Beware, I'm starting this as a bit of a rant...we have noticed that some of the young people in our lives are not good about thanking us for birthday/Christmas/graduation gifts. I'm not expecting a huge thank you note, but a text or phone call or email would be appreciated. I'm not talking about a small gift like a candle; I'm talking about a large amount of money. The checks were cashed, but we did not hear from them at all. 

Fast forward to this May and June...a friend's twins graduated from college. Each graduated from a differrent school. We sent a check to each and my husband made each of them a Christmas ornament with a graduation cap, their name, and the year. We received a thank you note from each. A real snail mail one in fact. It meant a lot. The sad thing is these kids probably aren't going to get anything else from us unless they pursue another degree because we aren't really close so it wasn't like they had an excuse to write in hopes of further gifts. Another friend wrote a thank you note to us because we treated him to a meal. So, in the span of two weeks we received three thank you notes. It was wonderful!

Being the frugal (or cheap if you want) person I am, I decided to figure out a way to recycle the fronts of the cards. I bought some cards and envelopes at the dollar store and so I cut the fronts to fit on the front of the empty cards. I decorated them with a few things that I have since I make many of my own cards. I like the idea of reusing the fronts of the cards. 

It was a good exercise getting to work on these because our "craft" room (read craft, but really it's a room with lots of uses) is in the basement and it's cool there. We are under quite a heat wave here in Central Illinois.

Hope you all have a great 4th of July if you are American as we celebrate the 250th anniversary. I've had the privlege of celebrating both the 200th and now the 250th anniversary.