I have a question about dressing girls.

Elizabeth wears a skirt almost every single day (her choice). In warm weather, she wears shorts or bicycle pants or cropped leggings under the skirt, so that she can still play normally without having to be careful of her skirt.

In winter, she wears tights or full-length leggings with her skirt. To me, it feels as if leggings are sufficiently covering, but tights might not be. Leggings are opaque enough to completely cover underwear, and tights sometimes aren’t quite as opaque, so that’s an issue if the goal is for the underwear to be hidden. But even when the tights are completely opaque, they seem….more underwear-y, somehow. And that does seem to be the societal perception, if I think about how we’d perceive it in the same situation with a grown woman. Individuals may differ on whether they think leggings are pants or not, but we’re not even having that discussion about tights.

So some days Elizabeth wears shorts or bicycle pants over her tights, but then that is a lot of layers, and it can be a little challenging in the bathroom. Other days I don’t worry about it (especially since she’s only 7) and she just wears the tights. But she is a bit of a “flip upside down” kind of girl, and when I see the tights I think, “Uh oh, her skirt,” but when I see leggings I don’t as much.

So what I’m curious to find out is what other people are doing for their daughter’s clothes. Are tights enough for decency, or do you add bicycle shorts as well?

I had a stomach bug over the weekend that left me feeling VERY GRATEFUL for everyday non-queasy life AND got me caught up on some reading! Also, before I got sick I watched a movie:

(photo from Amazon.com)

Beginners (Netflix link) is slow-moving/indie. I especially loved Mélanie Laurent, and also now I want a Jack Russell terrier. (Like the sweet one in the movie. Not because of Mélanie Laurent.) I really liked the whole movie, and it was fun to see Christopher Plummer again. Now I feel like I’m leaving Ewan McGregor out if I don’t mention him, especially if I’m even making a fuss over the DOG! I liked him too.

(photo from Amazon.com)

I finally read Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. I resisted for awhile because it sounded like I would hate it, but then I felt like I really wanted to know what everyone was talking about, so I read it. At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to get through it, because I hated Amy so much at the beginning: if her first diary entry were a blog post, I would have clicked away after a few sentences. But by the end, I didn’t hate anyone. It’s a little hard to give a full review, for two reasons: (1) I don’t want to give anything away, and (2) I accidentally found out a key plot point BEFORE reading, so I’m not sure what I would have thought about the book if I hadn’t known that part ahead of time.

Here’s what I liked best about the book: I found it riveting and couldn’t wait to get back to reading it. It can be hard to find books like that.

I was distracted by the way SO MANY characters in the book had double letters in their names just like the author. Based on the novel’s theme of in-jokes AND all the in-jokes in the acknowledgements, I’m guessing that was on purpose—which is a little irritating for those of us who think in-jokes should only be used with those who are in on them, because otherwise they’re off-putting, unfriendly, and deliberately excluding.

(photo from Amazon.com)

My Mother Was Nuts, by Penny Marshall. If you like autobiographies, this was a good one: a nice mix of insider stuff, name-dropping, getting in her side of the story, etc. I liked and admired Penny Marshall more after reading it, and now feel like re-watching her stuff. I’ll bet she and Carrie Fisher have the same plastic surgeon: when I looked at her author photo on the back, I thought, “Goodness, she looks a lot like Carrie Fisher!”

(photo from Amazon.com)

The One I Left Behind, by Jennifer McMahon. This one made me mad. It’s about a serial killer. The chapters alternated between “back then” and “now” in a way that was supposed to increase the tension but instead just made me cranky and inclined to skim. Many sections ended in faux cliffhangers: “There was A KNOCK AT THE DOOR!!!”—oh, it was just a package being delivered. “Behind her was A MAN!!!!”—oh, it was just the neighbor getting his mail.

There’s also a whole series of cutting incidents that seem to be intended to be erotic, but I couldn’t identify at all so they just seemed odd. And it seemed like people who COULD identify would probably be trying to avoid such material, and those who had the POTENTIAL to identify ought not to be exposed to it in that way, so it was hard to see the value of it.

