Christmas Card 2011

I love Christmas cards.  I love sending them.  I love receiving them.  Love everything about them.  If you've followed along for a while you'll remember my cards I drew for 2010, and my cards from 2009 and 2008. 

Each year mid-summer I start to come up with ideas for our family's card. I come up with all these ideas and tell myself that I'm going to do them in October so they'll be ready to go come December 1st.  And each year, I wait until the VERY LAST MINUTE.  But, I get them out.  In the end, that's all that matters, right?  Right.

This year I had this idea to do silly photo booth type poses with props.  I gathered a few silly props, bought a table cloth and a fleece blanket for back drops and recruited a friend, Tony, to take our photos.  I had plans (again, I'm great at making them, not always at executing them) to come up with a cute layout and print them myself.  But, I waited too long, was leaving town the next day for a month, and didn't have time to mess with them.  So, I uploaded the pictures to Shutterfly and found a layout that was perfect.  I love how it turned out.  I chose their premium card stock and it has a great matte finish.  It's so easy to upload everything, type my message and be done.

The best part this year was that we didn't even try to get a group shot.  No taking 200 shots to get everyone looking/smiling/not blinking/not wigging.  It was perfect for our two year and and four year old. 

Here they are all ready to send.  I find myself thinking I'm going to cut back on my list each year but we seem to keep adding to it.  We sent out 128 cards this year.  I know, crazy.  But, again, I love them and I love keeping in touch with friends and family.  I also send out a monthly recap of our year with our cards each year.  It gives people a glimpse of our year without being too wordy.

Do you send out cards?  How many do you send?  Do you love getting them as much as me?