Christmas Clean Up: What to do with those Cards

I love getting Christmas cards.  Love, love, love.  Every year, I feel so guilty throwing them away at the end of the Christmas season.  I know how much blood, sweat, and tears go into the cards.  Not just the cards themselves, which includes hours of pouring over websites, choosing the "right" card, laying it out, ordering, not to mention the addressing and stamping.   I am not even going to get into the pictures that go on, in, or with the cards-yikes!  Choosing the card eats up so much of our Christmas prep time.  Anyway, all of this plays into my guilt for just tossing the cards when it is time for them to come down from the display.  So this year, I decided to do two things:

I took pictures of all of the cards with my phone.  Then I used the ones that I needed as Contact pictures in my phone's address book.  So clever!  I got the idea from Pinterest, where all good ideas come from.   Now, when I get a phone call, or text from someone, a picture of their Christmas Card comes up on my phone (see above).  Love it!

I am made a coffee table "book" out of the cards themselves.  All that I did was punch holes in the corners of the cards and tie a piece of ribbon through.  The girls will love looking over the cards and we are going to start praying for a different family each night at dinner.  This way, we will get a little bit more enjoyment from them.  Plus, the girls will get the chance to practice praying for someone other than themselves.  Everyone wins.