Gearing Up for Christmas

With Thanksgiving over, Christmas is looming close on the horizon. It is time to start thinking about Christmas decorations, crafts, presents, and more! I don't do a ton for Christmas normally. I rarely decorate my house. Instead, I follow a few traditions every year. The one that is the most fun is making Christmas candy with my family. This year, we are going to do it at my sister's house for the first time, which should be fun. We always put together a list of candies we want to make, invite our friends over, and spend a few hours together in a group stirring, baking, dipping, and creating Christmas candies and cookies.

A few from last year that are favorites are toffee and chocolate cremes.

As a family, we only have a handful of other traditions, all of which are either Christmas eve or Christmas day (such as opening one present Christmas eve before going to bed, doing stockings before breakfast Christmas morning, etc.).

In the past couple of years, I have started sending out Christmas cards as part of my holiday routine. I normally try to get the picture for them taken by the end of November so that I can start doing card shopping and have my cards ordered and arrived early enough to send out sometime in the second week of December. I feel like for the card to really be appreciated it has to arrive early enough for people to hang it up and look at it for a while before the big holiday hits.

Last year, I took some good photos of the animals. I was lacking a good photo of me with them, though. This year, I am hoping to come up with a good photo of me and a good one of the dogs. But, I am already doing my card shopping. Tiny Prints has an amazing Christmas Card selection and has some great deals. Plus, I like that I can personalize the cards with text or pictures how I want to arrange it. My biggest problem is going to be picking out which card layout to use.

I was sort of leaning toward the postcards at first. It seemed like a simple way to send out the Christmas cards to my family and friends, with cheaper stamps, no need to worry about envelopes, and all that other fuss. If I get enough good Christmas photos, I might still do a post card and go with this layout.

But, I am also sort of rethinking the idea of doing a post card. I'm not sure if I want pictures of me and my dogs visible to every person who comes in contact with the postcard, especially with my return address right there on it. I might be just a little bit paranoid like that.

Additionally, I really like the weight and elegance lent to a larger folded card that arrives in a slick envelope.
This design is pretty appealing to me, especially since some of my family and friends are either Jewish or non religious. Sending a Happy Holidays card is a great way, in my mind, of being able to include everyone without so much risk of offending anyone.

If I don't end up with enough pictures for either of those cards, I will have an even harder time deciding. There are a ton of different options. I think I just need to do my Christmas photo shoot and pick a card once I look at the pictures.

Do you have any Christmas traditions that you feel have to happen for it to really be the Christmas season?

*Disclaimer- I will receive 50 holiday cards in exchange for this post about Tiny Prints. However, all the opinions expressed here are very much my own and in no way were altered by this.