book of thank yous

Having had a glorious day of sunshine it may seem a bit odd that my mind has gone back to Christmas. It's just that eventually I have sent off the last of our Christmas 'Thank yous'. I don't mean to sound ungrateful but from Boy's birthday thank yous from the end of November, then all the Christmas cards, the endless Christmas thank yous, swiftly followed by Baby's birthday thank yous, and 3 children who get bored of writing their name after 2 letters I have to confess that I find all the thank you letters become a bit of a chore. However I'm a true advocate of proper letters.


These days there is nothing better than a personal, hand written envelope dropping through the letter box and thank yous are always welcome (and, given the postal chaos this Christmas, one way of knowing for certain that a gift has been received!).


To alleviate the boredom I decided on a new approach. We created a little book, or rather a zine. One of my gifts had been How to Make Books by Esther K Smith where I learnt this nifty trick to make a book using one sheet of paper.*

Instead of writing 5 separate letters to family members we made one Book of Thanks Yous. Each of us having a page where we created something relevant to the gift we had received. It probably took longer than writing all the letters, but the children enjoyed it more so there was a lot less whinging involved. And hopefully the result is a thoughtful gift in return for all our Christmas goodies. Can you guess what the gifts were?



*These are the best on-line directions I can find. It may not look it but it is really simple and can provide hours of fun.