Don't Throw Out Your Christmas Cards!

I tried something this year that turned out to be a great idea.  I didn't want to blog about it until I knew for sure, but now I know...

While you're putting away your Christmas decor (as I have been working on for the past two days!), don't throw out those cards your friends and family have so lovingly picked out, signed, and sent to you. Instead, just put them away with your Christmas decorations.  Rubber band them together and put a sticky note on them that says, 

"Visit dressingheidisage.blogspot.com for a reminder of what to do with these."  :-)  

We'll do a more in-depth "how-to" next November.

I used them to decorate my Christmas packages.  There are two different ways you can go here. 

You can use die cuts, as you see below.  OR you can find some that have cute graphics that are easy to cut out and use those.  This is a great way to "recycle", but also a way to save some moo-lah next year when you start purchasing gift wrapping supplies.

I have a couple of rules about Christmas wrapping.  First, ALL gifts must coordinate.  Some call it OCD, others (...and by "others", I mean BRILLIANT people) think it makes for an amazing looking present presentation.  Second, I wrap all my gifts in brown craft paper.  Again, this could be seen as OCD, but I like it because I like my decorations to stand out...and again, it helps make them all coordinate.  When other people start mailing in packages or bringing them in, I can sometimes take a deep breath and allow a different paper under my tree...but I've also been known to rewrap other people's gifts...of course, that was back in the day before I had three children under the age of 4.  :-D

Below is a picture from this year's Christmas tree...if you click the picture it will enlarge it so you can see how I decorated with my old Christmas cards.  Not gonna lie...this year was quick and simple.  I went ahead and posted more pictures below from past years to show you how you can elaborate on the idea...

2007 - You could use your Christmas card cutouts as accent pieces as I did with the stars.

2008 - Not a great picture...didn't have many from this year...must have been pregnant.  It also appears that a one-year-old did most of the stickers...

2009 - Not preggers again quite yet, and look how awesome I did with my decorating!  :-)  Again, Christmas card die cuts would make great accents in place of some of the foam stickers I used.  And yes, those are foam alphabet stickers that I used to put everyone's name on their package.  A wee bit crazy, but oh so cute.

So...this isn't really a tutorial.  It's more of a "see what I did?" and a little heads up on what you can do, too!  (If you save your cards!)

Holiday'd Out!