Snail Mail Picture Cards

At our house, we truly enjoy receiving Christmas cards from all of our friends and family members. We hang up the cards around the door frame in the dining room and use them as decorations throughout the holiday season.

When Christmas time passes and it's time to take them down, I pull out all of the picture cards and place them in a scrapbook. I have a scrapbook compiled starting in 2005 (the year we got married), and have many extra pages to continue to expand our collection.

We enjoy sending photo cards of our family out as well so that our friends and loved ones can see our family grow and expand, but also so that our smiling faces might possibly bring a smile to someone else. Usually Chris likes to create, print and cut our own cards...but that takes a lot of time! To save time this year (pluse it's way more convenient), we plan to use Shutterfly to create our cards. We plan to use a card with two pictures on it, similar to one of these found at http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationary/christmas-photo-cards.

We plan to include a picture of the three of us, along with a picture of the little tyke who is on the way! Chris loves to manipulate photos, so stay tuned to see what our card will actually look like!

Olivia is very photogenic, so I'm excited to see what her face will look like on our Christmas card. I also look forward to seeing smiling faces come in the mail so we can hang them up, then add them to our scrapbook at the end of December.

This year we also plan to give other photo gifts for our parents. I don't want to post exactly what I've picked out so far (because my mother and mother-in-law might read this), but I'll tell you what we've done in the past! We have created personalized calendars for our parents to see the grandkids throughout the entire year. We made them at http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars. It was relatively easy to upload and insert pictures and I highly recommend this - especially if you and your kids live far away from grandparents. There's nothing better then your mom or dad being able to see their smiling faces every day!

I am currently pregnant and expect to deliver sometime in March. When this happens, Chris will use his talents to create a birth announcement that we will most likely create at http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationary/birth-announcements. March seems so far away, but I'm sure the time will pass before we know it!

Look for our card in the mail...and I'll look for yours!