Remember when you were a little girl or boy and you did a school project with pen pals? Do you ever wish you could undertake that hobby again?

About a month ago I was re-introduced to this craft. However, instead of your everyday pen pal relationships where one writes another a letter I found an underground world that is both fascinating and creative--A world of art and collectors.

It is a world filled with its own language filled with others just like myself who are addicted to snail-mail. I joined a pen pal group and was surrounded by code FBs, Slams, Crams, Decos, FSS, NSW, NPW, etc I started researching what all this code meant and started a wee web site of definitions.

Decos or Decorated Friendship Books are by far my newfound obsession. I really find that my artistic juices flow through swapping these with other moms across the world. I have been involved with swapping these for less than 2 months and have already received mail from Sweden, Germany, Spain, Estonia, and Russia. It is really exciting to find new pen pals from different cultures and to see how they decorate the book.

Friendship books are little booklets of paper no more than 4 pages thick that are swapped among pen pals. When you receive one, you sign it with your name and address and note whether you are seeking new pen pals or swappers. A FSS or Friendship Sheet is the same as a Friendship book but done on 1 sheet of paper. A Cram is a small piece of paper that is used as a friendship sheet however you gather as many pen pals on your small piece of paper before sending it back to its owner.

All the above are used as a means to gather more friends and/or to get to know your friends better. A Slam, unlike a friendship book, is a booklet filled with questions youd like to know about your pen pals. These are not the hate-filled books of high school.