thank you – Mediocre Mum

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.

The perfect thank you gift for teachers

Where has the time gone! First year of school done!

It’s almost the end of my daughters 1^st year at school, where has the time gone. It seems like yesterday that we were walking to school for the first time! Now the conversation in the play ground has turned to ‘what to buy the teacher as an end of year thank you present?’

Hopefully her teacher doesn’t read my blog or I’m about to spoil her surprise. We’ve been very lucky this year with our daughters teacher, she’s amazing, I’ve never seen some one with so much enthusiasm who obviously loves her job.

We’ve watched our daughter embrace her love of reading going from a non reader to a reader and I’ll miss the days when she no longer wants me to read to her at night, putting herself to bed. She genuinely loves school and runs through the gate every morning.

There has been whispers about doing a collection for the teacher, but apparently, this is discouraged by senior management as it may put pressure on some families and I totally understand. I’ve heard of intense competition amongst parents in the playground with large amounts of money being spent on gifts and that’s just not my style, I want my daughter to be involved in the choice of gift, as after all, the teacher has suffered 30 kids, like her, for the past year. My hat goes off to her!

My daughter’s class is called Butterflies and she wanted to buy her teacher a present related to that theme. As a teacher myself I know that the endless boxes of chocolates rarely leave the staff room, the flowers have nowhere to live and I wanted a more personal, but practical gift that the teacher can use or wine and lots of it!

Coincidentally, I was sent these Butterfly post it notes, a practical gift that the teacher she can use in the class next term, every teacher needs post it notes from marking a page in a book to jotting down notes after listening to a child read of difficult words they need to work on. We’ve stumbled upon the perfect present!

When the chocolate has been eaten and the flowers have wilted, the post it notes will still be there and the tin the post it notes come in can be reused.

Disclosure: I was sent these post it notes for review purposes, but you have to admit they’re rather fab!

Do you buy presents for your kid’s teachers? If so what do you suggest?