Thank-You!!!

So I have been cleaning out closets and dressers and cupboards like someone gone mad!  After the hubbub of holidays, everything was...a disaster!  And there was no help from anyone, since in order to put something away in the place where it belongs, it has to first have a place where it belongs!  The Christmas goodies have now all found their place in our home, I am happy to say.
In my cleaning and organizing, I found several thank you notes from past events that never got sent!  Oops!!!  I'm pretty sure I found birthday thank-yous from several birthdays ago...of course this is my fault - I don't keep postage in the house, and then I get stuck with "I'll send it as soon as I stop at the post office..."  Well, this Christmas is not going by without the thank you notes being sent.  They are made, written, and in the car ready to stop with me on the way home from school pick-up.  This WILL happen!!!


I chose one of our funniest pics from Christmas (everyone already received a perfectly posed family pic on their Christmas card!), and cut construction paper a little smaller than the 4x6 print, then my daughter and I used a glue stick to paste the paper on the back of the picture.

I wrote my message as if this was a postcard - only on one side of the rectangle, with the address on the other.  

WooHoo!  Another reason to use my handy laminator I got for Christmas!  This protects the message and the pic, and also makes the postcard firm, because once you use glue on a photo, it wants to curl.

Yay!  Ready to be sent!!!  (Little Girl's birthday thank-you notes are in there too!)

Christmas Cards!

I love to get pictures of our friends in the mail at Christmas time!  I also love to make my own...anything I can!  This year we are actually sending Christmas greetings in three different "formats," which is part due to my blog-searching for free offers from companies like SeeHere and MyPublisher, and partly due to the fact that I just love to make things with paper.  So, today after I baked cookies, two cakes, and a cheesecake all to put in the freezer in preparation for our big party this coming Saturday (more on that this weekend!), I sat down to see if I could get what has been brewing in my head, to actually look good on paper.
My thought was to cut out Jesus in a manger, and put a pretty piece of paper behind it to show through.  I even went to my favorite paper store and purchased a darling little Christmas flower print, but things evolved a bit differently...

First, I borrowed my mom's Christmas clip art, and found a good manger.  I held it behind my card stock and up to the window to trace it (it would have been easier to use my mom's fabulous light box, but I wasn't at her house today...), and then I cut out around the trace with an Exacto knife.  I didn't realize that it would pop up like this, which isn't what I had had in mind, but kind of fun nevertheless.

Then I cut that first card in half, so that I could just use it as a guide for my cutting, instead of tracing each one first and having to erase pencil lines.  I slipped the next card behind the cut one, and cut around the design.  This time I wasn't pushing quite as hard, and not all the lines met, so the manger stayed in place.  I could have broken through every piece, but I decided that I kind of liked the way the cut lines looked, as is.  Aware that the manger had the potential of looking a little like an animal without explanation (even though I know people should have the context...), I added Luke 2:11.

The lighting isn't the best here, but this is the finished card.  Inside is the simple greeting "Merry Christmas."  Don't worry, I'll find another use for that Christmas paper I purchased!