I have been checking things off my list this week. And spending a number of late night hours on shutterfly.com, where first I finished piecing together our London photo book and then I got busy on our holiday card.
Before I get on with the show and write about the holiday card, I'll take a brief photo book detour. The photo books have been the absolute best when it comes to shoving tons of pics I love in one place. I still have to do some weeding to come up with a final book but compared to the blog posts I did while I was in Europe, the books are much more thorough and help preserve a lot of really nice memories.
I try to wait until Shutterfly runs a good sale on the photo books and yesterday a nice one ended, so I hustled to get our London book done by midnight. It'll join the growing collection. Istanbul, Paros, and Santorini are already sitting on the shelf.
I like the 8"x8" size with the hard-backed photo covers. The books fit on a bookshelf and don't take up too much room on a coffee table. Not that I can leave these on a coffee table with the G-man and Clementine around:-) So the goal is to get Italy done over the holidays. Then I'll "just" have mainland Greece to worry about. We were in Italy nine days and I MAY have taken a gazillion pictures, so whittling them down is going to be an issue. Shutterfly caps you at a hundred pages! Doh.
Anyway, onto the holiday card.
The big news is that Shutterfly added photos on the BACK of their flat stationary cards this year. Considering we were traveling for a fourth of the year this year, I was having an ISSUE (yes, all capitals... I know) deciding which travel pics to incorporate into the card, especially once Jen took such adorable pics of the fam earlier last month. Not to worry (not that you were!)...
The solution:
Cute family pics on the front...
Some of our favorite travel pics on the back...
I like the template I chose but the only thing I can't figure out is our Top 10 list. It's a lot of pressure to come up with 10 fabulous things that happened in a year and not worry that you're overlooking other fabulous things that happened. I can think of a few already! So if you get one of these suckers in real life, don't hold me to this list! It's subject to change:-)
The good part about these two-sided cards is some of the templates have room for tons of text and just one or two pics on the back, so if you're the type who usually includes a holiday letter with your card, you could probably skip that step and just copy and paste your letter directly onto the card... provided you could be choosy with your words. (If anyone's ever received a holiday letter from Mark... Mark, this tip does not apply to you! Carry on with your two-sided, seven-point font self:-)
Here's the fun part. Shutterfly gave me some free holiday cards for writing this post (which is awesome since I totally would have ordered them anyway) AND I get to give away a set of 25 FREE holiday cards from Shutterfly to three commenters. So, in the comments, tell me whose adorable mug you'd put on your Shutterfly holiday card, and I'll pick three random winners on Turkey day. Make sure you give me a way to get in touch with you--either a blog address that's got contact info or an e-mail address--so that I can send the lucky winners their coupon code.
Before I get on with the show and write about the holiday card, I'll take a brief photo book detour. The photo books have been the absolute best when it comes to shoving tons of pics I love in one place. I still have to do some weeding to come up with a final book but compared to the blog posts I did while I was in Europe, the books are much more thorough and help preserve a lot of really nice memories.
I try to wait until Shutterfly runs a good sale on the photo books and yesterday a nice one ended, so I hustled to get our London book done by midnight. It'll join the growing collection. Istanbul, Paros, and Santorini are already sitting on the shelf.
I like the 8"x8" size with the hard-backed photo covers. The books fit on a bookshelf and don't take up too much room on a coffee table. Not that I can leave these on a coffee table with the G-man and Clementine around:-) So the goal is to get Italy done over the holidays. Then I'll "just" have mainland Greece to worry about. We were in Italy nine days and I MAY have taken a gazillion pictures, so whittling them down is going to be an issue. Shutterfly caps you at a hundred pages! Doh.
Anyway, onto the holiday card.
The big news is that Shutterfly added photos on the BACK of their flat stationary cards this year. Considering we were traveling for a fourth of the year this year, I was having an ISSUE (yes, all capitals... I know) deciding which travel pics to incorporate into the card, especially once Jen took such adorable pics of the fam earlier last month. Not to worry (not that you were!)...
The solution:
Cute family pics on the front...
Some of our favorite travel pics on the back...
I like the template I chose but the only thing I can't figure out is our Top 10 list. It's a lot of pressure to come up with 10 fabulous things that happened in a year and not worry that you're overlooking other fabulous things that happened. I can think of a few already! So if you get one of these suckers in real life, don't hold me to this list! It's subject to change:-)
The good part about these two-sided cards is some of the templates have room for tons of text and just one or two pics on the back, so if you're the type who usually includes a holiday letter with your card, you could probably skip that step and just copy and paste your letter directly onto the card... provided you could be choosy with your words. (If anyone's ever received a holiday letter from Mark... Mark, this tip does not apply to you! Carry on with your two-sided, seven-point font self:-)
Here's the fun part. Shutterfly gave me some free holiday cards for writing this post (which is awesome since I totally would have ordered them anyway) AND I get to give away a set of 25 FREE holiday cards from Shutterfly to three commenters. So, in the comments, tell me whose adorable mug you'd put on your Shutterfly holiday card, and I'll pick three random winners on Turkey day. Make sure you give me a way to get in touch with you--either a blog address that's got contact info or an e-mail address--so that I can send the lucky winners their coupon code.