By about a third of the way through, I felt like I really had to know what happened, but I didn’t want to have to read the book to find out. I tried skipping ahead, but it wasn’t that kind of book. So I just read fast and resentfully and got it over with. And then the ending was unsatisfying: I was left thinking, “Wait, but what about…?” and “But that doesn’t work with….” and “But in that case, wouldn’t they have….?” and so forth. And the serial killer’s motivations/reasons are so pat, it’s irritating—the serial killer version of “the butler did it.”

(photo from Amazon.com)

Marbles, by Ellen Forney. I liked this one a lot. I saw it mentioned in a magazine shortly before Christmas, and it looked likely to be my kind of graphic novel, so I added it to my wish list and Paul bought it for me. It was indeed my kind of graphic novel. It reminded me of Alison Bechdel (Fun Home, Are You My Mother?, Dykes to Watch Out For). The author has bipolar disorder, and this is the story of her diagnosis, symptoms, and treatment. Gosh, that sounds depressing! But it’s also funny and interesting and informative. Right after reading it, I ordered a used copy of another of her books, Monkey Food.

Elizabeth told me a rather long story yesterday about which children of her acquaintance had birthdays in what month, and then Angela mentioned on Twitter that birthdays in her office were heavily weighted toward certain months, and that got me curious about whether certain birth months are more heavily weighted over the entire population. I could look it up, but then I realized I’m mostly interested in OUR population. And it was fun doing that “Guess what number I’m thinking of” poll awhile back.

So let’s have a poll for “What month were you born?,” to see if we’re evenly distributed around here or not. The poll will be in the righthand margin. As I understand it, those of you reading on mobile devices can’t see it, is that right? Is that why some people put their poll votes in the comments section instead of in the poll? I poked around but don’t see any way to fix that issue, other than “Go home and take the poll on your computer.” (If anyone else has solved it, let me know and I’ll see if I can solve it the same way.) [Poll closed; see results below.]

[Edit: Ah ha! Jessica‘s comment sounds like exactly what I need! Let’s try THAT: now the poll MAY OR MAY NOT be in the post itself!] [Edit again: No. I see it in html, but not in the post. Continuing to work on it.] [Nope, still not working. I’ve read half a dozen posts describing how to do it, but all of them describe an iframe situation I don’t see in my own html. In the meantime, several commenters have mentioned that if they scroll down, they can click on “view web version” and see the poll that way.]

Poll results for “What month were you born?” (1110 votes total):

I am trying an experiment: I’m cooking one new thing per week and making the children try it. The experiment came about to try to fix three major issues:

1. I’d like the children by the time they leave home to be physically able to force themselves to eat food they don’t like (the “Keep offering it and they’ll eat it!” method never did work out for us, but now they’re all old enough for the “Eat it anyway” method)

2. Edward’s food pickiness may not be worsening his anemia but it isn’t helping it either, and we’d like to see if we can find more foods he’ll eat

3. I’m so bored cooking dinner, it makes me want to drink

Here are the ways life has been improved by this new way of doing things:

1. It really is kind of interesting (bordering on fun, but I wouldn’t want to go quite that far) to cook something new, though “during the worst hour of the day” is perhaps not ideal timing for it

2. It feels good to feel like we’re working on the children’s food-eating training, even if so far we don’t seem to be making any measurable progress and maybe all we’re doing is teaching them that trying new things always leads to not liking it

3. Paul thinks he doesn’t like any meals except the half dozen he always eats (hm, I wonder where the children get that picky eating, hm hm hm, what a mystery), but as it turns out he really likes the new foods, and he also likes coming home from work to find a dinner ready for him (normally I cook for the kids, and then Paul and I make our own dinners later: eating dinner around the table as a family makes us wish we weren’t one)

4. I cook stuff I like, so my dinner is made too

5. Since none of the kids eat the food, I have lots of leftovers for my lunches

Here are the ways life has been unimproved by this new way of doing things:

1. When I spend a couple of hours researching, shopping for, and cooking a new meal, and then the children don’t eat it, I feel like laying waste to all the lands

