Monday, November 24, 2008

Early Yearly Ritual


Normally I wait until we get our first holiday card in the mail to start the tearing down of The Card Holder Thingee, but the Thingee has begun to fail pretty catastrophically whenever I try to pin a new card to it, so I decided that the Thanksgiving card I got from my mom suddenly counted as our "first holiday card".

Thanksgiving could have been *the holiday* I was talking about before, so I'm choosing not to be picky here. At this point, I'm just looking to keep us out of the ER with hard-to-explain head injuries and a thousand evil paper cuts.

Now, historically, I've taken these cards down, rifled through the pile looking for ones with decent patterns, and then made gift tags from them with my underpowered, mini-tag producing Sizzix Sidekick "machine" or, when the "machine" fails (read: tests my patience to its breaking point), I use my handy scissors and a vague idea of what a gift tag looks like to turn these cards from recycle bin filler to repurposed gift-tagging.

And, historically, these methods have produced some interesting results.

Sometimes the tags come out OK - meaning that they have a useful design across the entire tag and don't have writing on the other side. Sometimes the tags come out all jacked because the opposite occurs and I have my Aunt Ginger's penmanship scrawled on the reverse side of half a Christmas tree or something. And then there are those tags that I have cut "freestyle" into the shape of a pointy pile of dog poo.

It would seem that my freestyle abilities with regard to gift tag cutting are somewhat limited.

Well, this year, a very dorky thing occurred that will save this year's cards from being turned into useless pointy hole-punched recycling. My coworkers gave me a Sizzix Big Kick Machine for my birthday AND the gift tag die-cut.

And I will admit right here to being mildly ashamed of my dorkiness when I opened it. I mean, all my crafty nerdy dorkiness was just right there for everyone to see and here I was holding a die-cutting machine like it was my first born.

Hi, loser.

I'm choosing to think that perhaps they were all horrified by the looks of the tags that accompanied their gifts last December, and were just trying to right my previous wrong. And when I used this machine yesterday to cut tags from all these cards, I reassured myself that what I was doing was practical and environmental rather than Supah Dorky and shameful.

I wasn't very convincing.

HOWEVER - I did get some good gift tags out of the project and, because I'm obviously a dork, I will show them to you now:

These were my favorites because they came out the way I envisioned instead of like a pile of poo.

Here are some holiday-type ones.
Here are some general purpose ones that I might force to be holiday ones.

I will just have to write a very small thank you note on the back I guess.

I don't know why these are in their own category.

These are the medium and small (read: Small and Xsmall) tags that punch out next to the normal size tags. I predict that these get recycled later because they are mostly useless.

And so, the yearly ritual has been completed and the Thingee is free to accept any holiday cards (or otherwise) we receive so that I don't have to stack them all haphazardly on the mantle and wait for Bubba to exhale deeply, thus sending them all to the floor.

Also, we turned on the heater yesterday, so it must be winter or something. Good news is - we all have our eyebrows.

14 comments:

  1. The question is this: Does the fact that I've had this idea filed away in my head since you talked about it last year make me Supah Dorky? Because it's true, and I've been ridiculously excited at the prospect of recycling last year's cards.

    Oh, and my mom got a Sizzix machine, which means I can be cheap *and* avoid the mayhem that is me armed with a pair of scissors. Supah Dupah Dorky -- that's me.

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  2. I would have shoved my first born out of the way in order to cradle your Sizzix machine. Which makes me dorky and crazy. And where do you work that you give each other such awesome gifts?

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  3. And oh yah, those tags are fantastic!

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  4. I Love It! I use cookie cutters to get holiday shapes from official holiday cards to use next year.

    Your "thank you" set would be just great for all those hostess gifts you need for all those upcoming shindigs.

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  5. Another dork chiming in here. That would have to be the MOST fantabulous birthday present! I use the cookie cutter method usually - which means I really have MANY years' worth of cards carefully preserved and have actually cut out about FIVE! But I love the card holder thingy, so perhaps this year I will be looking at the cards longer before they get carefully preserved!

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  6. Thank God your eyebrows are still intact. Though perhaps you could have cut out some new ones with your spiffy new machine.

    I can't believe I just used the word "spiffy."

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  7. 1. I love the card holder thingy
    2. I'm pretty jealous of your Sizzix..I'm horrible at free-handing things like that..

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  8. That heater story had me in hysterics! OMG! Seriously. I'm glad you were okay. And the sizzix is totally cool. How great that you work somewhere where they get you something that you WANT. Not like a stupid vase or something.

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  9. You must work in a really cool place! That machine is pretty neat, although I don't know much about them. That would be another thing my kids could roll their eyes about...oh mom has another hobby...
    Those tags are cool. Another something I don't know about. I wish people happys and merrys in person, cause I am too cheap and lazy to send cards. But I like your recycled tags. Maybe I should start sending cards out again, so I get some back, and then I can recycle too!

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  10. Using your heater???? Weak!

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  11. I had to LOL when I read you all still have your eyebrows. Thanks for the laugh. I remember that story.

    Anyway, LOVE the gift tags. I wish I would have thought of that before I just threw away all of my old cards a few weeks ago. Darn!

    Happy Thanksgiving!

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  12. Okay, that is so fun. Labels! And I love that I can see several cards I sent you this year in that stack.

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  13. Never heard of Sizzix, that's cool stuff. I'm not ashamed to admit that I would have been excited to get a gift like that too! Love the tags. I don't know if I'd have as many cards as you do if I tried to save them up over the course of a year... maybe this year I'll try!

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  14. I can honestly say I shall not expect to see any of our old holiday cards in your snazzy new tags. We send cards that do not lend themselves to giftyness. But your machine is cool and I'm jealous even though I'd probably never use it and, if I did, would no doubt do myself a mischief.

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[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.

Cheers.