We packed away our Christmas decorations yesterday. Even had a bit of a re-shuffle, so now everything fits into four large plastic boxes. Instead of several smaller plastic boxes, a couple of cardboard boxes and one of those big blue IKEA bags. Four boxes, so much quicker to get it back in the loft! Which is very good, because Blake goes kinda crazy when Tony gets in the loft, he has even tried climbing the ladder a couple of times!
It feels so good to have the house back to normal. I love Christmas and the decorations but it does add extra stuff, so it’s nice when they all go away, Especially the living room seems a lot bigger once the tree comes down.
Of course, there’s also the matter of the Christmas cards to deal with. We never actually manage to get them to somewhere that takes them for charity recycling, so instead of just putting them in the recycling bin, we re-use them. No, we don’t re-send them, that would be odd! ;-)
We have an annual ‘cut Christmas cards into gift tags’ session. We take a good look at the cards and cut out any imagery or words that have a good size for gift tags. Some of them are cut with scissors and for others we use this paper punch I have. It’s round with a scalloped edge. That in itself feels very festive I think.
Sometimes I even use a paper punch to make the corners nice and rounded, fancy! Punch a hole in each card so it can be attached with string or ribbon.
Of course, much of a Christmas card that can’t be used as a gift tag, so other years that’s just gone in the recycling bin. But this year I had a light bulb idea: use them to make hexie templates for EPP!
I got one of those clever 1″ hexie punches* a couple of years ago so making the hexie templates is a doddle. You can cut them by hand of course, it just takes a bit more time.
So if you’re planning a big hexagon project, put those Christmas cards to good use!
*1″ hexagon squeeze punch from Fiskars – I think it’s the one in large.
