my name is beatrice and all of my friends have left me there off somewhere in college
busy being awesome and doing their thing and I'm here in Madison doing my thing and as much as I
enjoy doing my thing it is much more enjoyable when they're here with me and I miss them a lot
handwritten letters and like little notes and handmade cards and things like that or might
love language whenever I receive anything like that I keep it in this box I have in my closet
and I like to just pull them out once in a while and read through all of them I also used to have
a bunch of pen pals all around the world back in sophomore year I even had an Instagram account
for it which is still up if you're interested the reason it's called pen pal rice is because
rice is the second half of my first name and it doesn't make any sense at all so since I like
making little handmade gifts and letters and things like that I thought I would step it up
a notch and send out some care packages to some of my friends to remind them of how much they missed
me so in this video I'll be putting together for care packages for friends who have moved far
out across the country I wish I could make care packages for everyone but I have a feeling this
is gonna cost a bit of money and so I decided to send four packages to friends who have moved out
pretty far away from home and would benefit most from receiving a little piece of home in the mail
but first I'll show you the step-by-step process for how I put together these care packages and
make them cute and aesthetic without making them hella expensive and then at the end I'll show you
exactly what I put in each care package so if that's the only part you're interested in just
skip to the end but if you want to see how I go about making these and how you can make some and
be a fantastic friend to your friends then watch the whole video let's get started step 1 is gonna
be to write out a brainstorm for what I think I might want to get for each friend preparing
like this helps you come up with more creative and thoughtful ideas and it also helps you get
your shopping done faster because then you're not just wandering around the store looking for
stuff your friends might like you can also find better deals this way because then you go to the
store knowing exactly what you're looking for to protect the identities of these friends I'll be
referring to them by their nicknames friend one friend to friend three and friend four you might
have to be sneaky and reach out to them to try and figure out what they would actually want so
like I want to put in some hot chocolate packets or tea bags but I'm not sure which friend would
prefer which or if they want both so I'm not even gonna try to hide why I'm asking cuz I've already
asked for their mailing addresses so they probably know to expect something but yeah I'm just gonna
straight-up ask do you like tea or hot chocolate better some ideas for things you might put in a
care package are non-perishable snacks like granola bars candy trail mix etc a mug with
some tea or hot chocolate packets bath products like chapstick lotion face masks bath bombs etc
fuzzy socks and hats especially if they move to a colder climate gift cards bonus points if it's
something meaningful like a place that you two have a lot of memories at stickers washi tape and
other stationery supplies a souvenir from a recent trip you might have gone on books and magazines if
you're into pen pal you might want to incorporate some things you'd normally put in a pen pal
letter like a letter uh a playlist of songs you're listening to right now a tag of questions for them
to answer and inspirational quote a friendship bracelet just don't underestimate the value of
little things like that step 2 take your list and go shopping so let's talk about saving money
when you're shopping for care packages one thing you probably don't have to worry about is weight
because USPS flat rate boxes are usually the cheaper option to go with when you're mailing
things these flat rate boxes actually do not have a weight limit and when I checked their website
according to USPS weight restrictions for domestic Priority Mail express flat rate envelopes and
priority mail flat rate envelopes and boxes are seventy pounds so I feel like 70 pounds is kind of
hard to reach so I really don't think you should be worried I think the heaviest thing I have
is like the book and I'm not good at estimating weight but it's definitely not anywhere near 70
pounds but something you should be worrying about is what store you're gonna shop at so if you want
to visit coal stores I would highly recommend checking out the dollar store because they have
some great deals there don't automatically go for stuff at the dollar store you might be able to
find things cheaper at like Walmart or something but usually the dollar store does have some pretty
good deals so like I've got socks and lotion which are things that if you went to like Bath & Body
Works or I don't know whatever store sells premium socks you would not be able to get for a dollar so
the dollar store then some cheaper stores like Walmart and Walgreens and I would also recommend
checking out some cheaper book stores so I went to Half Price Books which is a store that we have in
our city I got this book for $9 this one for eight and then this one for seven so they also had like
magazines and stationery and things like that so I didn't shop online because I just wanted to get
everything done today but it's definitely possible I could have found some better deal as if I had
gone online if you are shopping online then you can check out websites like rot Rakuten um honey
so those are either websites or like plugins that you can install that will help you find
cashback opportunities or different coupons for the items that you're looking at also when you're
at the store make sure to buy in bulk I mean this isn't like Costco level bulk but I got this box of
