Day 188: Gift Tags from Christmas Cards

This is the one time of year that I actually enjoy going to the mail box.  There are so many beautiful cards coming in the mail or being handed to us in person in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  Some of them are works of art and it seems a shame to throw them away when Christmas is done.  So last year after Christmas, I printed out templates of each one of our initials and cut them out of the front of all my cards.  I ended up with about 25 letters (5 for each of us) to use for this Christmas’ gifts.  During the after Christmas sales, I purchased some solid color wrapping paper and some simple graphic paper so that the “tags” would not be lost in the busyness of the wrapping paper.  This year, as I wrapped presents, I just attached the appropriate initial to each gift.  Now the kids know which gift is theirs at a glance.  It is sure to make Christmas morning easier! If you have multiple people with the same initial, or you just want to keep the packages a surprise, you could randomly assign a letter to each family member.  Don’t tell them which letter is theirs until Christmas morning when they get the “code” in their stocking.  What a fun way to recycle!