2. The more time I spend doing cooking and cleaning in general, the less happy I feel with my role in life: I start feeling grey and drudgey and like I’m in servitude to an endless cycle of unappreciated work that leads nowhere and results in nothing of any lasting value (I had not been sure which way this one would go: lots of people feel MORE fulfilled and happy when they do more/better cooking/cleaning)

3. It takes about 5 seconds for Paul to start taking cooking/cleaning for granted, I think because those gender roles are so easy to slip into; when I see even the first edges of that happening, I feel like laying waste to all the lands AND I feel less happy with my role in life

4. Because this is new, and because the children normally are allowed to have a snack in the evening if they’re hungry, we are dealing with a lot of new-rule explaining, accompanied by whining, forgetting, and fresh shock upon hearing that no, after eating one bite of dinner, you do NOT get to have a snack.

I would say that overall, the costs and benefits of the experiment are about equally matched: I am both happier and less happy. But I can see the long-term effects going either way. If, for example, Paul gets even one single millimeter further on the “Wow, I LIKE having a wife who cooks me a hot dinner and then does all the dishes while I go have free time!” spectrum, that will make a kilometer difference to my drudgery spectrum. One. more. millimeter.

I completely shop for Rob in the men’s department now. He is 5’10”. He wears the same shoe size as Paul.

Fit on some things is tricky: he’s guy-height, but not necessarily guy-width. He can wear a men’s medium or large in t-shirts, but if it’s something SHOULDERY like a jacket or a button-down shirt, it can look weird. I found a nice brown hooded jacket at TJ Maxx, but because the material was kind of stiff (leather-like), the jacket looked bizarre on him: it was the right length, but about a foot too wide.

I am not enjoying the waist/inseam pants-measurement thing. He has a drawer full of mixed sizes because I can’t figure out what size he should be wearing: 30/31, 30/32, 31/30, 31/31, 31/32. Aiieee. His pants are always needing to be hitched up, not because he’s too cool for pants that fit him but because his mother has not yet conquered this challenge. (I have a MEASURING TAPE. Why is that insufficient to determine his size??) (Yes, yes, he could try things on. But most of the time he’s not with me when I’m shopping, or I’m ordering online.)

I was wondering why now it seemed weird/gross to buy him underwear, when it didn’t used to. I think it’s because the wrapper now shows a grown male model looking pleased with himself. Ick.

You know how kid sizes are all weird when you’re transitioning from the toddler sizes to the 4-16 sizes? There’s some weird overlap, so that some 5T is the same size as 4, and some is bigger and some is smaller, and different brands are all different sizes and use all different size names, so for awhile you have a drawer containing 4-5T, XXL, 5T, 4, 4-5, 4-6, XXS, XS, S, etc. It is similar going from the 4-16 kid sizes into the men’s sizes. I had expected to go from size 16 (the highest size in boys) to size S (the smallest size in men’s). But no: some brands for boys have 18-20, and some brands for men have XS, and in some things we went right from 16 in boys to M in men’s, so there must be some overlap. This new information helped me because William (age 11, size 14 in shirts) wanted more sweaters, and there were some size S men’s sweaters on 70% off at Target that I think are going to fit him.

One upside of shopping in the men’s department is that the clothing styles continue on pretty much the same as in the boys’ department: cargo pants, graphic tees, solid long-sleeved t-shirts. One of my friends tells me that shopping in the women’s department for appropriate clothing for a middle-school girl can get a bit more challenging.

I finished May We Be Forgiven (by A. M. Homes) last night and, as with many books, I can’t figure out if I DO or DON’T recommend it. But a telling detail is that this morning I am disappointed that I finished it, and I don’t really feel like starting a new book.

(photo from Amazon.com)

I would like to digress and talk about photos of ourselves, because I think that’s a subject near to a blogger’s heart. Here is the author photo I kept looking at on the book jacket as I was reading the book:

(photo from the jacket, by Marion Ettlinger)

And here is the photo on Wikipedia, which I saw when I went to find out more about the author:

(photo from Wikipedia, credited to David Shankbone)

I do empathize, and I suspect we ALL do, with the feelings that cause an author or blogger to use something more like the first image. Here are two reasons not to:

1. The shock of seeing the second image AFTER the first is far more severe than it would have been if I’d only seen the second. The second photo would have been a normal picture. But because I was familiar with the first picture, the difference between the two CRIED OUT. If a blogger is ever planning to be seen in public, it would be better to be frank from the very beginning.

