Last Last weekend it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t done anything in terms of Holiday cards.

I do everything for the cards, from concept to design and photography. It’s a lot of work, and the effort to payoff ratio isn’t always there, but I take pride in it. In the past I’ve queued up a bunch of different designs, which helps reduce the December time work load. In good years I not only have a concept in mind but have already taken the family photo. (Recently the family photo happens in early to mid December.) This year I had… nothing.

Since time was running out I decided to do things a little differently this year. Rather than one big family photo, I decided to use the individual head shots of the girls I had been working on the past month. (At least it’s a recent photo, if not a holiday themed one, right?) I was initially going to get a similar style photo of Domingo and I, and do a three-photo card. (It’s a lot easier to get a good photo of adults on cue than it is to get one of the kids!) After a little design work I decided to just forgo that idea.

I dub this year’s card “My Sunshines.” Not exactly Christmas themed, but I like it. Call it “California Christmas.”

I finished the card a week ago Monday. I figured I’d print them and address the envelopes one of the days the kids are in school. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

When I finally got around to printing the cards this afternoon I discovered we were out of ink. Out printer is pretty old at this point, and finding ink for it is getting harder these days. I usually have to buy it online, but I didn’t want to wait for shipping. Fine, I’ll use one of the local print shops. Queue eye ball popping, you are charging how much?! for a five by seven realization. Ugh. And there was no time to bulk print online. ARGH.

If I was going to pay a lot, I decided I was going to get something extra out of it. I decided to use Shutterfly* and have them mail the cards directly.

* Disclaimer, that’s an affiliate link. If anyone clicks on it and signs up I can order more discounted Christmas cards.

Entering the mailing address was a giant pain in butt, but all the addresses were saved, which should make this much easier in future years, should we decide to do it again. The final per-card price ended up being about 40 cents more than printing locally would have been, which seems worth it. Next year I’ll keep an eye out for a coupon. I’m sure the prices are better much earlier in the season.

Posted in Family Life | Tags: Christmas