Holiday season thankfulness and partially DIY holiday cards

Holiday season thankfulness and partially DIY holiday cards

• 11.29.2013

Phew! The holiday season is officially here! Thanksgiving has come and gone, it was delicious, and we can all talk freely about our holiday shopping without making half the room groan about how it was practically just October. ;) (I'm sometimes in that category. I don't feel ready for Christmas yet but I do always love the holiday season, so I figure I ought to start now and make it last!)

However... holiday stress may also be coming. It's definitely ironic that Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year in the US and our first shot to "get it all over with" (the gift shopping, that is), is less than 12 hours after the day we all come together and celebrate things we're grateful for. It's awesome to practice gratitude with friends and family, but does it really only last for the few hours of the meal and TV-watching?

But in more practical terms, we do buy gifts for people we care about, and we all chose the extent that makes sense for us. I sometimes complain about having to do holiday shopping, but I realize I'm grateful that I have people in my life to shop for. I'm so happy I'm surrounded by family and friends and it's nice to express that every year! (Wish it didn't have to be material things, but I'm trying to stay positive here.)

So, maybe you did some Black Friday shopping today, maybe not. Maybe tomorrow you're celebrating Buy Nothing Day or Small Business Saturday and supporting your local bookstore?

Or maybe you're having a DIY party with friends and making gifts together!! I have that planned with a couple other crafty ladies later this weekend. (We're gong to make some real food holiday recipes from Beyond Bacon and do some small crafts like beading!) This weekend seems like a great time to DIY instead of/in addition to shop. Maybe some of the lovely dresses in my 7 Days of Holiday Party Dresses inspiration series have got you excited to spend some of the long weekend sewing! (That, and, so many DIY gift ideas out there!) I've already shared some holiday ideas and posts this year, and been pinning away to my holidays and parties board!

And, if you haven't already, you can at least order Christmas cards. I did a very minor DIY on mine!!

Holiday card time?

Regardless of your Black Friday plans, if you haven't ordered your holiday cards yet, now is the time. I feel like we procrastinated on this because when I started to shop around for card and ideas, I realized the ones I liked best were the ones with the greatest photos. Happy family in a beautiful setting, gorgeous sunlight, all that. And, uh, we don't have any of those photos from any recent time. I didn't think I had time to figure out getting some good ones taken. Haven't done that in a while. (My husband has lost 40 pounds since we last had photos taken, and I look totally different, too, and isn't the point of the photo card to show what you currently look like?) So that was off the table.

So we set up a tripod and the camera and made our own little photo booth in our room one afternoon. Took down the art, pretended we were at a party with a "photo booth"! Here's a couple pre-cropped...

And here's the one we went with. Wish it were a little sharper, but it was like baaaaarely light enough when we took these. I did what I could with editing, but, ya know, we're not going for fancy here. Just friendly. Fine for a relatively small printed card!

I've never ordered from Zazzle before but they have suuuuuper cute holiday cards (and holiday gifts--husband will definitely be getting some of these). They sent me a gift card to use on these! We debated on several choices...

We went with the Gold Glitter holiday photo card. Gold glitter=kinda my thing right now. ;) Even the backs are cute. They also have tons of cute holiday stamps! Got some of those as well. (Use code HOLCARDSSALE to get 65% off cards right now!)

Embarrassingly easy DIY holiday card idea

So, I got the cute cards and stamps in the mail, but I couldn't just send them out without adding a little DIY touch. So I pulled out some red ribbon, a nice bright contrast against the mostly neutral colors of the cards, and tied little ribbon pieces on them!! Makes it a little more fun and personal, amiright?

Now that's checked off the list.

Thanks to Zazzle for providing our cards this year!