2. I liked her far, far better when I saw the second picture. I think people think to themselves, “People will only like me if they think I’m thin and pretty.” But the thing is, I think we admire people who are thin and pretty, but that most of us are also a little put off by it until we get to know the person. Also, photos made to look thin and pretty may carry an unintended attitude the photographed person isn’t aware of: the photographed person is thinking, “Whew, this angle hides my double chin!” and not noticing that in order to hide that chin they’ve had to make themselves look bitchy or vapid or silly or unfriendly or unapproachable or unrelatable.

When I was reading the book and seeing the first picture, I had the author summed up as a girl in her twenties, right out of a writer’s MA program after attending expensive prep school; grew up rich; now kind of a privileged brat trying to shock people just for the sake of making them uncomfortable. I was a little cranky that it turned out she was making it work, because I’d prefer to see such people taken down. When I saw the second picture and read on Wikipedia that the author is 51 years old, I had to completely re-evaluate my impressions of the book. (Paul: “Well, how long ago was the book written?” Swistle: “2012.”)

I think when people choose pictures of themselves that they find flattering, they do know that they’re trying to alter the way people see them—but what they don’t realize is that they could be altering it with a net effect of WORSE.

Anyway. On to the book. I knew from the flap that there would be some violence at the beginning, so I was braced for it. I read the first scene of violence, which was only described by a character, not witnessed by the narrator, and I closed the book. Nope, not reading this. A minute went by. I opened it up again and kept reading. I came to the second scene of violence, which the narrator does witness, and I closed the book even more decisively. No. I’m not reading this book. Five seconds passed, and I went back to reading.

For me, continuing to read was the right decision: the really bad stuff was over after that, and was tempered considerably by later events.

Another reason I almost stopped reading is that this is a book that employs a method I’m sure has a name but I don’t know what it is. I would call it “unreliable narrator”—which is funny, because I just Googled that and it IS what it’s called. This reminds me of when I was trying to figure out what “AKA” could stand for, and I thought, “Well, it’s kind of like saying ‘also known as’….oh.”

Anyway, you can’t trust the narrator to tell you the truth, and I generally HATE that. There are two Agatha Christie books with unreliable narrators, and I will never read them again because that makes me so angry. But it can make for a compelling plot, because you keep thinking if you keep reading you’ll find out what’s REALLY going on. And there are enough hints in this book that even though many things are left non-revealed, I didn’t end up feeling tricked. It’s not that the narrator LIES, it’s more like he’s not processing information correctly HIMSELF, so he can’t quite relate it accurately to us either. I ended up with a feeling of “Boy, humans sure do kid themselves a lot about their own behavior and/or sure do tell the story one-sidedly to others.” (Another issue close to a blogger’s heart.) I did, however, feel like the narrator’s issues were too severe to have been so easily resolved, and there were a number of places where I’d been pretty sure we were working up to a big plot twist but then was irritated when nothing ever happened with it.

From my author assessment, you will have received the correct impression that there are parts that I feel the author wrote To Be Shocking. But I wasn’t SURE about it: that is, I’m still not sure the author DID write them “just to be shocking”; she might have written them because that’s how she writes and that’s how she saw the story going. In descriptions of her writing, the word “fearless” keeps coming up. I could go along with that.

Both plot and dialogue seemed unreal to me, but it was hard to tell how on-purpose that was. I probably thought “What?” a thousand times. I kept reading parts aloud to Paul, because I couldn’t figure out if (1) the author had no feel for dialogue, or (2) the author was trying to be funny, or (3) the author was trying to Show Something with the way the people were talking, or (4) kind of all three.

