Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year.  It means decorating the whole house, it means picking out gifts for my family, and it also means one of my very favorite things: lots of mail.  Specifically in the way of Christmas cards.  I have no idea why I like getting them so much, but every year I save my favorites and keep them in a big bowl on one of the shelves in my living room.  I've done this for years for no apparent reason.  I can only guess my love for Christmas cards is due at least in part to the fact that up Mom was always a huge proponent of sending them, at least until my sister and I graduated college.  Since then, she's sent them out at random, and that's mostly due to the fact that it's hard to get the entire family to agree to be in the same place at the same time and all look festive and be able to stand taking more than about 2 pictures (Dad is decidedly not into photography, mostly in regards to photographs of himself).  L and I missed out on sending cards last year (thank you notes took top priority when it came to outgoing mail), mostly due to time and money constraints since we'd just moved and were still basically unpacking, so no pic of us from our wedding! It would've been fun, but we just couldn't swing it. So now we're making up for lost time!


I've been scouring the internet for the past few weeks looking for the best possible card options.  I have a pic selected to use (not my fave, but in light of the fact that L was only home for 43 hours this weekend, hauling it off to the National Tree to snap some more was not high on his list of things to do, so when you get yours, don't judge my hair), but I haven't quite decided yet what design I want to use.  Enter Shutterfly's blogger giveaway!  They have way more designs and options than I've been able to look through so far, but I love the idea of a folded card like this; something a slightly different, like this; or something traditional, like this.  I have several others earmarked but I figured I'd just give my little virtual audience 3 and not ruin the real selection (which has yet to be made- I need to keep playing.  And probably I need to take my picture to work tomorrow and touch it up with PhotoShop).  Also apparently I have a thing for red, which is weird.  One of my favorite things is that Shutterfly offers an option of sending the cards to you so that you can address and stamp them yourself, OR you can pay a little extra and Shutterfly will do it for you!  Part of me loves to hand-address envelopes (it makes them feel more personal, in my opinion), but the idea of being able to point, click, and take care of it in one swoop is pretty awesome.
 
Side note: I've also been playing around on the rest of the Shutterfly site and if I don't hear back from my wedding photographer soon about the status of my wedding album (it's only been 7 months since I submitted my picture choices), I may just make my own book through Shutterfly. 
 
And with that, it's time for me to finish playing, make some decisions on this matter, and call it a night.  Hope everyone has had a great weekend and that you're busy planning your own Christmas cards!!  Merry Christmas!