Frugal Christmas Cards

By Teri Hanson

Each year after the holidays what do you do with all of the holiday cards you received? Most of us throw the cards away, some of us keep them in a box stored somewhere. Instead of throwing the cards out or storing them, you can recycle them. Just imagine, never buy Christmas or holiday cards again. Now, unless you have stored all the cards you received from last year, you'll have to wait until next year to do this.

What you do each year is save your holiday cards. The following year, get them out and make holiday postcards out of them to mail instead of holiday cards. It's also a nice time to look at the cards and see who they were from and remember last year's holiday.

Here's what you'll need to do:

1. Cut off the back part of the card; the part of the card that has the signature and/or writing on it and throw that part away. You can cut it very straight by just cutting it right down the crease of the card. Be sure to take note who sent it to you last year though so you don't send them their card back as a postcard this year!

2. Write a message on the left side on the back of the pretty holiday postcard you just made. Write the mailing address to the right on the back of the card. Put your postcard stamp in the top right hand corner just as you would a normal postcard.

Tips:

1. Cards that work best are ones that do not have indentations in the picture part or scene of the card.

2. Scenes that are horizontal look much more like postcards than scenes that are vertical.

Not only will you save money by not purchasing holiday greeting cards again, you'll also save on postage. It costs less to mail a postcard than it costs to mail an envelope. Every year we always have someone ask us which store we buy our beautiful holiday postcards from and we gladly tell them our secret.

Article by Teri Hanson of Babychatter.com. Visit http://www.babychatter.com for baby names, meanings, origins, baby freebies and coupons. Subscribe to their free newsletter for site and freebie updates.