a year without Christmas cards

I just couldn't let that happen.  Until last week, I thought that was just the way this year was going to go.  We've sent Christmas cards out every year since we've been married...it felt wrong to skip a year just because I felt like I had run out of time and we hadn't gotten a Christmas card worthy photo yet this season.  So, on Saturday, I took a shower and dried my hair (which I rarely do).  I couldn't let an "I did my hair" day go to waste, so we headed out to the backyard to see if we could get a picture worth sending out to family and friends.  Thankfully, mission accomplished.

Here are the three pictures that were in the Christmas card 2011 running:

Originally, I wanted to place an order with shutterfly.com.  I put together the cutest card, but when it came time for placing it in the "shopping cart", I just couldn't swallow the $90 price tag.  Areyoukiddingme?!  Even with coupons that I found and applied to the order, $60 was still too much to pull the plug on.  Back to square one.  Costco was my next option...come to find out you can only order Christmas cards and pick up at a warehouse store.  Scratch that idea (since the nearest Costco is 5+ hours away, in Texas).  So, I decided to make my own.  After a few hours playing around in Photoshop, I came up with something both Travis and I liked.  I uploaded them to Costo's photo center, and they'll be printed like a 5x7 photo.  (Thanks for the idea, Cherish!)  For $17 and change, I don't think they're too shabby.  I just need to pick up some envelopes, and we'll be good to go.  They should reach their recipients well before Christmas.  :)

Here's what we settled on:

We snapped a few more pictures before heading inside to warm up.

I love this one.

Have you ordered your Christmas cards yet?  Maybe you're skipping cards this year?  This time of year tends to get a bit overwhelming, hope you're staying on top of your holiday to-do list!

outgoing mail

announcing the arrival of our announcements

I'm so excited!  The birth announcements/Christmas cards that I ordered on Sunday night showed up today!  12:25 pm, to be exact, via FedEx.  They are absolutely adorable.  I can't wait to get them out in the mail - I should have all of the envelopes ready to send out by tomorrow.

The dilemma this year was whether to send out a birth announcement OR a Christmas card.  We had to choose one or the other - it would be too expensive to order two different cards and then pay postage for each.  So we decided to make it primarily a birth announcement (you only get to send those out once!), with a little Christmas wish on the back of the card.  I hope you're not disappointed.  The announcement is just so cute you won't even miss the fact that it isn't "Christmas-y". 

I'll share the birth announcement with you here on the blog sometime next week.  I just want to give the announcements a head start so most of you get to see it in person before you see a digital image of it on here. :)

making the cut

Over the weekend, we finally got around to snapping a few pictures (ok, fine, over 300 pictures) in hopes of getting a handful of photos to choose from for Callan's birth announcement/this year's Christmas card.  I'm happy to say that out of the 300+ pictures, there were about a dozen, or so, that had Christmas card potential.  After narrowing down a final photo and sending our order off to tinyprints.com, we (I) now wait impatiently to receive them in the mail.  They should be here by the end of the week, and sent out to family and friends soon after that.  I can't wait to see how they turned out!

Callan had many faces during our little "photo shoot".  He screamed, he was sleepy, he was content, he was gassy...  Here are a few pictures that didn't make the cut; a few of my favorites.