In this age of e-mails, texts, facebook and Twitter, the real, actual, old-fashioned mailbox can be a pretty lonely place for a handwritten letter or card. Most days around here it’s bills, catalogs, and credit card offers. On those rare days when a card finds its way into my mailbox, I have to restrain myself from ripping it open right there. I practically skip all the way up my driveway and into the house.
A mailbox full of holiday cards nearly every day is waaay up at the top of the Why I Dearly Love Christmas List. It’s right up there with enchanted children and gingerbread spice lattes. It’s a good thing it makes me so happy – I could use the skipping to burn off a few of those lattes.
Every year around this time my thoughts turn to what I will choose for the annual Six Family Christmas Card. Of course, it all starts out with the photo. Now, there have been years where the process has driven me to drink, but not this year. It helps that my kids are older. It also helps that I’ve gotten a little better behind the camera. And also, my standards are sliding. Those three things have made this year’s Christmas photo a walk in the park. It’s already done! Can you believe it? Go ahead, hate me a little.
If you thought choosing the photo was the hard part, wait until you get wind of all the cool options you have out there now. Gone are the days when you trudged to the grocery store or drug store and chose from a handful of tacky designs. Without even leaving the house you can find the coolest photo cards from all sorts of designers, whatever your taste may be.
This year I’m ordering my Christmas cards from Shutterfly. Every year they improve their selection by leaps and bounds, and I feel like this year they’ve hit it out of the ballpark. Whether you like the good old-fashioned flat photo cards or the fancier cards printed on card stock, they have something for you. While browsing for my own favorites, I loved the ability to refine the myriad of choices by number of pictures, color scheme and designer. Believe me, with over 700 cards to choose from, you’ll want to do some refining.
I’m a card stock girl myself, and I love the Peace Print flat card. I can’t divulge my super-fun theme for this year’s photos, but I will say they work better with a design that has a modern flair. This one would fit nicely. I’m also quite smitten with the Bright and Merry Story Card. Say what you will about them, but I kind of like the holiday letter. I like how this particular design gives you space to (briefly) let everyone know what your family is up to. I’m also a sucker for blue and red together. Now that I’m in the giving frame of mind with my 29 Days of Giving series, the Peace, Health, Hope design also caught my eye. Shutterfly donates 10% of the sale of each card to the LIVESTRONG foundation.
For those who aren’t quite so on the ball, Shutterfly also has a line of New Year’s cards. I kind of like the idea of bypassing the rush of the holiday and sending cards out after the first of the year. Stretches out my mailbox happy dances, too. With all the photos I’ve taken in my 3(six)5 project, A Year in Pictures card would be a fun way to share some of them with friends and family.
Oh my, it’s going to be difficult to decide. Here’s to a season of full mailboxes!
Do you want 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly? Click here to go to Shutterfly for information on how you can get 50 free cards this holiday season, and make sure to select Clever 1000 as the referral source. This post is part of a series sponsored by Shutterfly. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.
Of course, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to tie this post in with the 29 Days of Giving Campaign. You can see the rest of the posts in this series here.
Today I Gave: A card to a friend. For as much as I like to be on the receiving end, I send cards and letters far too infrequently. I resolve to be better about this.
Today I Received: The gift of good conversation. A friend of my brother has a child at the same school as Elena and Eli. We ran into each other during drop-off this morning and had a really nice chat. I miss my brother a lot, and having this connection with one of his friends makes me feel just a little bit closer to him.
bluecottonmemory says
I agree- as they get older, the standards slip – or maybe just the magnitude of the numbers of sons has worn me down. Then, when one of them married – how do you do a Christmas Card with the fam when ones is not there? I think my Christmas cards have become more challenging! Older just means different challenges:)
Angie Six says
I think you're right – I probably have just a few golden years ahead of me when the children are old enough to sit still and wear what I tell them to and look angelic. And then the older one will fuss about the outfit or a zit, the little one will get his sister ramped up about the outfit or the zit, and it will be downhill from there. And then they'll be gone, sending out their own cards! I'll enjoy it just how it is for now.