Thursday, December 11, 2008

Christmas Card Tips

So this is the first year that I am sending out Christmas cards with pictures of the kids on them. (Actually this is the first year I am sending out Christmas cards, period, in a very long time!) At any rate, I have learned some things along the way.

What NOT to do when sending picture Christmas cards:

1. Don't work until you are sweating to make your card perfect and then get to the online checkout and find out that it will actually cost you twice what you expected because you aren't buying 800 cards and the shipping cost for the measly 75 cards you want to order is 35% of the total price! (Rather make a lame card first and go to checkout to see what actual cost will be.)

2. Don't go to the next site mad because of previous hassle and just choose the first card you see because you will realize later (after it arrives) that the card doesn't actually portray the joy of the season that you had dreamed it would.

3. Don't scour every Christmas card that comes in your mail and think, "Oh! Why couldn't I come up with some clever little sentiment to put on our card?" ... "What? I didn't put the date on it - how are people going to know that these are my kids in the year 2008 when they are rummaging through old shoeboxes of cards 20 years from now? How am I going to know??" ... "Should I have put our last name on the card? Can't people see it on the return address on the envelope? Am I sending this to anyone who wouldn't know us without our last name on it? Why am I sending it to them anyways?" Don't do this. It will only upset you further.

4. Don't think that just because the card looks good in the tiny little preview they give you online that it will look that good when you actually receive it. Note: blurry pictures look amazingly clear in the preview, and the fonts do seem to match.

5. Don't take a picture of the fancy expensive picture you bought and then use the copy you took to make your Christmas cards out of. You will realize later it could be a copyright issue. You will probably feel guilty and then you won't enjoy your Christmas cards at all. And you might secretly worry that Santa will put coal in your stocking as penance.

6. Finally, don't let yourself stress about Christmas cards. Just stuff and send. The worst that can happen is your friends won't put your kids on their fridge. You'll get over it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are soooo funny! And I am so amazed that you actually learned all of these hard life lessons without actually having to go through them (tongue in cheek!) LOL!!!! Love ya! Mom

Sarah said...

So funny, Jess :)
I do the same thing with our card. Ours should arrive any time now, so I am prepping myself not to stress when it doesn't light up with the joy of Christmas.
We will enjoy the card immensely when we get it - and I promise it will go on our fridge (probably for years because we don't have any pictures of you guys. And then, years from now, we won't know when it was taken because of the lack of date. jk :)

Anonymous said...

Jess - I miss you...you are sooo funny! Your kids will definately be on the frigde and I will be able to figure out what year it was because Danny and Joshy (oh and Livy and Liv) are so close in age...right? =)
Love you!

Elizabeth Byler Younts said...

these are great and humorous thoughts... :-)

Tarah said...

I did mine the easy way. It turns out the Sam's Club has these machines you can put your memory card into, do the editing, and order right there. It took us about 15 minutes to make the cards and then used the 1 hour printing while we did our shopping (and then you can check out ALL of your items at the photo place without waiting in line). We got 30 photocards for about $10.50. SOOO worth it. I will definitely be doing that every year. Sorry your experience was frustrating, but thanks for sharing your humor.