Reply to Ye Olde Christmas Letter

Duval-Lecamus 

Buy This at Allposters.com

Mrs. Jones reading the reply

Dear Friends the Joneses,

How nice of you to go to all that trouble to send us a card, seeing how busy you are. And thank you for the long letter updating us on the doings of your family. The paper was such nice, fine quality. It was a pity to throw it away but we had to use it to light the kindling in our little tin-can stove. It is the only heat source we have now, in the garage, since our home burned down this year, just before the snow storm hit.

Congratulations to you for your new son-in-law, and that your daughter married so well. It sounds like you are enjoying your grandchildren. We are, too, since the job market crashed and all the kiddos moved back home-- with all 17 grandchildren. Fortunately they think tent camping in winter is "fun."

Our in-laws have parked their RV close by, so we have some access to plumbing and running water. Since my son's father-in-law lost his job, they have been strapped for cash. We felt that it would only be fair to let them stay in the driveway and enjoy their grandchildren, too. We are hoping that the landlord will see fit to take our collected rent and let us stay a little while longer, since we can't go anywhere else as gas prices are high and we only have one car now, since we sold the others to buy food.

I hope you don't mind us re-using the front of your Christmas card. The post office forgot to cancel the stamp, which was a boon for us. You are the only person to get a card from us this year-- until the post office forgets to cancel another stamp.

If you are ever up this way, be sure to drop by and say "hi." We'll put more water in the soup for you.

We are sure you will have a warm and merry Christmas.

-The Smiths

Ye Olde Annual Christmas Letter

Good News from...
George Smith
Buy This at Allposters.com


Dear Jane and John,

Well hello again, friends. It has been another fantastic year. I hope you enjoyed it! Our family grew by leaps and bounds again this year-- we were so busy we met ourselves coming and going!

Our daughter's wedding in France was beautiful-- it was quite a feat not just to host 600 people for a wedding, but to get them on planes to the wedding was something else! She pulled it off beautifully. It was a good thing the chateau was large. And here we have yet another son-in-law that is a millionaire. Our daughter continues in her highly successful career as a consultant, and she is often called away from her Island home in the Mediterranean to fly all over Europe and offer her advice.

Our second son graduated this year with all the usual honors from Harvard, Yale, and Cambridge all in one month! You can imagine how tired he was from all that studying and traveling. He is excitedly looking toward the future as he starts his new job in a prestigious law firm. He is already on track for the presidency and sure that in a couple years he'll win an election. Pretty good for a 15 year old.

Our youngest boy-- the baby of the family!-- is really into sports. He's won every major competition in swimming, basketball, biking, skateboarding, track, skiing, hockey, soccer, football, figure skating, volleyball, baseball, chess, and Frisbee. His coaches are talking about sending him to the Olympics. If so, that would make 3 of our kids who have competed in that venue.

My Uncle Hal won the lottery again!! That makes twice! Can't believe the luck of that man! We enjoy having him around-- he was a 5 star chef and he makes the most wonderful meals for us. We want him to retire and stay with us forever, but he is in much demand in Hollywood.

Hubby and I continue our busy week of work, he has been with his company for so long they are naming the new office building after him, and I am still called upon again and again to run the bank. I guess a person of my abilities can't be done without! But I have to get off work early so I can oversee the construction of our new house. This is our 5th custom home, and I think I'm beginning to be an old pro at being my own general contractor.

The new home will be our biggest yet, as we are expecting to host a lot of family gatherings, now that our oldest has had their 3rd child. Yes, we are grandparents yet again. All the little ones have far exceeded the normal milestones; Ace was supposed to enroll for kindergarten, but the teachers in 2nd grade begged to have her there! Topp is reading already-- at 2 years old. This isn't a surprise as his Daddy already was writing up his thesis at 2 1/2, and his Mother had cut an album of original songs by that age. And the new little baby is as bright as they come, so they named her Starr.

Lest you think it is nothing but work, work, work around here, we did enjoy 5 weeks of vacation this year, besides the wedding (which I don't think you can call a vacation!). Two relaxing weeks we spent at our summer home in Aspen. Then we spent some time visiting friends in Italy, and took a hop over to India and enjoyed a resort. Then off to Australia! You can imagine we were glad to get home and take a rest! But with the Christmas holidays upon us, we will be glad to take some time off of the hustle and bustle and celebrate the New Year on our Yacht in the Caribbean.

We hope that your family has a happy holiday!

-The Joneses

Hi Smiths-- how are you poor people doing this winter? I heard you had 6 feet of snow and no power for a week! Hope you stay warm!

