Holiday Greetings!

Christmas cards were never something we did growing up, so it really didn't even occur to me to do it until we got married and started receiving more and more of them. I always thought that they were hard to do, and also a bit pretentious. As I've started doing them, though, I've realized how easy they are and how great it is to be able to send current photos of your family to friends and family that you don't see often.

This will be our third year of sending Christmas cards and we've used Shutterfly every time. That's why I was so excited to learn about Shutterfly's promotion of 50 free Christmas cards to any blogger (ugh - I hate calling myself a "blogger", but I guess I am) who shares their Shutterfly experiences. I can say that they're incredibly user-friendly, reasonably priced and have some really cute styles. I've also used Shutterfly to create calendars (great gifts for the grandparents) and Six Month and One Year photo scrapbooks for Brooke (so much easier than physically cutting and pasting!). With Shutterfly, you can also share photos via a password-protected website. Many of the teachers at the preschool that I work at do this.

Using Shutterfly is simple - you upload your photos onto your Shutterfly account (again, very easy to set up), and they're permanently there. You can then use those photos for any current or future creations by simply choosing your style and dragging the images that you want to use on to the designated "photo" spot. They have many samples, but are very easily personalized to your particular taste. You can also use only one, or many photos. The only difficult thing about Shutterfly is choosing from their many styles. I'm still working on ours for this year. In the meantime, enjoy some samples with pictures of complete strangers:

Starlight Star Bright

Modern Cranberry Noir