Hawaii Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
spill it: Christmas cards
I haven't done Christmas cards in oh...four years, I think?
I got all b!tchy because after years of putting a lot of time and effort into sending them to every freaking relative of mine, I realized I was never getting any cards back (OK I take that back - my mom sends me one every year but that's it). So I turned all Scrooge McDuck and stopped sending them. 
I'm wondering how rare this actually is, since pretty much everyone on the planet outside of my family seems to do them.
Re: spill it: Christmas cards
We send them to our friends and our family. But like you, I really have NO idea why. Most of time we only get a few cards but this year we didn't get ANY! NONE! Are you kidding me???? I'm feeling very scroogey. Oh well... I'll probably stop sending so many next year. Or I'll just forget about how scroogey they all were this year and send them all out again next year.
we always *intend* to send cards, but never actually follow through. we have a huge stack of gorgeous, super cool cards that we bought a few years ago. still haven't touched them...
the thing is, this year, we must have gotten at least 15 or 20 cards, so i've been feeling guilty. (apparently not guilty enough though?) ...most of them are from friends of their kid(s) - photo cards just stuck into an envelope, so it's not like it would have taken *that* long to do anyhow! us kidless folk would have to actually *write* something.
- scrooge
I love sending (and receiving) Christmas cards. This was the first year I did a photo card and it felt weird just to pop something in an envelope and not have to write on it....which I figured was justifed since I 'composed' the sentiment on the card.
I was, however, bummed that I didn't get out as many as I'd hoped since my computer crashed last summer and lost every address I had. I just hated the idea of sending emails to everyone and asking for their address so I kept hoping I'd get cards from a lot of the people I was missing, and I did!
we send them out, but have not had a photo ones since our engagement pictures 2 years ago.
I have never done a newsletter and rarely write in any updates unless it's a special family member or it is someone I haven't talked to in a while like the family I use to nanny for.
We get quite a few, mostly because there have been lots of weddings, babies, and other stuff going on so people sent picture ones this year. But we definitely don't get as many back as we send - and I'm ok with that. This year everyone was really really late, my mantle are was really sparse for our party last week - I actually brought the ones I got at work home to display! But then this week, poof! we got about 5 per day!
I love sending and receiving cards! Lots of our friends have munchkins and it's super fun to see their family photo cards every year.
We do two versions of holiday cards (although we celebrate Christmas, we send "holiday" cards because lots of our friends celebrate Hanukkah or Festivus or whatever). One version goes to our out of town family we never see; that version includes a photo card and newsletter about what we've been up to that year. The other version is a simple photo card with a handwritten note that goes out to our friends; they don't get the newsletter because, thanks to Facebook, they know exactly what we've been up to all year.
I've always done Christmas cards, probably because my mom made me when I was a kid. Last year was the only year I didn't because we were sending out our wedding TY cards at the same time and I couldn't be bothered.
I love doing photo cards because I don't have to write anything! And now I just print address labels, so it's even easier. I usually use photos from trips we've taken through the year...this year I used one from Japan, one from London and then I took one of us (and our dog) where I look obviously pregnant. I ordered 80 cards this year and had to cut a few people out because I almost ran out. We do get a lot in return because most of my family and friends do photo cards as well. I love seeing the photos of the kids & families.
I used to send photo cards in the mail but have become a special snowflake scrooge for the past couple of years lol. For the past 2 years, I had been sending an electronic greeting card/slideshow using SmileBox (they have cool templates. you should check it out!). I don't write a newsletter but use personal photos to summarize how our year has been. It only costs $1.99 :-P and I can send to however many people I like. It's fast, and it's environmental friendly (my excuse for my laziness lol)
.
Speaking of, I need to start on mine this year and send it out by tomorrow!!
We do a holiday card with photo(s) and a letter...the past few years when we were still singing professionally it morphed into a e-newsletter with photos because of the time of year I could send it via email from anywhere and it was less of a hassle than mailing cards.
Now that we've given up our lives on the stage and are actually not running at break-neck speed from Thanksgiving to New Years we do cards again. I send about 40 total...to immediate family (we have four sets of parents, siblings, etc. between the two of us), my mom's brothers and sisters, a couple of cousins and then our closest friends. This year I scored the photo card (holder) and holiday 8.5x11 paper in the $1 bins at Michael's Crafts. We ordered reprints of two of our maternity shoot photos and voila! That was what we mailed. Pretty easy. That said, we've gotten cards back from everyone that we mailed cards to and then some. We don't send presents to family so I feel like the least we can do is mail a card.
TTC/PG Blog | Mommy Blog
This is true, though. Maybe I'll do that next year. Except I don't have email addresses for everyone that I send to. (Like older aunts and uncles who probably don't use email).
I voted for Super Scrooge because we do the cards every year but we only did it with the photos this year, to include a pic of us, the pups and the baby u/s pic to share with ppl that we're expecting (if we haven't told them already)...
Last year we sent out about 30+ and got about 10. This year, we got one so far and we sent out 30+ again (although, I used our old address labels to our old house--which we still own but is rented out to renters in another state--because I was too lazy to write our current address, which I don't have labels for, over and over again on the envelopes, so maybe that explains why we've only gotten one card?).