Our Domicile

I have a bit of a thing for thank you cards. It is probably thanks, in large part, to my mom, who was quite consistent when we were growing up about sending thank you cards for gifts. It has certainly been reinforced by having some particularly thoughtful friends, and an ongoing love of sending and receiving real live mail. It’s for the latter reason that I tend to gravitate towards actual cards or hand-written notes over thank you emails, when possible.

That said, I do feel like the immediacy of email is sometimes the enemy of a hand-written thank you note. I frequently feel like I’m letting people down by taking a week or two to send an actual thank you card, in place of an email. I’ll admit sometimes I do both.

I’m hoping to instill the same habits in little Miss L, and this holiday season was really the first time that she had any real sense that gifts were given to her and that they also came from someone in particular. And so, while this is perhaps verging on the late side of things, this morning was the first time I had time to sit down and set her up to help me with sending thank you cards, which means we’re sadly going to be late according to current Emily Post guidelines for sending thank you’s. Alas.

To involve her, I decided to pick up some blank note cards at the art supply store which she could decorate. I set her up at the kitchen table after breakfast with some paints (she choose red and yellow) and some cookie cutters she usually uses for playdough to use as make-shift stamps. We had a great time. I also invested in a $8 “Thank You” stamp, which I hope to reuse for many years, which I then used to stamp the front of her creations and viola, mama and little girl thank you cards.

The best part? Aside from the process of doing it together, which was great fun, she seems to have perhaps (ok maybe just a little) got the thank you concept, as she’s been happily declaring “thank you cards!” every time she sees the pile ready to go in the mail.

I’m big on stamps and kids art in general these days — beyond giving kids stamps, which is also awesome. My friend Louise mentioned that she picked up a date stamp so that she can easily date her daughter’s artwork as it is produced/comes home (brilliant!), and I’ve been thinking this same principle for making thank you cards could be applied to birthday cards, with the acquisition of a good “Happy Birthday” stamp. I did favourite a bunch of excellent “Thank You” stamps on Esty, if you want to consider the same kind of a project. In the end I picked ours up at Granville Island, but I’m particularly fond of this one. Next up? Perhaps we’ll try making our own stamps!