...to make my Christmas cards

So I am beginning to panic just a bit.  One might think there is quite a bit of time until the holidays are here; but when I began to think about them in terms on weekends I began to panic.  Especially since one of the weekends will be consumed by Army/Navy festivities.

Well the list writing has begun...a few things I need to accomplish include:

• Make Christmas cards
• Make Christmas calendars
• Make teacher gifts (Isabella wants to make snowball soap again and I want to make them truffles)
• Buy community appreciation gifts (a clever, politically correct phrase I am coining) for those whose services I appreciate (e.g., the postman, garbage man, cleaning crew, office staff etc...)

More on the latter two items later.

I wanted to begin today with the first two items on my list.  Luckily I have heard about this awesome give-away on Shutterfly.  They are giving 50 free cards to those who blog just to promote their site.   Crazy!  This site seems to sell their products on their merit alone. 

But since I love their products AND I was going to order from them anyhow....

There are several styles of cards that I LOVE.  Here are a few that I can't seem to choose from:

I love the simplicity of just one photo...but how can I capture our life, with four children, in a whole year, with only one photo?  Thus, I tend to favor the photo cards with several places for my cherubs beaming grins.

You'll have to endure the suspense until you receive the photo of my choosing....

They also have really great gifts that seemingly would not need such promotion.  Like this mug...I know Fred and Ellen will love to enjoy their morning cup-o-joe with these sweet mugs.  And I REALLY LOVE that you can put more than one photo on this cup!

Anyhow, I digress.  Again. 

I have picked out my holiday card

AND I have also began the arduous process of putting together,  been working on, completed my annual Crow family calendars (with ONLY a few different key photos) that the grandparents love to receive every year.  At least they certainly pretend to!