I use awards for places like Hawaii and summer business class to Europe - places where I'm never going to get a rock-bottom airfare from the Midwest. (Winter/spring to Europe, on the other hand, is a wonderful way to earn miles!)

Whenever I use an award, I always look for good stopovers to do: to me, that's the one main thing that an award gives you over buying a cheap ticket. For a 4-week honeymoon last year, we milked the stopover and open jaw rules to the max, using two award itineraries to visit 2 Hawaiian islands, 3 mainland US cities, and Europe.

The last category of award I book is the last-minute domestic ticket. If I absolutely need to go somewhere last-minute and the lowest fare on any airline is over $400 or so, I will redeem miles. Obviously that doesn't deliver the theoretical bang for the buck that int'l C/F redemptions do, but it delivers real cash to my pocket, which is worthwhile to me even if that's only 1 penny per mile.

The other side effect of redeemed last minute (and being willing to part with 40K) is that many times you can get an F seat on at least some of your segments. Depending on day/time/destination of course...