Christmas cards

Wow. I can't believe its been since Halloween since I last wrote. So much has happened. Duh! It's been two months! Before I get to today's post, I'll fill you in. We sold our house! Well, sort of. We are in contract and close on January 5. What a way to start off the new year. What a relief to know we've sold the house in time for us to move to San Francisco in June. The best part is, we are going to be renting back from the new owners so we don't have to move twice! Score!

Okay, back to today's post which is on our Christmas cards. This is the first year we've done one. I kind of always thought that only married people/people with kids sent out Christmas cards and I couldn't be more happy that we are finally married and able to send out our own. And just like all of the invitations for the wedding festivities, I decided to take these on myself.

Since we were a little behind the ball and didn't take any seasonal photos before the hubs started a really intense rotation for his residency program, I decided that a New Year's card might be more apropos, especially given the fact that we are going to have a very exciting 2015 due to our move across the country. Not to mention we had a very exciting 2014, you know, getting married and all. So a New Year's card it was!


As for the pinspiration, I have always admired the designs from Tiny Prints. I did a quick search on Pinterest using the terms "Tiny Prints" and "New Year's" and came up with a bunch of ideas. Does anyone else use Pinterest as if it was Google? I can't help myself! Here were my favorites:

Clockwise from top: here, here, here & here

I couldn't decide between the simple black and gold look or going the more colorful route and also using an individual photo versus multiple photos. In the end I settled on the old "the more the better" mantra: lots of color and lots of pictures. The winner was the bottom left. However, when I followed the pin to the Tiny Prints webpage, I saw that they offered it in different color variations. I ended up using their "bright green" option as my pinspiration.

Because I recreated their design in InDesign, I was able to make customizations that I wouldn't have been able to make in their program. I removed the "Enjoy 2014" box they used in order to fit more of our picture in. I was also able to squeeze more text and change the fonts a bit. I love the way they turned out. They tell the tale of our past year: graduation, wedding, honeymoon, selling the house and then give a glimpse of our future in San Francisco.

I ended up ordering them through Vistaprint, saving more than $60 that way. I even customized the back since Vistaprint offers free color printing on the backside.

I can't wait for them to arrive so I can get them addressed and mailed out! Happy holidays!