest big city and tell them:
1. how far it is from you and
2. how you would get there from your house (train, plane, ferry, car)