Also, if I hadn’t read on Wikipedia that the author had a daughter, I would have said she not only didn’t have kids but had no experience with kids. The kid part comes across as a 1980s fantasy movie where the single career woman with no interest in children gets stuck with someone else’s. (But I liked it, the way I also liked those movies.)

I don’t know, I don’t think I’m telling this well, because if I read this description I would be like “NO WAY IS THIS BOOK FOR ME”—and yet it WAS for me. When I was reading it, I kept being eager to get back to it, and that doesn’t happen with very many books. I don’t want to read it over again, but I want there to be MORE of it—two more volumes! three! four! MORE ABOUT THIS STORY. That seems like recommending.

Rob is now old enough to get the HPV vaccine, and his pediatrician recommends it, so I chose to have him get it. (It’s recommended for boys even though the cancer issue is more serious for girls, because boys can transmit the infection from one girl to another.)

There are lots of reasons why parents might choose NOT to get this vaccine for their children (it might not work, it’s too new, all vaccines are bad, etc.), and on a couple of those reasons I had to do some thinking: Rob was actually old enough for the vaccine two years ago, and the pediatrician brought it up a year ago, but I wasn’t done thinking yet.

Today I would like to address only one reason, and why I think it’s not a reason. It is possible that this will start a heated discussion, and I hate heated discussions. But I keep hearing this reason, and I have some Insider Experience that others might not have, and so it feels like a worthwhile risk. If you have chosen a DIFFERENT reason for not getting the vaccine for your child, that’s not what we’re talking about here, and I would hate to get half a dozen heated discussions going when I have only stocked up on enough gin to handle one. So tangential discussions such as “Well, _I_ chose not to because _I_….” will just get things all tangled, and perhaps would be better saved for a post discussing THAT particular topic.

Here is the reason I’m talking about: “The vaccine is to protect against sexually-transmitted diseases, but we’ve taught our children that sex is only for within marriage. In a monogamous couple, there’s no risk of sexually-transmittted diseases, so there’s no need for the vaccine.”

And here are the things I would like to say about that:

1. Teenagers are known to be kind of dim. Many of them make foolish mistakes. In fact, ALL human beings are known to be kind of dim, and ALL of us sometimes make foolish mistakes. Even Christian adults continue to sin and ask forgiveness, sin and ask forgiveness. A teenager who truly wants to obey God and parents WILL continue to make mistakes anyway, just as adults do. A major tenet of Christianity is that ALL humans sin—it’s just that God no longer requires the sinner’s death as payment for that sin.

2. One out of six women is sexually assaulted—and because of the large number of women who don’t report such things, the number is estimated to be much, much higher than that. Teaching a child not to have premarital sex does not protect the child against being sexually assaulted.

3. I went to a Christian middle school. Of the twelve children in my class, seven are known to have been sexually active before marriage. (This is not to say that the other five are known NOT to have been. It’s to say that of those five, I know one wasn’t, and the other four have not confided in me.) These were children who were all vigorously taught not to have premarital sex.

4. I went to a Christian college. While I was there, a study came out that electrified the student body. It involved a survey that showed that when college boys were asked if they would commit rape if they KNEW they could get away with it, a certain percentage said yes. What electrified us was that the percentage at Christian schools was the same as at secular schools. This led to a flurry of surveys done at our school, mostly by students in psych programs. Those showed that although in our particular Christian student body the students tended to have had fewer sexual partners than the national average, the percentage who were (or had been) sexually active was hovering right at average. This was not staggering news: I lived in the dorms, and girls talk.

5. I would like to make sure everyone is hearing numbers 3 and 4. Those children had parents and pastors who taught them not to have premarital sex. Those children’s parents paid extra money for Christian education, in part to make sure those standards were upheld among the children’s peers. And those parents were sitting at home with no idea their children were having sex. They even now would say, “Well, but see, I taught my children not to have premarital sex, and they didn’t!” And yet many of them are wrong. Did you yourself refrain from having premarital sex after being taught not to? How nice! But is that detail relevant? Well, it’s about as relevant as the information that other children given the same instructions DIDN’T refrain. What it tells us is that “parental/church say-so” isn’t something parents can count on to make the difference between the child refraining and the child not refraining.