Larabars and there's five in here so it came out to be cheaper than buying individual ones and if
you end up with leftovers you can always keep them for yourself so nothing gets wasted or for
future care packages if you guys remain friends I guess step three decorating and packing so one
thing you can do is you can line the inside of your flat-rate mailing box and to do that you're
gonna have to cut open one of the sides so that you can lay it flat and then take some tissue
paper or wrapping paper or whatever you have and just use glue or tape to line the inside of it and
then cut through the paper where the slits of the box are tape the box back together put it together
easy peasy another thing you can do is you can just decorate the inside and outside of the box
with little doodles as far as I can understand for a little googling you are allowed to decorate the
outside of these boxes but I would just make sure that you don't cover up any of like the
USPS branding that tells them that it's a medium flat rate box but otherwise I think coloring the
rest of it as long as you also keep the address nice and visible should be okay so I actually
realized that the medium flat rate boxes were not quite the right size for me so I went back and I
ended up using three envelopes and one small flat rate box to save money on this step try and get
creative and use only things that you have at home already so you probably have some old wrapping
paper might look weird if you use happy birthday wrapping paper and it's not their birthday you
might also have some tissue paper laying around or like I had these weird little paper things that I
used to stuff the box and make sure nothing broke I also like to make my own little stickers this is
something I did when I wrote pen pal letters so I just draw a little doodle on a piece of paper and
then put around it and glue it on and it's like a sticker no one would know step 4 packing so
when you're packing you obviously want to try and use your space as efficiently as possible because
you're literally just paying for the volume you're not paying my weight so it's gonna take a little
bit of Tetris and be prepared to kinda unpack and pack everything a couple of times to see
how everything fits best also if you have any breakable items like mugs make sure that those
are wrapped in something soft so that they don't break and also that they're not near the edges
of the box so then the last step is getting your friends addresses on there and sending them off
I did not try to be secretive at all about this I would literally just say what's your mailing
address and they could be like here it is why and I'd be like no reason but if you do want to find
out their address and you want to keep it totally a secret you could probably ask their family their
family will probably have their mailing address otherwise just don't worry about it it'll mean
a lot to them whether they know it's coming or not so so if you are mainly interested in what
I put in my care packages this is the part of the video where I'm gonna go through each of them so
this is the one for friend number two I did some doodles on the front and the back and then I put
the chimney sticker on there and then lined it with aqua I think is this color aqua tissue paper
so I got this book of short stories face masks a letter friend number two wanted tea and hot
chocolate so I got these lotion lara bar chapstick some postcards that I got in Paris a letter and
then I wanted to get a gift card for kung fu tea you can only I think buy them digitally so instead
of emailing it to her because I didn't want her to get it ahead of the package I emailed it to
myself I bought a gift card for myself and then I just printed it out not as cute but it'll work
so for friend number four I didn't have to deal with any bulky items like books so I was able to
put everything in a small flat rate box so I got a bar of chocolate face mask lara bar chapstick
this friend only wanted hot chocolate so I got a bunch of those I got a Starbucks gift card
some postcards from Paris and then the letter I also found this ribbon in a random drawer so I
also tied that around everything alright then for friend number three I did a little cookie sticker
and then these are lyrics from no more dream and I added some random washi tape and doodles I also
lined this one with tissue paper on the inside so for this package I got these socks that have
llamas on them or alpacas I'm never really sure lotion facemask postcards tea and hot chocolate
Larabar some washi tape and then some zebra mildliners which are my favorite highlighters
in the world I used them on everything and then chapstick and the letter alright then for the
last one since that number one I did a bunch of washi tape around the adress part of it and
then I basically did the same like design on all of this so inside the package I also had another
pair of llama socks I got this book for her I got some chocolate but I made sure it was vegan
chocolate because she's also trying veganism right now I've put together a list of vegan food places
in Boston lotion lara bar bags of tea a face mask a post card and a letter so yeah this is a really
fun experience it was as I mentioned my first time making care packages if you're curious like what
sort of a budget a project like this needs I ended up spending just over 75 on the gifts and then 35
for the shipping so the shipping actually came out to be cheaper than I thought it would so the
overall cost of the project definitely was not where I thought it would be obviously there's
ways you could do it cheaper than I did and I talked about some of those ways throughout the
video so I hope this video inspires you to send a care package or just like a letter to a friend in
this day and age where we rarely even FaceTime our friends and we mainly just text them it's
really important once in a while to just put some more time into some meaningful gestures so thank
you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you next week bye