Pages

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Creating the Perfect Christmas Card

Today I'm talking all about Christmas cards!!  I know I'm not alone in the following statement:  Christmas cards are absolutely my very favorite thing to send and receive in the mail!  I really, really love looking in the mailbox each day during the month of December and finding cards from our friends and family members.  I keep them in a basket in our kitchen and every evening after dinner the kids like to browse through to see the new cards we received that day and it's fun for us all to see smiling faces of the ones we loved and cherish, especially this time of year.


I also love planning outfits for our Christmas card photos.  It doesn't take much to make me happy and coordinating outfits are just one of those simple little things that make me smile.  I love to coordinate my kids, but on very rare occasions (like Christmas card photos) I can get the Mr. to play along, too.

I picked and planned all of our outfits and immediately the complaining from everyone began.  Someone didn't like their leggings, someone else didn't like their hair.  Jen usually takes our pictures, but this year we just couldn't coordinate everyone's schedules so my sweet mother-in-law was kind enough to come over and deal with my neurotic self wanting to capture the perfect photo to send out to over 100 of our friends and family members.  There were a lot of funny out-takes and our dog, Walker, chose this day to go totally crazy.



There was a lot of bribing involved for the kids (you'd be amazed how well they smile when I promise them candy), but I was still convinced we didn't have anything worth using.


There is nothing like trying to act happy in a picture when all you really want to do is pull your hair out, because no one is cooperating.  However, when I started to look through them I realized they were not professional photos, but there were some really good ones.  I ended up being really pleased with them so it was all worth it in the end!


When I sat down to check out all of the options that Minted had to offer I was really impressed. Not only did they have a huge selection of unique designs from their community of independent artists, but I also loved how I could customize the designs and choose from unique die-cut shapes to truly make our cards our own.

Because I went totally nontraditional with our colors I was a little nervous that I would not be able to find a card to coordinate, but I was so wrong.  There were a lot of options and for almost every design I looked at, Minted offered it in several different colors so I could pick what would look best with our photos.  I had almost settled on one when I came across this.


It was perfect.  The colors were perfect, the wording was perfect, and our photo fit on the card perfectly.  I quickly edited the text to add our name and moved on to the back.  You can select several options for the back like photos, messages or just a solid color, but I loved the idea of having another photo with the kids' names and ages.


I did not take advantage of the FREE matching envelope design and recipient addressing, but I'm kind of wishing I did.  Yes, you read that correctly. This year, all cards are available with FREE recipient addressing.  Talk about a time saver!  Oh well...instead my hand got a good workout addressing all of ours!

I was really surprised by how quickly my cards arrived.  It took only a few days and they were here, so if you haven't ordered yet, don't worry!  There is still time.  I was shocked, actually, by how fast they got here and even more pleasantly surprised by the quality when I took my first look.  Minted's signature paper is really thick with a cotton texture and the colors and photo printing were just as I expected.

I am so thrilled about sticking these cards in the mail and can't wait to fill our basket with cards from all of our loved ones.



A BIG thank you to Minted and Savvy Sassy Moms for the opportunity to create cards that I truly love.  All opinions are my own.  

 photo cbsignature.jpg

Follow us on Pinterest HERE.
Follow us on Instagram HERE.
Follow us on Facebook HERE
Follow us on Twitter HERE

1 comment:

  1. Oh my gosh... I LOVE your coordinated outfits! And the cards are perfect! I totally agree with the Mom side of this and getting the "perfect" picture! I always dream of the perfect picture and during family pictures get overwhelmed! And then the outcome I realize that this is my life and the stage we are in... Years from now I will look back knowing that I wouldn't have changed a thing!

    ReplyDelete