Repurposing Christmas Cards

I absolutely love the beautiful pictures and creativeness of Christmas cards.  Each year, I have a handful that I fall in love with and I hate to see them go when Christmas is over.  There are a few ways that I am now repurposing Christmas cards that I receive.

Postcards*

I write to our Compassion child regularly.  Sometimes, instead of writing her a message through their online site, I like to send a physical card.  If a Christmas card does not have writing on the front cover, I cut the card in half, write a little note for Anabel and put a postcard stamp on it to send it off.  This way, not only do I get to enjoy the postcard for some weeks, our Compassion child is able to enjoy it as well. 

**Please note that in order to use a postcard stamp, the card cannot be any larger than 4.25" x 6".

Frame It!

We keep our Christmas decorating to a minimum, but I like having a few things dispersed throughout the house.  Picture frames are available for $0.10-$0.50/each at flea markets and garage sales.  When I find one that I like, I snatch it up and display the holiday cards in the picture frame.  The great part is, on the “Happy Holidays” cards, I can leave them out until February before putting them away for the season (or taking them out and using as post cards for next year!)

Original Card

New Winter Decoration

 

Gift Tags

I found a website that shows how one person recycles their Christmas cards into gift tags for the next year!  What a great money-saving idea.



Source : A Spoon Full of Sugar Designs

 

Do you recycle the gift cards you receive each year?

Apples Galore!

Around this time last year, Todd and I found an awesome vineyard and orchard in North East, PA that sold “deer apples” at $4.00 for a little more than a bushel.  Deer apples are apples that have fallen from the tree, but they aren’t necessarily bad.  Actually, the majority of the apples are perfectly fine, many without any blemishes at all!  When we got home, I was just dieing to find out how much the box of apples weighed, and they were 53 lbs.  Now that’s a good price on apples ($0.08/lb!)  I gave some away, made several batches of applesauce, apple pie filling, apple bread, apple dumplings, and we just ate the apples too.

This weekend, Todd and I made a special 2 hour road trip to pick up deer apples, take in the beautiful fall colors of changing leaves and explore the area a little bit.  I called the orchard ahead of time to make sure they had the apples available and to confirm the pricing.  The deer apples went up $1/box, but at $5/box, they are still a great deal!  We ended up picking up 3 cases.

When we got home, we weighed them as we did the year before, and this year, we have 135 lbs of apples.  You didn’t read that wrong.  One hundred thirty five pounds of apples!  This equates to $0.11/lb for apples this year.

This is what 135 lbs of apples looks like!

Over the next several weeks, I will be posting a lot of apple recipes that I am making as I peel and core the apples.  (Hopefully I will have time to post considering I have to get these apples peeled, cored and prepared before we leave for vacation in two weeks! Eek!)  I am looking forward to making several batches of crockpot applesauce (to give as gifts), apple butter (gift), apple cake, apple pie filling (gifts), apple crisp, apple chips, apple everything!

Around November 15^th of last year, I mentioned to Todd that I never wanted to see another apple again.  I had peeled and cored over 40 lbs of apples by hand.  This year, I have an applecorer and peeler that my mom got me for Christmas.  This should make it easier on me this year to be able to get these apples cored and peeled in “no time” (meaning a few weeks!)

The apple corer/peeler my mom got for me last Christmas.

If you have any awesome apple recipes, I’d love to try them out!  Please email me at sparingchange@gmail.com .

Frugal Project: Outdoor Furniture

Todd and I bought two bistro sets on clearance at Home Depot when we bought our house 4 years ago.  We have had the bistro sets on our front patio where it has been exposed to extreme heat, cold and all of the elements in between!

This year, it started to look really rough and washed out, so we decided to paint it! 

Before:

$7.00 worth of spraypaint and 20 minutes later, it looked like this:

This is what the furniture looked like when we bought it!  One great thing about the spraypaint that we purchased is that it will protect the wood from the elements in the future! 

Quick, inexpensive fix!

This post is linked up with Hop Along Friday, HomeMaker By choice and Boost my Blog Hop!