There is nothing that excites me quite so much as a hand addressed envelope in my mailbox, Dear Reader. I don’t care if the envelope contains a card, a letter, a newspaper clipping, or a quick note, the fact that someone cared enough to write a note, affix a stamp, and mail it really warms my heart.

I know I’m not the only person who feels this way. My Grandma puts our postcards and notes on her refrigerator. They stay on there until they fall apart.

Cards and letters make people feel good. They show that you care. They inspire people to pay it forward and do nice things for others.

In the past, I have usually picked up a pack of 12 generic but nice cards for each major holiday of the year – Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I always wrote a little note inside, and I mailed the cards to all of the important people in my life.

Last Valentine’s Day, I put paint on Grace’s little hand and made hand prints inside every one of my cards. Those were really cute, but they were a lot work. A lot of work. It took seven people to get her tiny prints on the cards.

This year, I’m sending Tiny Prints of another sort. These were much easier, and they are going to be just as treasured as last year’s Valentines.

That’s my current favorite card, minus the bottom part where it lists my personal information. How cute is that? I also loved these ones:

Guess what, Dear Reader! Tiny Prints is giving a $50 gift certificate to one lucky Feels like Home reader!

To enter: (I know this sounds complicated, but it really isn’t.)

1. Visit Tiny Prints and pick your favorite card.
2. Under the big green personalize button, click Save to Favorites. (You’ll have to register on the Tiny Prints site to save it as a favorite.)
3. Come back here and share your favorite card and why you picked it in the comments section with the email address you used to register at Tiny Prints. If you don’t include the same email address, your entry will be invalid.

For extra entries: You can earn one extra entry for each of the following:

1. Tweet about this giveaway and leave the URL for the Tweet in the comments.
2. Stumble this post and write a brief review.
3. Write about this giveaway on your blog, including Feels like Home and Tiny Prints. Leave the URL in a comment.
4. Post my button on your sidebar. Report the URL for your site in a comment.
5. Subscribe to my feed and report it in the comments.

Good luck! I’ll use Random.org to choose a winners after 11:59 pm on January 27, 2009.

Fine print:

• The winner will be verified by Tiny Prints to ensure that he or she is a registered user and saved the Valentine’s card as a favorite. If this step is not completed, another winner will be chosen.
• Entrants can only win one gift certificate but many enter as many times (on as many different blogs) as they would like.
• Winner is responsible for the full purchase price of any items that fall outside of contest winnings.
• Open to entrants worldwide.
• The gift certificate will be mailed to the winner directly from Tiny Prints.

Receiving “real” mail inspires me, so I submitted this post to Monday’s Muse