our christmas cards, 2011

as mentioned, i have a total obsession with christmas cards. not obsession like "i judge you if you send costco cards" but more like "i love love LOVE getting cards in the mail!" yeah. so anyway, i hope you don't judge my christmas cards because i love them.

we went with brightside prints for the 2011 wells family card, because they are AWESOME. [see also: moving announcements.] and also because i got free mailing labels! woot.

it was a tough call since there were sooo many good options [chevron stripes! swirl borders! non-traditional colors!] but we chose peppermint stripe, designed by the very talented lauren at palm papers.

we used a photo from our shoot with adele. it's us in front of lake union [with the space needle in the background, see it on the right?] and i thought it was a fitting tribute to our big move of 2011. i also love to read little family updates so i wrote a tiny summary and taped it to the back of each card with some festive washi tape. [brightside prints has the BEST backers on their cards, i thought the stripes were adorable.]

as much as i love a holiday card itself, sometimes i think envelopes are even better. this is what people see as soon as they open their mailbox! i always go a little overboard on addressing and decorating my envelopes. i hand-wrote every address, added our brightside prints return-address label, and threw another piece of washi tape on the back to double-seal the cards. 

for the record, we ran out of holiday cards before we ran out of friends and family, so i ended up making a costco run anyway to add some extra, less-expensive cards to our stash. can't beat those costco prices, but you also can't beat the awesome extra touch that comes from cards NOT ordered there. and that, my friends, is my personal eternal debate. moving on!

i worked on our cards on and off for six nights before getting them all mailed out. ha! it was a labor of love, for sure, but i'm so happy to be able to keep in touch with our loved ones in this way. and for a flashback -- check out our holiday cards from 2010 and 2009.