Christmastime means Christmas Cards!

For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by looking at the Christmas cards my parents received each year during the holiday season. Reading their personal messages and well wishes gave me that warm, fuzzy holiday feeling. But what I liked even more was looking at the photo cards. The ones where families wear matchy matchy sweaters or button-down denim shirts (ha!) were my personal faves... and the inspiration behind me vowing to never have my [future] family fall into that whole "clone" thing.

Anyway, all those years of leafing through their Christmas cards made me eager for the day when I could send out some of my own. And last year, we finally had that chance! So I decided to look at Shutterfly for our Christmas cards because we ordered a photobook from them for our Guestbook when we got married and were super happy with how it turned out. Anyway, I dove into their Christmas card templates and was so impressed by all of the cute choices they had. Now, I have a tendency to be completely indecisive, so choosing a border/backdrop for our card wasn't easy with all of the fantastic holiday card options; I spent days looking at all of the options before finally deciding on one that matched one of our wedding photos perfectly.

Once I got over the obstacle of narrowing down which template to use, the whole ordering process with Shutterfly was a breeze. For newlyweds, the price-point wasn't too high, either! And they had a great promotion going where we got 20% off, too... always a bonus :) Best of all, we even had the option to pick up our cards at a local Wal-Mart rather than waiting for them in the mail (which was perfect, because I was totally impatient to see my first-ever Christmas cards!). They turned out beautifully and we got so many complements on them.

This year, I'm just as eager to get Christmas cards out... but maybe this year with the addition of a Christmas letter, too :) We'll see. This time I'm also thinking of doing a multi-picture card to showcase some of our adventures in our first full-year of marriage. I was really excited when I looked into Shutterfly's new options for Christmas cards this year because I found one that would fit exactly what I was looking for if I wanted to go the route of both a letter and a multi-picture card:

Christmas Letter Christmas Card

But of course, life gets busy... especially with being a first-year-teacher! So who knows if I'll get to writing that little letter. So if not, I could still use this multi-photo option instead...

All in Lights Christmas Card

However, there's something to be said for simple elegance at Christmastime, which Shutterfly does an amazing job of. These are some of my favorites...

Merry Bright Star Christmas Card

Swirl Greetings Christmas Card

Festive Script Christmas Card

And then these next few are just so fun and so perfect...

Vintage Merry Christmas Card

Mod Ornaments Holiday Card

Glitter Glamour Joy Christmas Card

I love that last one with the glittery words. The red looks so good with the black and white photo! I think I might be mostly leaning toward that one. But can you see how hard it is to choose just one?! They have such cute designs!

I can't wait until Christmas comes a little closer and I can start playing with each of these cards and getting some ordered! I'm trying to hold off on getting into the Christmas spirit too much before Thanksgiving... :) But when I am ready to be full-blown Christmas, ordering one of these snazzy holiday cards is definitely at the top of my "to-do" list! And I promise I'll share it with you on here when I do :)

*I’m receiving 50 free cards from Shutterfly for this post, and if you’re a blogger, you can too! Follow this link and check it out! Click here!