06 December 2010

Christmas Cards

As Christmas rolled around this year I figured it was probably time for me to finally make a Christmas card for our family.  I'd never done Christmas cards myself before. My family always put together a fun newsletter, but that seems a little silly for us since this blog is essentially a year-round Christmas newsletter. Most of the people that I would want to send an update to probably already keep up with our blog. But I found after last Christmas that I really liked having the Christmas cards from our family posted on my refrigerator.  I think we had a picture at least from each of Eric's siblings, which allowed us to have all of Sam's cousins up on the fridge.  Since some of them we don't see very often it's fun to be able to at least show Sam his cousins and teach him their names. So I figured if I was enjoying other people's cards they might enjoy one from us as well.

This summer our brother-in-law Rhett took some family pictures for us which turned out AWESOME. We posted them on Facebook and Twitter, but somehow neglected to post them here. Here's the link to the full gallery of pictures.  I wanted to make a photo card but since I rather lack creativity to design something like that myself I was a little afraid of what they would turn out like.  I tried out a few different sites and tools and finally found Shutterfly's collection of cards.  I was able to easily make several different layouts for our Christmas card in less than an hour and they all looked really cute. (you can click on the images to see a more full-sized version)
For not being a creative type these cards make me look pretty darn creative huh? If you want to make your own they have tons of different layouts. My sister-in-law just sent us hers and it's a normal style fold-open card that has pictures and their full family update inside rather than just the postcard style. I thought it was really cute and a nice way to make a more formal card without having to write something individually inside every one. Plus a nicer way to do a family update without having to spend all the time printing it yourself and it looked nicer than a single piece of paper.

It was so easy that I'll probably use their site again when our new little boy gets here in April to send out a birth announcement  or recommend it to friends looking for an easy way to put together a really nice wedding announcement without too much hassle.

The one thing I wish I had seen offered, which I think saw with one of their competitors, is the ability to upload your recipient list and have them mail the cards out for you.  Obviously it was for a fee, but just to not have to address, attach postage and actually send out the cards myself would have been very tempting to me for sure. 

Correction: When I went through the checkout process again I discovered that Shutterfly *was* the provider that offered the mailing service. It cost $1/card sent out, which I think is totally reasonable, depending on how many cards you're sending out. I decided against it since we want to have some extra money in the bank for house closing etc. and we didn't have our Christmas card list finalized. But seriously, it's only about 50 cents more per card than doing it yourself, if you're just counting postage. You also don't have to seal cards, address envelopes or get everything in the mailbox. I'm definitely a fan!

The real kicker for me is that Shutterfly is currently having a promotion that if you write a blog post about their Christmas card collection and submit it to them they'll give you 50 Christmas cards for free!  If you'd like to participate you can get more information here.

Also, we've started to put our Christmas card list together, but if you'd really like a print version rather than just seeing it up here send me an email with your address and I'll be sure to get you added to our list! Also, we've already sorta decided which card we're probably going to send out, but let me know which one is your favorite. If enough people vote contrary to what we'd decided we might be swayed to change which one we send out ;)

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