Thank Your Employees – With a Heartfelt Card.

I hope you’re all surviving the holiday rush with a minimum of stress, and managing to have a little fun the process. I know that shopping budgets are tight and time is short, but I wanted to send out a reminder to spread a little holiday cheer among the people you probably spend most of your time with each week—you know, your employees.

If you haven’t already done so, take a couple of hours to say thanks to the people that keep your business running day in and day out. A short, well-written greeting card is a great way to express appreciation and inject a little humor into the hustle and bustle of the holidays.  Unlike an email, which is sure to read and deleted, a greeting card gives you a way to show employees that you’re thinking about them and the contributions they’ve made to your company’s success.  Collage Greetings has a great selection of holiday greeting cards, ranging from artistic and sentimental, to wickedly hilarious! Whatever your message says, make sure it’s from the heart.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Thank a Soldier – Send a Card

I want to take this week to get away from the holiday madness and economic doom-and-gloom to talk about something that isn’t getting as much media coverage these days. Our troops overseas. I was going through my artists’ card decks this week and some of Kristin Nelson’s Americana-inspired cards made me think of our troops. Her cards gave me that thrill of reminding me how lucky we are to live in America. We live in a country where we have the freedom to take risks by starting our own businesses. And even if we fail, we always have the opportunity to try again. I think a lot of credit for our freedom goes to the people who protect our borders and work to promote peace around the world.

No matter what your thoughts are about U.S troops fighting wars abroad, there are a lot of men and women who won’t be home for the holidays this year. Unfortunately, their story seems to have gotten lost amid all of the other things going on right now. So, I’d like to encourage everyone to take a minute to put a greeting card in the mail for a member of our troops. One site that offers the names and addresses of U.S. soldiers is anysoldier.com. We have to act soon, but it’s not to late get a card, a “thank you”, or anything else into the hands of a soldier for the holidays. Thanks for letting me get on my soapbox this week, I’m hoping our soldiers have a chance to get a small sliver of the enormous thanks they deserve.

Black (and Blue) Friday?

Ok, hopefully everyone survived Thanksgiving and Black Friday with a minimum of hair-pulling and scratches.  I’m wondering if they should rename it “Black and Blue Friday” to acknowledge the madness that overcomes people during the biggest shopping day of the year.

Surviving the craziness reminds me of something else I’m thankful for: manners.  I’m not one to fight over a parking space or elbow my neighbor out of the way for a video game or television. And I’m proud to say that my kids are comfortable with the words “please” and “thank you”; they don’t shove past people in public, or make a scene when they don’t get everything they want.  Nope, they’re not perfect, but I definitely feel a huge sense of pride when a stranger compliments my child’s manners.

Since it’s the gift-giving season, another thing that falls under the category of “manners” is thank you cards.  I write them, and my kids write them any time we receive a gift; although I sometimes have to remind them that yes, bath towels and underwear count as gifts. I’ll go ahead and mention that Collage Greetings has some fabulous thank you cards for both adults and kids.  One of the things I love about our Good Buddy Notes is the kid-friendly touch they add to their thank you cards. Rather than looking like “old people” stationery, Good Buddy cards have that playfulness that kids really seem to have fun and identify with. So even though my kids still view thank you cards as a chore, at least they have a creative way to embrace their inner “Miss Manners” while personalizing the art of saying thank you.