this year's christmas cards.

i have a love hate relationship with christmas cards. i want the picture to be just right and the design to be cute enough without being too expensive. it's a process haha.

it seems like all of the usual sites have gone up in price. even shutterfly is trying to charge upwards of $50 for 30 cards. that just seems nuts! that's a christmas present wasted on cards! so i'm trying something new this year. i don't know the quality of vistaprint but at this point i don't really care. i've got a 50% off coupon and it makes the cards less than $1 a piece! that's too good to pass up. so i'm hoping the pictures take the focus off of the paper quality.

i didn't love any of the vistaprint designs because i'm nit-picky. i love birdesign's shop and have used her stuff in the past so i ventured over there for a card template this year. we settled on this one.

we took the girls out a few weeks ago for some fall photos and i just couldn't land on one that fit the christmas card look, so we tried again last weekend!

we got some seriously cute ones.

i'm pretty happy with how they turned out and i'm excited to see the finished product in person. here's what the card will look like after i added our photos and tweaked the color a bit:

sweet, right? just enough happy to make you split a grin when you open the envelope. now i just hope the quality is passable. fingers crossed! ho ho ho!