A Happy Home in Finland

My sender says this is her yard, and the photo was taken by her husband from the roof of the cowshed. It is very pretty.

Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto was a Finnish designer. He designed architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvar_Aalto

http://www.alvaraalto.fi/index_en.htm

Happy frog stamp. 

Antibes, France

What a beautiful locale! The sender is from Finland, but had recently visited Antibes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Riviera

The stamp is pretty, too:

A Favorite Card from Finland

This card was sent to me because I had chosen it on Postcrossing as a favorite.  If users upload cards sent or received on postcrossing.com, then others can choose different cards as favorites, even if they were not sent to them personally. As I looked at exchanged cards awhile ago, this particular one caught my eye.  I was delighted when a copy of the card arrived in my mailbox on July 21!  

A Butterfly from Greece via Finland!

This pretty butterfly arrived on June 17 from Finland.  The photo was taken by the sender in Greece last year, and made into this postcard.  I did a search, and found that the butterfly is a Scarce Swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius):

She says it took a while to get a good photo of the butterfly, but she likes this one.  I do, too.  It is called a Scare Swallowtail.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarce_Swallowtail

This little bird looks very happy.  Is it some sort of Finnish swallow I wonder?  

A Yummy Card from Finland

On November 11, 2009 another "treat" arrived.  This looks yummy ~ 

This card is advertising the "Turku Food Exhibition" in October 2010.  It will be happening along with the "Turku Book Exhibition", and the sender of this card will be visiting. Turku sounds familiar, doesn't it?  That's because I received a fabulous castle postcard from Turku (from a different sender) about a month before I received this one. Here's a link to that card's post: acollectionofpostcards.blogspot.com/2010/06/turku-castle-turku-finland.html.

I love sweet peas!  This stamp is a braille stamp.

Turku Castle ~ Turku, Finland

This is my first castle postcard, and one of my very favorites and arrived on October 13, 2009.  This is one of the cards that I have sitting on a shelf near my computer.  I never grow tired of looking at it.  See the people and their dog at the bottom near the rock wall?  It is a very large structure!    

The sender of this postcard says that Turku is the largest surviving medieval building in Finland, and one of the largest surviving medieval castles in Scandinavia.  

Construction was begun in 1280, and the building has been through various fires, destruction in many wars, reconstruction, etc.  It was completely restored in 1993.   It has a very fascinating history, which can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turku_Castle

This stamp is one of those that changes as you move it so that the skier looks like he/she is actually whooshing down the slope!  Unfortunately you cannot see that here.