8th Day of Christmas Giveaways with Leah DiPascal
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Welcome to the 8th Day of Christmas Giveaways!!!
Today my friend Leah DiPascal is here to share her favorite way to display Christmas cards! She also will be giving away a festive candle and holder to keep your home smelling inviting this season. Leah is a speaker, inspirational Bible teacher and writer for Proverbs 31 Ministries. She also writes for the First 5 mobile app which reaches over 500,000 people in 191+ countries each day. Her love of ministry centers around helping others engage, understand and apply God’s Word to their hectic and oftentimes stressful lives. Leah lives outside Charlotte, North Carolina where they stay busy running a family business and raising two teenage sons.
Connect with Leah on her blog, Whispers for the Soul, where she shares what God is teaching her, along with real-life stories of adventure that are helping women around the world.
To join in on the fun and be entered to win the various prizes, simply leave a comment on the post answering the question of the day. ALSO—one grand prize will be given to one person who comments on all 12 days.
The Grand Prize is a $50 gift certificate to Proverbs 31 Ministries store and a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com!!!
Now, here is Leah with today’s post…
My Favorite Way to Display Christmas Cards
Hi Friends!
Leah DiPascal here and yes, I am so excited to be a part of Karen Ehman’s 12 Day Christmas Celebration!
Gosh, it’s that time of the year already? How is it possible that 2015 has gone by so quickly? But don’t you just love Christmas and some of the special moments that comes with it?
Roasting marshmallows over the fire pit. Sipping hot chocolate with an extra layer of whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles on top. Listening to glorious tunes while stringing lights and hanging heirloom ornaments onto a freshly cut Frazier tree.
Christmas. It is the most wonderful time of the year … don’t you agree?
One of the things I love most about the holiday season is sending and receiving Christmas cards.
Since our family lives far from relatives, there have been many years when we were unable to travel “home” to be with our extended family at Christmastime.
But … each year I can count on my Aunt Elsie to send the first Christmas card of the season, which always arrives in my mailbox the week after Thanksgiving.
As days pass, I find myself waiting with great anticipation for the mailman to slide a new batch of red and green envelopes into my holly-and-bow draped mailbox.
My routine is always the same: I open each card, read the message inside, gaze and smile at the enclosed family photo, then proudly tape it to my kitchen pantry door.
As the countdown to Christmas continues, every white space on that door disappears as I tape a steady stream of cards and pictures over every inch, including the doorframe.
Smiling faces and seasonal attire are on display as I hang each card with loving care. Neighbors, friends, relatives, classmates, co-workers … even our mailman and dentist’s cards are included.
I used to bundle all those cards and tuck them away in a keepsake box once January rolled around. But the last several years, I’ve decided to make some changes to my Christmas card tradition.
Instead of tucking away those beautiful smiling faces (into a box I probably won’t open until the following December), I transfer them onto a decorative framed corkboard, which hangs in my laundry room.
You’re probably wondering, the laundry room? Yes, the laundry room, because for me it’s a central place where I’m guaranteed to be several times a day.
I strategically display the picture cards there, so every time I go in and out of the laundry room, I am reminded to pray for each person represented.
Even after the Christmas decorations are packed and put away, the cards remain and I am committed to pray for each family. Not just for one month or two, but all year long.
I pray for stronger marriages and godly children.
For daily provision and unexpected blessings.
For loving conversations and renewed appreciation.
For restored health and increased faith.
Every time I whisper a prayer, I’m reminded of how blessed I am and grateful to God for placing these special people in my life.
Though many miles may separate us, prayer instantly brings us invisibly together — right in the midst of some flowery-scented laundry detergent and spray starch.
Last Christmas I was surprised to receive a much smaller amount of picture cards and honestly, I was a little bummed it at first. Honestly, I think more people are going digital and uploading their family photos on Facebook or Instagram because of the cost factor. It is getting expensive, but that’s a topic for a whole other post.
The smaller amount of cards didn’t deter me. God knew my heart and my plans. I figured He sent me just the right photos of families I needed to pray for in 2015.
Ever consider changing your Christmas card tradition? Before you pitch or put away those seasonal cards, why not embrace the idea of turning them into an annual prayer collection? What a great opportunity to speak prayers of blessings into someone else’s life and experience a greater sense of gratitude in your own. Not just at Christmastime, but all year ’round.
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To show my gratitude for each of you I’m giving away a Bath & Body Works Candle Set. It’s contains a Joy candle and Christmas decorative holder. The candle smells divine!
It’s Your Turn:
To enter the drawing for this lovely candle set simply leave a comment and share how you display your Christmas cards each year or share what’s one of your favorite traditions during the holidays.
