Christmas Cards

Now I can celebrate!  Our Christmas cards went out in the mail last week.  We sent out 225 this year!  Apparently that's a lot.  The man behind me in line at the post office said, "please tell me those are for work and not all your friends."  I had to tell him that they indeed were all personal friends and joked, "aren't you offended you didn't make the cut?"  It probably looked like I was sending them to everyone in California!

Much to my (and my husband's) chagrin, I typically make our Christmas cards by hand.  Yes, call me insane.  And if I had my way, they would be 100% completed before Halloween.  It seems like time flies each year once the holidays arrive and every year I tell myself that next year I will get them done early!  And each year that never happens.  

Below is our dining room table when I made our cards in 2008.  It was one of my favorite cards and definitely worth all the time and effort.  Yes, we (I'll give my husband some credit) tied all those bows, cut the hang tags, stuck the photo to white backing and then applied it to the red card.  Since the cards were bulky, I had to hand cancel all 220 of them at the post office!

This year as Thanksgiving quickly approached, I realized that I hadn't even begun to think about our Christmas card.  I knew I was in trouble.  So I took the easy route this year and headed to my favorite stationery store, Soiree San Francisco.  I flipped through a couple of books and ended up making a custom card ordered through Crane's.  

I loved this year's card because of how much it saved my sanity (and my marriage - my husband hates tying bows & stuffing envelopes at the last minute!)  From the moment they arrived I knew that this year my job would be much easier...

All I had to do was attach the photo...

Done!  That was easy and took no time at all!

I was happy with how the finished product turned out.  Since I wasn't making them by hand this year, I wanted the whole process to be SIMPLE.

Here they are all stuffed and stamped.

The return address labels went on...

I used labels on the front as well instead of hand addressing them this year (again...SIMPLE was the theme).  The labels were printed with red ink and green design on the borders....

After that I was off to the post office!  The whole process this year was so easy.  I might be INSANE if I go back to making them all on my own in 2010 (and my husband might threaten to divorce me)!  But if I do, I'll have them completed before Halloween....yeah right!


Merry Christmas!