Nourished and Exhausted: December 2010

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

It's a little early for some of you, but I think it's never too early to start thinking about Christmas. :) (Well, as long as it's after Halloween!) I'm actually somewhat on top of gift buying this year, surprise, surprise! There are some pesky recipients who are always hard to buy for, but surely I can think of something... Aaaaannnndd, we've got an anniversary coming up too. Why did we get married in December?! Dumb, dumb, dumb. Okay, not really dumb- just crams a little more into an already busy season. But I digress... Do you give out cards and/or other personalized items for gifts? Ohhhh, we do and I looove it. It makes it easy to buy for family members; who doesn't love that? :)

Before we had kiddos, we didn't send out Christmas cards. Who really wanted to see another picture of us? ;) Pictures of kiddos, on the other hand, are always welcome we have found. After Olivia was born, we send out simple photo cards with one picture of the three of us. The past few years, we've gotten a little more creative (we even did a Christmas letter one year, cheesy as it is!). This year, I'm planning on doing it up a bit fancier, maybe with this one - I just LOVE all that lacy design and the crisp, white background. But then, I also like this one, so elegant! And I'm really digging the different shapes that are coming around, the squares especially. Shutterfly is doing a blogger promotion, so here I am blogging about Christmas cards! You could go and sign up, too. You know you want to... Everyone else is doing it...

We also do a photo calendar every year for our families. The first few years we used some local places, and the finished products were okay but nothing really to write home about. The past two or three years, we've ordered our calendars from Shutterfly and could not have been happier. I love all the background options and the different layouts. I probably spend waaaay too much time making these, but they are so fun! I even got my friend Hannah to order 3 this year. :)

We've ordered other photo gifts before from local places also, and I was not that impressed. The mug we have has faded around the top, so much that you can hardly see Olivia. Boo. We haven't ordered any of that stuff from Shutterfly (although I've got my eye on some personalized stationery!), but we have ordered 4 or 5 photo books and they are super cool! I would post a pic of what we already got this year, but I don't want to spoil anyone's surprise. ;) The last one I made, I used the Simple Path option at Shutterfly and it was so much easier than trying to place the pictures myself. My stress level went waaaay down and the pictures were in the order they were taken. Score!

Now we just have to find a few good family photos, right? Here are some excellent options...