Keep the Christmas Cards Coming

I love Christmas cards. I love shopping for them, mailing them, seeing them stacked in my mailbox – real letters! At the end of the season, I just can’t throw them away, so I stash them with the lights and ornaments and save them for next year. The next time I see them, I’ll remember the people who put pen to paper, a special moment in our busy electronic worlds.

Because I can never let them go, I’ve gotten in the habit of making last year’s cards into this year’s gift tags. I love looking at them all again and it feels good to make something instead of recycling. This is an easy project to pull off. All you need is scissors, a hole punch, and a little bit of patience. Once you start, you’ll be surprised by how easy it is to reuse each card by cutting around notes and signatures. Even the ones with smiling faces have a lot to offer with festive backgrounds and motifs that work well on their own. Here are some of mine from last year.

Homemade gift tags are more interesting than the prefab stickers in the stores and make a gift feel more special. Find a picture of something meaningful to the person you are giving the gift or one that ties in to a running theme or a joke that everyone is in on. It’s a small gesture, but sometimes it’s the little things that count the most. It really is that easy.

If you accidentally throw away your cards, don’t worry. You can put the little elves in your life to work making gift tags. My kids love to draw and are still young enough to enjoy helping out. And if it involves their scented markers, all the better. Happy Hollidays! (Ha, ha check out the pic below.)