I Love Christmas, and I Love FREE!

I’m a little bit frightened that with the completion of Halloween, Christmas is now officially right around the corner. And with the rapid approach of Christmas comes preparations. Holiday shopping to do, a house to trim (both inside and out), the usual debate about whether to put up our tired, old plastic Christmas tree for one more year, or to purchase (and care for) a live one, and holiday cards to send. I think the holiday card portion of the equation takes the most advance preparation. What type of card to purchase? Do I want plain, pre-printed, or photo? If photo, what photo do I use? Do I want flat or folded? Big or small? Multiple cards for people of varying denominations, or a generic holiday message? And that’s not even factoring in writing out a card list of who to send them to…

I love to receive holiday cards from my friends and family. We run a string across the wall draping the folded cards over it and punching a hole in the flat ones to hang them on it as we get them. They make a truly lovely display.

Last year I purchased my cards from Shutterfly. Seriously, that had to be about the best thing I could have possibly done. I was able to have a hand in the personalization of my cards, without having to cut and glue or tape a hard-copy photo onto a generic photo card from somewhere like Target, which is what I had done in the past. It was so easy. Personally I prefer the non-denominational holiday designs, like ones you can find here.  This way I can create one card, and send it to my non-Christmas-celebrating friends without worry.  Last year I chose a flat style, turquoise with snowflakes. Here’s an example of a design I may use for this year's card (just pretend it’s got beautiful pictures of my little princess instead of someone else’s family…):

You can find so many other fun ideas on Shutterfly for the holidays, too, such as gift tags, calendars, and great photo gifts! I’ve created several photo books with Shutterfly, and will likely create more for gifts this year.

Know what else I love? I love FREE. Shutterfly is offering all you bloggers out there 50 free holiday photo cards, just for blogging! Go to http://bit.ly/sfly2010, fill in your information (just say that you heard about it from the Bates Motel blog!), and wait for the e-mailed instructions. How much easier could it get? I, for one, am just glad for the reminder that it’s time to start thinking about this in earnest, and love the little jump start by getting my free cards.  Think they may be willing to throw in the stamps?