Tis the Season...for holiday cards

I love checking the mail box this time of year.  It is the one month that I can expect to find something other than junk mail (a waste of paper) and bills (a necessary evil).  I'm always intrigued to see who we will be receiving cards from as well as the types of cards that are sent.

In the past we've received everything from the homemade, handcrafted holiday 3x5 note cards to the 7 photo photo-paper card to elaborate professionally taken family photo for the triple-ply card stock 5x7 with silver-lined, embossed address envelope.  They come in all shapes and sizes, from friends and families, near and far.  All are cherished and sit in our kitchen during the entire holiday season.

Holiday Cards

However, while I love receiving these festive greetings, I find that I'm at a loss for what to do with them once the holidays are over.  When we first started receiving them, I would keep them and put them a scrap album so that we could look back over time and see the evolution of the families sending us their cards.  But after about the first five years of collecting, while scrapping the cards was fun, it was extremely time consuming and not a terribly efficient way of keeping the cards.

I then switched to a card box, which I indexed by year.  This was great because it allowed me to catalogue them and put them away, but now I just have boxes of cards put away that we really never look at and are sitting in my home office taking up the limited space I have in there.

Over the last couple of years, the cards have just been sitting in piles on my desk, waiting for a place to go.

So this year I'm putting it out there to all my card giving/receiving and crafty friends to share what they do with all the lovely holiday cards they receive?  I'm curious to know as I would love to figure out what works for you and maybe try it too!

Happy Holidays to everyone and I can't wait to see your cards and your suggestions!

Pass the Page Kit Please - A Thanksgiving Tribute

2014 is quickly coming to a close.  It has been one of those years that I don't think I will miss when it is over.  There certainly have been some memorable events that took place, but between the craziness of work and family life, the focus seems to have been more about just getting things done. 

I am thankful that in years past I have always had time for my creative outlets - cooking, writing, photography and scrapbooking - but this year, my time was filled with other things.  One might say that I'm imagining it and that I still took as many photos as years past, or I spent plenty of time piecing together pages for the girls albums.  But I'm here today to tell you that's just not the case.

At the beginning of the month, I sat down at my kitchen table, the first time in a year, to start working on page kits that I purchased about a year ago.  My intent when the kits arrived was to do a page a week.  As you can guess, that didn't happen.

Halloween 2013

It was at that moment I realized that I wasn't making time for myself anymore.  I was so focused on work and my family that I briefly (or not so briefly) forgot that I needed to make time for myself.  I openly pledged on Facebook, that I was going to try and complete one album, a 2013 album of the girls, before the years end.  Now, for some of you that might not seem like a big deal, but for me it is a huge undertaking. 

 

In order to accomplish this task, I hate to say it, I'm not relying purely on my own creativity.  I have given into the time saving, lovely page kits that I have found on the internet and been able to order.  I am thankful that these kits exist, because without them, I don't think I would even have a chance to accomplish my goal for the year. 

 

To make the pages my own, of course I add pictures of my beautiful girls, age with inks, write personal notes and embellish with buttons and ribbons if the mood strikes me. I am thankful I have my beautiful family to photograph and I am still able to find time an hour or two a week to put these kits together.  But on some level it makes me sad that I just don't have the time to play with the paper combinations and make the pages work myself. 

 

The good new is that I'm well on my way to finishing a 2013 Sisters Album.   I have about six months covered and I have six more to go with five weekends left in the year.  

 

Sisters 2013

My goal is clearly set.  I will achieve it.  I'm looking forward to the new year, when I can carve out some me time and hopefully get some much needed time away for a scrapbooking weekend so that I can return to the paper crafting activity I love so much.

 

PS - I am thankful for my followers...for those of you still following.