Say please and thank you!

The holidays are officially over and many of you are enjoying those fabulous gifts...

I know we are here at our house!

And I think it's very important to say thank you for all of those gifts, too!

It doesn't have to be an elaborate letter, just a simple note to tell the giver

that you so appreciate them thinking of you.

Believe me, there is nothing better than receiving a hand-written note in the mail.

Now, the basics...

I was re-organizing all of my paper items the other day,

and I decided to re-purpose an old utensil holder....into a stationery caddy!

It's the perfect item to hold all of the things I need to write my thank you notes!

Inside, I put a set of stationery for each of us -

one for LeeLee, one for B and one for Annie Louise.

I also stuck a nice ballpoint pen, a letter opener, our return address stamp

and some enclosure cards in the smaller spots.

I think it's important to teach our children to be grateful -

so even though my Annie Louise can't write her own thank you notes,

I write them for her, and when she's old enough, I'll help her write them herself.

And what a proud mama I will be!

I have to share my "nice" stationery. When I left my job at the stationery shop in August, my boss told me I could pick anything out our Crane stationery album for myself.

I don't think I have ever received a gift like that - it was almost too big of a decision!

I'm definitely a stationery "snob," so getting to pick from the best of the best was perfect!

I ended up choosing a white flat card with a yellow hand-bordered border.

I chose a bird motif for the top (as birds are my thing),

and my name is done in a lowercase script font.

It's actually the same font that I chose for my wedding invitation - so it's sentimental, too.

I only pull these out for special occasions because I don't want to run out of them!

So, have you been busying writing your Christmas thank yous? And how do you keep them all your materials organized? Do you have a method to your madness?

Do share!