A Little Birthday Card Postage Bucket

Yesterday and today, I have spent some time preparing all of my March, April and half-way through May birthday cards for posting.  I admit that I missed two of my lovely girlfriends' birthdays at the start of March (sorry girls!!), so I needed to backtrack a bit and catch up on those, plus I wanted to do the next month in advance, as I know I won't have time to even think about writing birthday cards to send when the baby arrives!!  The end result - this cute little bucket of ready-to-post birthday cards!

Although it may seem like an easy job, I broke this task into baby steps, so that it didn't seem too overwhelming.  In March/April and into the first half of May, we have 13 loved ones with birthdays!  That is a lot of cards, and a very easy job to procrastinate!  Anyway, here is what I did:

1.  I like to add little treats to the cards that I send to my girlfriends and close family, so first I made up the bits and pieces that I need for this year's treat.  (You can see last year's card treat here.)  For the young kids, I found these adorable Puzzle Cards a few years ago, so I love sending these to the children we know - it gives them a little something extra to play with inside their card!  In the pack is a puzzle (shown below), a matching card and an envelope.  They are super cute!

2. Next I attached little pockets to hold the ladies' treats into the cards, and slotted in all their goodies.

3. Then I popped the cards in a bucket, so that I could write on them when I had a chance - like at night time in front of the TV.  At the back I pegged together stamps, address labels, and my address book pages out of my diary, so that everything I needed was ready to be used.

4. Then when I did sit down to do the card writing, I also stamped and addressed all of the cards, ready to post when their date comes around.  But I didn't sign the cards for April, as I don't know 'who' I will be signing the cards from!!  I left the envelopes unsealed, so that I can just add in all of our little family's names, once I know who our new addition is ;)

5.  I put all of the cards into this bucket, and it will live in my study.  Then on Mondays when I check the calendar for the week ahead, I will just pull out any that need to be popped in the mail that week.

I usually do my cards one or two weeks in advance, but having the next couple of months ready to go is nice to know with the busy time that we have coming up.  It really didn't take that long to arrange, and by breaking the task into smaller steps, I didn't become overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. 

I keep a stash of greeting cards ready all of the time, and like to plan a few months in advance.  You can see how I do this here and here.

And for those of you wondering where I got the bucket - Ikea of course!