Printable Card Display Easels

Here are some printable paper easels to use for displaying holiday cards. These easels are also nice for displaying any home-made cards you might get for birthdays, etc., which can often be so elaborate that it is a pity to store them in a box! If you are handy with your printer, you could print the easels out smaller and use them for  place card holders on a holiday dinner table (though you would have to have a lot of patience or many willing volunteers to cut around all those leaf-points for a large Thanksgiving gathering!).

 The Christmas Tree card holder (pictured above) has been cut out of green card-stock.

Print the easels on heavy card stock and cut, or glue two print-outs together if your card stock isn't thick enough. If you find the cards aren't standing right, you can bend back the upper branches of the tree slightly, but I have tried to "engineer" that trouble out of the templates for you! 
Click the links to go to the Google Drive page, and look for the little printer icon to print.
Christmas Tree and Autumn Leaf Easel

Here is a Christmas card displayed on the tree easel. 

Just for fun, I've included some print-outs for other seasonal and holiday cards.

 An Autumn leaf  Easel. (The print-out has a slightly longer base, as I found it was a little sturdier that way, so yours will be slightly different than the picture.) Just for fun, I decorated the easel by just stamping it with ink pads.
Christmas Tree and Autumn Leaf Easel

 Here's one for Valentine's day, perhaps. I glued two easels together for this one, to get two colors.

On the other side, I glued pink hearts to the card stock.
Heart and Flower Easels

Another two-tone easel, perhaps for Springtime or Easter, with the bottom part cut out of green card stock and glued to some pink card stock.

Heart and Flower Easels

And just in case you would rather have a simply shaped card easel, here is a plain one. The one above I covered in scrap-book paper. Plain and Fancy Easels

 And another one with just a few scrolls to make it a bit fancy. This one I am showing decorated with rubber stamps (below).

 This particular easel does well displaying open cards, too, so you can see the message inside of your card.
Plain and Fancy Easels

And here is a BONUS idea for you! Use the "negative" side of the print-out to make a card! I have used the "Scrolly" easel on red card stock to make a flourish (below) and I think the Christmas tree negative would also be neat glued to the inside of a card.

Or you could use the easels themselves glued on a card. 

I hope my readers enjoy this little craft, and that you all have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

The Modern Way To Clean Out The Basment

First, get an early start. Pull out everything you can to make a path through it so once you get in, you can get out. By the time you are done with this, your friend next door will be awake and texting you, so you can have a break and answer her text and then send her a picture of the massive project you are undertaking. If your friend liked the photo, it might make a neat Facebook update, so upload the photo to Facebook, and put a clever caption on it-- "boy I need a Starbucks right now..." 

Look at the mess again, decide where to start. Move a box. Say, it might be a good idea to have "before" and "after" photos-- so take another picture of the mess and upload it to Instagram. 

Now a few comments are trickling in on Facebook. Some of them are very clever-- answer with some cute replies of your own before going back to work.

Pick up the old lampshade, and wonder whether to keep it or toss it, then wonder why you wonder whether to keep the out-of-style thing!  Say, this project might make a great blog post: "How to stoicly let go of useless objects for a cleaner house." Take pictures of  a few items that you might want to toss, to post on your blog. 

It isn't any good typing a whole post on a smart phone! Besides, it must be almost lunch time. So go in the house to fire up the laptop so you can do some decent typing. Get out the tablet to look up a good lunch recipe. 

After lunch, and typing your post, uploading photos, getting on Photoshop to crop and write quotables on the photos, searching your affiliates for any links that could be useful in your post, and looking up to see if "stoicly" is a word since the spellchecker seems to think that it isn't (you know you've heard it used before), publish the post, then read and edit it for the things you left out or shouldn't have left in. 

By now your friends on Facebook have simmered down, but there are some comments on your Instagram that could be answered. 

My, you didn't realize that the sun was getting lower in the sky. You really got distracted!  But at least you have a great blog post to show for your time. 

It's time to get back on task, but you just don't feel like it. Maybe a jaunt over to Pinterest to look up "Organization" boards will inspire you. Say, there are some really good ones there that you should add to your own boards, and some pictures to embed on your latest post. 

Well, it's time to get down there in the basement (or up there in the attic) and start following all that good advice you wrote about on your blog-- at least with the time left you can start a pile to take to the thrift store. Oh wait, your friend is texting you to say that your blog post is great! I'll bet there are some comments on the post already. Better check to see.

It's dinner time now, and you are getting awfully tired-- mostly your eyes hurt. You only moved one box and a lampshade. Well, Rome wasn't built in a day! I'll bet those Romans never had to clean out a basement anyway. They probably filled it in with dirt and built on top of it. Yeah, that's what they did!  That's why we have archaeologists today-- to clean out those old basements.