Holiday Cards - Remembering and Reusing

Sorry, I haven't written in a few days. Getting back into the swing of things at work and around the house after the holidays has taken its toll on my energy level. I have a lot of fun stuff to share though, including my thoughts on a great meditation class I went to on Saturday!

But for now, I FINALLY was able to get around to finishing a project that I wanted to do with the holiday cards we received.

This Christmas we got quite a few holiday cards from our friends and family. I think a lot of this had to do with the fact that we sent out our own holiday cards to most of our wedding invite list. Throughout December, the cards have adorned the entryway to our kitchen.

Now that the holidays are over and the decorations had to get put away (so so sad if you ask me), I wanted to figure out a way to save and/or reuse them.

I decided that I would do one of two things with them...

The personalized photo cards were compiled into a 2010 Holiday Card Scrapbook, with The Hubs and I's Christmas card at the forefront. I'm hoping that if we continue to receive the same types of photo cards from these families in the future, that we can see how not only our family, but the families of all these other special people in our lives has evolved over time. I've also included the cards of special family members including our parents and grandpa.

Here are some pictures of just a few of the pages:

I was really happy with the way it turned out!

For the remainder of the holiday cards, I tore the front part of the card off and plan on using it as a postcard to send holiday cards to either our troops or to the needy during the next holiday season. I've seen this reuse idea on the internet in many places (too many even to reference them all). I haven't written on the cards yet, as I need to do a little more research to determine if there are any postcard size restrictions and if it matters whether the post card is horizontal or vertical, but I figure I have a whole year to figure that out. For now, the postcards are in one of the sleeves of the scrapbook so I don't lose them!

I'm hoping to keep this tradition alive year after year, so that will have a book of Christmas memories that we can share with our children and grandchildren some day.

What do you do with your holiday cards after the holidays are over?  Was anyone else sad to see the decorations go down, but somewhat happy that the house could somewhat return to order?