I will "fourth" the Starwood starpoints. You could "earn" an extra 5,000 miles just for converting 20,000 miles to any of many airlines on the list.

Then, you could book an off-peak award travel on US Airways for 20,000 domestic travel award, which would save you another 5,000. Further, if you are a NW visa cardholder, you could save an additional 4,000 of a domestic ticket for specified periods. Add this to the frequent NW promotion of earning 1,500 miles for booking award travel online during around Nov. to April. Then you would bee looking at saving about 5,500 miles from the 25,000 miles, which were really 20,000 miles from STarwood.

If you opted not to use the miles for airline travel, then you could use them to book hotel rooms. If they have the rooms available, you could book them--in other words, no blackouts.