6. Have you noticed that among your own Christian peers, there is some disagreement about what God’s will is, and/or what the interpretation of certain biblical passages should be, and/or how important those particular issues are? Children too may disagree with their parents on these same things. I hope you have not accidentally gotten the impression that all those sexually-active students at my Christian college had turned their backs on the teachings of God and their parents. On the contrary, these smart children had been taught to analyze scripture for true meaning, and analyze scripture they did. Many of them were satisfied that either premarital sex was not a sin, or else it was a minor and forgivable one (like the tattoo thing, or like the eating of cloven-hoofed animals thing, or like the gossiping thing). This was after being THOROUGHLY TAUGHT that it MOST DEFINITELY WAS a sin. They disagreed, as many Christians disagree with each other on many matters.

7. For many people, God’s plan for their lives will involve them marrying someone who is a flawed human being like every single other flawed human being. Their intended spouse’s particular flaw may have involved a sexual slip-up, from which they have fervently repented and taken steps to prevent ever happening again outside of monogamous marriage. Or perhaps one person in the marriage was married before, and has since been widowed/divorced, perhaps by someone who was not faithful. The virus remains unaffected by the information that the other person in the marriage was a virgin when the marriage took place.

8. For many people, God’s plan for their lives will involve them marrying someone who was raised by non-Christian parents and only converted after hearing about Christianity in adulthood. That person might have spent their youth without understanding that they shouldn’t be having premarital sex. They now repent of it and will live a monogamous Christian life. The virus shrugs its virusy shoulders at this and goes right on being a virus.

9. HPV can be transmitted from mother to child during birth. Presumably even those who think it’s a fair consequence for fornicators to die of cancer don’t think that virgins who got HPV via childbirth (and the virgins they later monogamously marry, and the children they then have within their monogamous marriage) should all also die of cancer.

If your concern is that a vaccine that may help prevent a sexually-transmitted disease may also send the message to your child that you endorse and encourage premarital sex, I suggest talking to your child on that topic. I was certainly FULLY AWARE of how my parents, teachers, God, etc. felt about premarital sex; getting a shot wouldn’t have made me think, “Hey—maybe they DON’T think it’s wrong!” When I talk to a teenager about Dangerous Things of various sorts, I almost always use the Double Lecture: for example, “You MUST NOT drink alcohol before you are old enough to do so. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you not drink at your age. It’s illegal and dangerous. Here are all the dangerous things that can happen” AND ALSO “…But if you DO drink alcohol, PLEASE don’t drive. Call me and I will come pick you up.” I’m telling them absolutely not to do something—but I’m aware that they are not golums into whom I can put a magical slip of paper giving them instructions that will be absolutely followed, and so I also tell them what to do if they disobey me.

Actually, what I’d probably do if I were worried about the shot seeming to endorse premarital sex is NOT talk about it (in the context of the vaccine, I mean). I haven’t discussed other vaccines with my children: I just tell them they’re getting a shot, and they say “Oh no!” and that’s the end of it. When Rob got the HPV shot he also got a Hepatitis A vaccine (it’s part of the standard set now, but wasn’t when Rob was a baby so he’s catching up now). I didn’t explain to him that this did NOT mean I was condoning the drinking of fecal-matter-tainted water; I just signed the paperwork and he got the shot. If a 12-year-old child hears he or she is getting a HepA and a HPV shot that day, the child is likely to continue looking bored, rather than perking up and thinking “Ah ha! This means my parents DO approve of me having premarital sex! And this shot MAY eliminate ONE of the MANY dangers, so basically I’m CLEARED FOR TAKE-OFF!”

How many decades will I spend on this earth before I realize that if I want my hair to be lighter/highlighted, I should lighten/highlight it rather than purchasing a lightening/highlighting shampoo/conditioner? What is it, I wonder, that appeals to me about the shampoo/conditioner route? Is it that it costs more, takes longer before any result can be expected, and doesn’t work?

