31 Days of Hospitality: Day 20-Thank You Notes...

Image Crane



 Thank You Notes.  When you are on the receiving end of hospitality, whether as a guest for the weekend or just for dinner, a thank you note is a must.  I am a stickler on this one.  A hostess gift does not take the place of a note.  A phone call is nice but it is not a thank you note.  An email is also not a thank you note.  Either is a (gasp) text.  In my opinion, a gesture of hospitality requires a thank you note.  Hand written.  On stationery.  Nothing else will do.

What you write your note on is personal.  Monogrammed or personalized stationery is always appropriate.  A thank you card from Hallmark is fine as long as you add a personal note of thanks along with the pre-written message.  The idea of the thank you note is to extend  gratitude to your host/hostess for taking the time to invite you into his or her home.  It should be heartfelt and sincere.

Image Crane

As a parent, one of the most important things we can do is teach our children to be gracious.  Teaching them from a very young age to write thank you notes will serve them well throughout their lives.  If our family goes to dinner at a friend's home I will write a note for the whole family.  But we have a rule in our house that a gift is not played with & a check is not cashed until a thank you note is written.  I got some flack from the beginning from LM about this but as the years go by she gives me less and less.  And my hope is that when she spends the weekend at her college roommate's parent's home down the road the first thing she'll think to do is write a thank you note.



Image American Stationery

As I said, stationery is personal.  For myself I like the basics.   A cream foldover with my monogram.  I have other, cuter, more exciting notes too - for variety.  For a family/couple thank you we have a cream foldover that says 'Mr & Mrs xxxxxx'.  And LM has her own personalized notes.  Of course, she likes more exciting stuff than I do.  But we try to compromise when it's time to shop!

On the Nate Berkus show I once saw him say that he will often frame a very special note so he likes to use flat cards.  I love that idea.  I plan on ordering flat notes the next time I need some.

There are TONS of places to order notes.  Crane has been around forever.  I like American Stationery as they have great service and reasonable prices.  And lets face it, even reasonable monogrammed stationery may cost more than we can spend at times, so the $1 bins at Michael's always has a fun selection.

Find my other 31 Days of Hospitality posts here.  There are hundreds of other bloggers taking part in this series.  They can be found here.