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I’d love to connect with you in 2016! Let’s touch base on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, okay? Or you can drop me a note on my blog – letting me know how I can be praying for you and your family – and I’ll add you to my Christmas card cork board for 2016. :)
I keep all my cards together in a “Christmas basket”.
Love your idea of saving pictures for bulleting board and praying for families.
Our church has boxes set up alphabetically in the foyer for us to send and receive cards without the cost of mailing. My pattern was to send cards only to people I would not see during Christmas; however, felt a need to send a card to those who were sending to me at church. This gets very time consuming and expensive.
I put cards in a special gold basket and enjoy reading then again before putting away with decorations. Hard to part with cards, I save them to use for name tags. This year, I decided to just cut the cards in half- save the cover (which is usually blank on back) and then just write on the blank space and put in the boxes at church. Saves me time and also recipient who doesn’t even have to open an envelope, just look at back for message.
I take the cards that have pictures and take a picture of that and use if for the contact in my cell phone. One of the things that we like to do every Christmas is spending time with r large extended family on Christmas Day. My mom is one of 8 kids, and most of those kids are now grandparents. 4 generations make a huge effort to be there for Christmas Day, usually about 50 people under one roof, and sometimes even one long table!
I have a wall card hanger that spells BELIEVE and our cards often spend many months hanging. I love that I can be prompted to pray for the senders-instead of just dusting them off!!!
We tape our cards to an interior door during the month of December and then put them into a basket to become prayer prompts throughout the following year.
We have a service window between our kitchen and living room that we tape the cards around.
I have a tree shaped wire hanger that holds all the wonderful cards we receive for Christmas.
We try to bake cookies for the holiday season. This year we moved back to our home state so I was able to bake with my sister again after many years of living away from each other!
I typically hang my Christmas cards on a door with a piece of Scotch tape the way my grandmother used to do.
One of my favorite Christmas traditions is getting the count down calendar that starts on Dec 1 and each day a little chocolate is behind each door. I get one calendar for each of my children, all in their 20s and one 30 and they still comment on it!!!
Right now our cards are on the television cabinet, but I love some of these new ideas for displaying them!
I display my Christmas cards by taping them to the doorway from my kitchen to my living room. The kids enjoy putting them up and looking at them.
I love your ideas. This year my table center piece is sitting on a large wooden tray and I have been placing the card all along the edges of the tray.
I tape the cards around the frame of the doorway so that we can see them all season!
Every year, for the 19 years I’ve been married , my husband’s family repeats the same ritual. Mornings begin at my brother in law’s home, everyone naps, and the party ends at our home. We love spending time with family!
My favorite tradition is driving around looking at Christmas lights with my husband, dreaming about our future home and how to decorate it :)
They usually are just hung on the fridge for awhile. But this year I’m going to keep them in a journal and pray for those family and friends throughout the year.
I have a Christmas decorated basket that sits on the end table in the living room. When cards come, I place them in the box. The cards serve as a cheerful greeting when I receive them in the mail, then as decor the whole season through!
I hang pretty Christmas ribbon from the wall and when i get Christmas card i staple it to the ribbon. I usually have 2 or 3 ribbons to hang up.
I tape them to our cabinets!
We hand out cards around door frames – it’s what my mum always did.
I hang out cards on the back of our front door. I put a bit of tape on the back and randomly place them all over the door. My Mom did this when I was growing up and now I do it. I love the idea of praying over each family we receive a card from throughout the whole year!
We have the cards on a bookshelf for all to see!!!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas of how you display your cards and pray for everyone in them. Love it! For our family, we make an outline of a Christmas tree using tinsels and then place the cards inside the tree as ornaments. The kiddos help me arrange the cards and it’s always a fun time doing this!
I do the usual and leave them on an end table, however if I find something unique or beautiful about the card , or it just touches my soul, I frame it in a beautiful frame, as with other cards I do the same. As a tradition , we listen to the Charlie Brown cd all month long, burn cranberry oil ( diffuse it) , bake whipped short bread , boxing them in reusable containers tied in rafia and given to all in a brown paper bag with hand written notes. I display House and Home on my coffee table ( collected the xmas edition for 15 years for decorating ideas and hostessing ideas) and we have a live tree. Also keeping in tradition , we thank God for the real meaning of Christmas. The Birth of our Savior. Merry Christmas ! :)
We have a basket that we keep our cards in during Christmas and we will look through them often during the season. Once Christmas is over a lot of the picture cards are placed on the refrig and sometimes those are left in the basket on the end table until next year.