Cutting Back at Christmas

I usually send out Christmas cards to family and friends with a picture of the kids &/or a Christmas letter (last year's letter), but I've been procrastinating this year thinking maybe I'd take a year off. Well, yesterday I got a Christmas card from an ex-relative with a note saying she looks forward to my Christmas greetings every year.

I had just ordered some Free Postcards from Vistaprint to use as invitations for my brother and his fiance's upcoming college graduation parties. I love the free postcards idea that I had used for invites for my birthday bash and my other brother's birthday party.  So, why not send free postcards as Christmas greetings?  Vistaprint offers 100 free postcards for free (regularly $24.99) – you just pay shipping of $5.95!  That's less than 6¢ per card!  And postage for postcards is only 27¢ compared to 42¢ for a regular card in an envelope.

Now, what to put on my Christmas postcard?  I thought about taking a picture of the kids in front of one of the Christmas trees, but they weren't too keen on the idea. Especially since my son got his wisdom teeth excised on Wednesday and looks like a chipmunk. So, I decided to make a collage with some of the pictures from our Holiday Parade of Homes. I used Picasa to create the collage (it's free software from Google).

Vistaprint does offer many templates as well if you don't want to design your postcard from stratch. Then on the back/mailing side, I simply included our return address and then in big script letters wrote “Merry Christmas from our home to yours! Love Kim and the kids“.

When they arrive, I'll print out address labels that I already have saved on my computer from years past, have the kids smack on the names and stamps and ta-da – that was easy peasie!