********

I’m reading the 1930s book Diary of a Provincial Lady on Alexa‘s recommendation. I think I read it a few years ago, also on Alexa’s recommendation, and that I enjoyed it then too. It reminds me a bit of the 1960s book Diary of a Mad Housewife, which I liked very much but am uncertain about recommending it to you, because I found it so very compelling in my early twenties, and there are many things I found compelling in my early twenties that I would not now want to recommend to others. Both books are the sort where you think, “Goodness, so many things are so DIFFERENT now—and yet so many thoughts/ideas/feelings are the SAME!”

One thing catching my attention in Diary of a Provincial Lady is how the old custom of calling hours and paying calls and so forth was probably very good for people’s social lives. Just think of how many blog posts you’ve read about how impossible it is to meet friends in adulthood, and/or how hard it is to know how to get the friendship going once a potential has been met. Do I call her, or is that weird?, It feels almost like dating!, etc. With the old custom, we would all be FORCED to get together with practically every other woman in town!

Which is, of course, the downside. The idea that we would also have to actively maintain relationships with women we actively didn’t want to be friends with is a bit out of step with current attitudes. And yet it would result in more good friendships overall, plus the fun of choosing calling cards. Though it would be quite hard on those of us don’t much feel the drive to have friendships, but perhaps we could develop reputations for old-fashioned 2000-era non-social-calling eccentricity. Hm. Well, we will have to decide if all the trade-offs are worth it, if we are ever given the opportunity to re-ignite the custom.

Did you see Princess Nebraska’s What To Do With Leftover Christmas Cards post, about making gift tags out of Christmas cards? This appealed to me because I like Christmas cards so much and always have a little trouble throwing them out. (But like Princess Nebraska, I don’t actually want to save them.) This way I have a TRANSITIONAL CRAFT. I especially loved how she made some initial gift tags by snipping out a large letter (like the M in Merry).

So I decided to try it. The first decision was what kind of punch to get. I decided I needed at LEAST five different punches. Then I narrowed it down to my favorite, because who knows if I’m even going to do this? I always use to/from stickers, and I have a lot of fun choosing/using them, too, so maybe I’ll have a lot of fun punching out shapes but then won’t want to fuss with threading them on a ribbon and/or won’t want to give up my cute to/from stickers. So I chose just ONE for starters: the “real estate sign” shape (in our area, real estate signs are rectangular, but the punch is not):

(photo from Amazon.com)

It seems about gift-tag-sized. Maybe a BIT skimpy. I won’t really know until I have to write on them next year. (I also considered the 2.25-inch scallop-edged circle, the wavy-edged circle (but someone on Amazon needs to review it and say how big it is), the gorgeous but expensive 3-inch lacy oval (the one negative review doesn’t scare me off—of COURSE hers is defective, of COURSE it’s not DESIGNED to chew up one side of it every time), and the merchandise tag (but it might be a little small).

I took some of the cards I got this year and made a first batch:

Here’s all the first batch, punched and freehanded alike

Closer-up of some of them

Closer-up of some more of them

I found that my favorites were the ones I DIDN’T use the punch for: the two red doors, the cats (I didn’t freehand those: the shapes were layered for dimension on a fancy card), the plump mouse, the Christmas tree. But I also like a lot of the punched ones. And my scissor skills are insufficient for most cutting-out tasks (like if a straight line is involved), but the blade on my paper trimmer was bent or something (had I let the children use it? yes, I had, like some kind of ROOKIE), so I didn’t feel like doing much without the punch. What I’d kind of like is a straight-edged punch (like this rectangle), but it’s hard to spend the money on something so plain.

I think what made this project so fun was that I’m not good at visualizing things, so each card/punch was a fresh surprise. The punch I was using let me see what I was going to get before I punched, and so it was fun to budge the card around and see how it would change the results. I was also surprised at how some cards yielded GREAT RICHES, and others NOTHING—and they weren’t always the way I’d have guessed. Also, sometimes the BACK of the card had the best thing: a small picture that looked very nice surrounded by lots of white.

I’ve put all the tags in an envelope and tucked them in with the box of wrapping paper, so they’re going to be fun to discover next Christmas!