Decorating and Gifting with POSTCARDS!

By Kitty Lapin Agile on January 16, 2016 • ( 0 )

I wasn’t born in New England, but I have lived here long enough to have picked up the Yankee habit of thrift.

This was especially important, as I also picked up the Yankee habit of expensively educating my children.

So, I learned “Thrift”, also known as being cheap.

This started when I came upon a vintage postcard of my daughter’s prep school Westover. I always wanted a nice gift for the teachers that went out of their way to educate the students. That first vintage postcard cost only a few dollars. I then discovered Ebay has a vintage postcard of ANYTHING.

I also discovered that most postcards fit in a standard 4 by 6 opening.

Long narrow hallway, what to do? Start a miniature museum!

Now it’s gifts galore, the combination of cheap postcard, inexpensive standard size frame, and personalization equates to a thoughtful appreciated gift.

So what to look for?

*Favorite vacation spot

*Hometown person grew up in

*Town the person lives in now (only 50-100 years ago)

*College attended

*Postcard of favorite animal (vintage cuteness counts)

*Welcome postcard of state the person live in now, or used to live in (These are especially nice graphics)

*Profession, a physician of today might enjoy a postcard of the physician of yesterday

Keene claims to have the widest Main street in the USA, it’s up for debate!

I had a spot in the long narrow hallway of my new to me home. Downsizing to a one floor ranch means some decorating challenges. A big painting or picture was not going to work in this hallway, you can’t stand back and LOOK. However the hallway looked barren and clinical without anything on the walls.

This building still forms the core of a much larger and updated library

The local vintage/junk shop had wonderful postcards of the town we have moved to, Keene, for only $1 each. Michaels had a huge discount (and I had a gift card) on some very old looking new frames. The combination of cheap frames and cheap postcards means that we have a mini museum about the town of Keene on our walls.

This mill is now a shopping area, and my favorite new bookstore is located there

All these buildings are still standing, though they perhaps don’t look exactly as they did 80 plus years ago. It’s just perfect to stop when walking down the hallway and you can then enjoy the details in the postcards. You don’t need the space you need to enjoy a larger photograph of painting. Plus I imagine it will be fun for future guests to look and be informed all the views in those postcards are still around today.