Giving thanks

In my previous (on hold?) life as a charity fundraiser a hugely important part of the role was to express thanks and gratitude to our donors and supporters in the most appropriate way. On a personal level, it was also something my parents drummed into me as a child. I remember making phone calls and writing out thank you notes after every birthday and Christmas.  Now I find myself doing it for my own kids.

As a great lover of both stationery and snail mail, for past occasions I have had photo cards printed, written a short personal note on them, and posted them off. Sending off for my own cards to be printed wasn't the cheapest or fastest way of doing it, but I wanted to personalise our thank yous as much as possible. Also, we don't live close to any of our family, and a lot of our friends, so it's a good way to send a little photo update of the kids.

This year I wanted to involve Charlotte a bit more so decided to buy some plain postcards and get her to draw some pictures on them. Cheap, cheerful, simple, easy. Right? Well, kinda. What I hadn't anticipated was how long it would take to do this. She usually loves drawing and doodling pictures but as soon as I said "we need to draw some thank you cards for all your lovely presents" it became a massive chore, and she didn't want to do it. I mean, she is only 3 so I didn't expect her to do them all in one sitting, but did think she might manage more than one at a time with me hovering over her shoulder.

After a couple of stressful, forced, drawing sessions I decided to change tack. Turns out she didn't really get why she was drawing a bunch of thank you cards. So, we did them one at a time, specifically for each recipient. Ask her to draw a picture for granny and grandpa? Uncle Sam? Evie? Off she went with great enthusiasm. Just a shame I didn't figure this out until the last 5 cards! It did mean that the cards didn't arrive until a month after the event, but better late than never. And they were pretty cute. These are some of my personal favourites, along with their titles!

"One person, one giant"

"Two frogs"

"Two people on a road with stars"