cards – Mediocre Mum

Christmas Garland Made from Recycled Cards

How to Recycle your Christmas Cards

I have mixed feelings about Christmas Cards. On one hand I love hearing from old friends, but they quickly begin to take over all the surfaces in the house. This year with a bit of blue tac I managed to keep on top of them.

Shortly after Christmas, that urge to de-Christmas my house set in, but what do you do with all the old cards? There are local schemes that recycle them for you, but as we had a few more days off school, I was looking for an activity to entertain my 7 year old.

Over the years we have made Mosaic Placemats with them, Thank you cards and Christmas tags. I had a quick look on Pinterest and came across an idea from Party Planning Center for creating Christmas Garland with them. I have a personal hatred of the store bought shiny garland so this was a perfect solution and it was relatively easy.

The most difficult part was locating a 2″ Circular Craft Punch, like any other time we decide to craft it always results in a trip to the shops as we aren’t well stocked in the craft department. I managed to find one at Hobbycraft.

I think they’re fairly self explanatory but the full instructions can be found at the link below.

How to Make Christmas Decorations with Recycle Paper

Now that we have the circular punch, we thought we’d do a few Thank you cards while we were at it.

What do you do with all your old Christmas Cards? Do you have any other craft activities I can use my punch for?

How to Recycle your Christmas Cards

Simple Craft Idea for Recycling Christmas Cards

I couldn’t take it anymore and have de-Christmassed my house today! I know it’s a bit early, with the 12 days of Christmas and all that! Hubby went up for a nap and when he came down he declared ‘that Christmas must be over’ as everything was down and ready to be boxed up and put in the loft. We live in a small house and the boxes everywhere were doing my head in. I can’t stand chaos.

Space is a premium

This afternoon Madame and I spent the afternoon sitting on the sofa watching the Sound of Music, as you do on New Year’s Day, cutting Christmas Gift Tags out of the cards using pinking shears for next year. She didn’t quite understand why we were doing it now and not next year. I had to explain that I didn’t want to save the cards for a year.

Necessary Evil

Last year we made mosaic placemats with our old Christmas cards using our laminator. I’d come across Helen from Actually Mummy’s idea for Thank You Cards using Recycled Christmas Cards but she wasn’t quite ready. This year was the perfect timing as she had the dexterity to do it. It’s simple really. All you need is cards, doubles sided sticky pads, pinking shears and a silver pen. Surprisingly I had everything in the house to do it.

I think they’re fabulous we now just need to get her to write them and get them posted sometime before Easter.

There are also a lot of schools, charities and organisations that will re-purpose your old cards. Click here to find local Christmas Card Recycling places.

Importance of Thank You Cards #giveaway

Why you should say ‘Thank you’

I’m a huge stickler for Thank You Cards. It doesn’t take a lot to say thank you when someone does something nice for you and to let them know that their efforts have not gone unnoticed. And quite frankly it’s just good manners!

Who doesn’t like getting a little thank you in the post.

Easier said than done!

This is something I would like to instill in my daughter from an early age, but it can be incredibly painful trying to get an early writer to do them without a lot of coercion and frustration. It was her birthday last week and she received some lovely presents from her friends. So, we needed to sit down and do some Thank You Cards.

Some people feel that Thank You Cards need to be handwritten, yes I do agree to some point, but I personally don’t mind if the thank you is in the form of an email, text message or commercially produced . As long as people say ‘thank you’. But for the love of god please do not send e-cards, I have a personal hatred of them. nothing worse than having to click on a link and waiting ages for it to load to see a dancing cat!

As always, I did a little cheat. Using a photo that I took at the party, I had a little post card (pack of 10 was £6.99) created using PhotoBox and added some text on the back so all she needed to do was address them. She also added some stickers to personalise them. Another bonus is that the children who came to the party now have a little keepsake.

Win a £40 Photobox Credit

Do you have any parties coming up and are in need of some Thank You Cards? The lovely folk at Photobox are offering one of my readers a chance to win a £40 Credit to purchase any of their products on the site (photo canvases, phone cases, prints, books, etc).

To enter simply use the Rafflecopter form. Full Terms and Conditions can be found at the bottom of the form. However, in short it’s open to UK residents only aged 18+ and closes on the 30th September 2013.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This competition is listed on Loquax, Prize Finder and Competition Hunter.

Disclosure: I received a credit from Photobox in return for running this competition.

How to play cards with kids

I come from a long line of card players. Some of my first memories of my Grandfather was playing cards. He was a dreadful cheat. This is how he used to babysit us. I learned how to play cribbage from a very early age and so did many of my 22 cousins!

We’ve recently started introduce our 5 year old to a variety of card games. Snap, Go Fish, Memory and Old Maid. Have you ever tried playing cards with a 5 year old especially when it requires them to hold a mittful of cards? She is forever dropping them all over the floor and becomes increasingly frustrated. Bless!

But then I discovered, thanks to the net, this handy little trick. It’s pure genius.

It’s so simple. Just using a clothes peg, then they can hold the peg. Problem solved!

Do you have any other tips when playing games with kids? Please do leave them in the comments.

If you’d like to learn how to play Go Fish here are the rules.

Win a ‘Birthday Card Bundle’ worth approx £25

I’m forever finding myself dashing to Sainsbury’s to pick up birthday cards at the last minute and I often find the selection is less than desirable, cringe-worthy at times. So I thought, you may like the chance to win a ‘Birthday Card Bundle’ worth approximately £25 from Orchard Cards to have on hand!

To enter simply use the Rafflecopter form below. Full Terms and conditions can be found at the bottom of the form. Open to UK residents aged 18+

This competition is listed on Loquax, Prize Finder and Competition Hunter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: I was not compensated in any way to run this competition.