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I just placed my order for family holiday cards this morning and thought it might make an interesting discussion — I know I’ve definitely picked up a few tips for family holiday cards over the years, and would love to hear yours.
A few caveats: we have never done a family photo shoot for holiday cards, so I don’t have any tips on that. (Instead I tend to use a collage of various photos from the past year, with hopes that all four of us are in at least ONE picture.)
I also don’t write a ton — in fact this is the first year I wrote even a few sentences — in large part because it kills me if there are typos or editing mistakes.
One final caveat: while I’ve experimented with a lot of different card places over the years, personally I’ve found that I like the quality, ease, and pricing at Shutterfly the best for holiday photo cards and photo books; I almost always order family photo calendars from Snapfish because they have a year-end calendar deal that blows all the other calendar deals out of the water.
When my eldest son was first born I experimented more with some of the other photo spots — they all have great deals and great products; the pricier ones will have slightly shinier foil or thicker cardstock, while the less expensive ones will have slightly thinner cardstock or slightly duller pictures.
For my $.02 the main difference between digital photo companies is the interface — there’s a big learning curve to figure them all out, and know what you can do in each of them and how to do it — so at this point it’s not worth my time to investigate the competitors.
But this post isn’t sponsored by Shutterfly (although I do have an affiliate link that I’ll stick in here), so please feel free to discuss which photobook company is your favorite.
Of course it’s totally fine to say a big old NOPE to holiday cards (in fact, we have a whole post where we discussed what we DON’T do as well as holiday delegating ideas) In the past I’ve talked about my other general obsession with digital photo books (here are my best tips on how to get started with digital photo books!), as well as the business etiquette around sending family holiday cards.
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My Best Tips for Ordering Family Holiday Cards
So, here are a few of my best tips on family holiday cards that I’ve learned over the years…
1. Look for sales at the company you’re comfortable with instead of trying to look for THE BEST sale out there.
For example, a few days ago Shutterfly offered 40% off cards, but I suspected it could get better, so I waited until that deal ended (it was good through Nov. 20) and checked today — and voilà, it is now 50% off plus free shipping. I was going to order 90 cards that would have been something like $168; today I ordered 105 cards for $124.
2. Keep a list of what you’ve paid in the past, when you ordered and what the deal was so you can gauge what’s a good deal.
Also, keep a list of how many cards you’ve ordered in the past! I remembered that last year it felt like we had a ton left over but didn’t remember exactly what number we ordered.
This is what my personal list looks like. (If you’re reading this post thinking, GAAAH I HAVEN’T DONE THIS YET, don’t worry — you’ll notice that a lot of years we ordered prettttty late. Procrastinators for the win! In fact, we are such procrastinators that in 2011 we just decided to combine our birth announcement (my son was born in AUGUST) with our holiday card.
2019 – Shutterfly, $124 ordered 11/21 (50% off, f/s, ordered 105 because same price as 95)
2018 – Shutterfly, $110, ordered 11/18 (50% off, f/s)
2017 – Shutterfly, $169, ordered 12/10 (105, $25 rush shipping)
2016 – Shutterfly, $96, ordered 11/28 (100)
2015 – Shutterfly, $170, ordered 12/6 (didn’t come until 12/18!)
2014 – Shutterfly, $132, ordered 12/12
2013 – Shutterfly, $128, ordered 11/28
2012 – ?
2011 – Shutterfly, $75, ordered 11/17
3. Pro Tip for Family Holiday Card Content: Put the Year on it!
I can barely remember which holiday card is from which year, to be honest — so this is the first year I made sure to put the year 2019 on it.
I also always appreciate when people mention how old the kids are, so this year I put a few super short sentences to note, basically, that in 2019 J turned 8 and started 3rd grade and H turned 5 and started kindergarten.
Because I’d included photos of some trips on our card, I also included one sentence noting that my husband and I had gone to Lake Tahoe for a wedding (so, so, so gorgeous) and the whole family had enjoyed a trip to Universal Studios Orlando.
4. Let your partner and kids veto pictures of themselves on your family holiday card.
My husband and I often disagree on what is a “great” photo of him — I’ll be looking at the picture of him and both kids in front of Hogwarts at Universal Studio thinking, great! Three people! Smiling! Looking at the camera! In front of an interesting thing that says something about our year!
And he’ll take one look and be like, YUCK, my chin, and it’s out.
Fair enough!
My kids at this point don’t care (and they’re not handing them out to their friends or anything), but as they get older I’ll have to include them in this exercise also.
5. Before you checkout, play around with how many cards you’re ordering to see how it changes pricing.
Because so often the companies price their cards in tiers (where if you order X number of cards it’s $Y, but if you order X+25 it’s another $Y-$.25, or if you order X+100 it’s Y-$1. A lot of times ordering MORE cards puts you in a lower price tier and ends up being the same, or less, than only ordering a few.
This happened today when I went to check out on Shutterfly — the card that we had selected was something like $2.40 if you ordered 80-100 cards, but $2.19 for 105-125 cards. At checkout I played around with the order count — ordering 90 cards was $116, 95 cards was $124, 100 cards was $129, and 105 cards was $123. So I could get 10 extra cards basically for free (and 90 cards would have been a little too tight anyway for us).
6. Consider saving a digital version of your family holiday card with your other digital photos.
If you’ve got a digital slideshow in any way, it’s great to have a digital version of your family holiday card. (We looooove our WiFi digital photo frame, as I mentioned in our post with father’s day gift ideas, but this also works for computer slideshows!)
Having a digital version also comes in handy if you want to include your holiday card in any digital photo books since if there’s stuff printed on both sides you may not want to glue it into the book.
(I suppose, once you have a digital version, you could always then skip the ordering and just email this digital card around to people… but that seems like a jerk move to me since someone at the photo card company spent time and money designing the cards.)
How to save a digital version of your family holiday card:
On my Windows computer I just use the “PrtScn” button (above the +/= key on my ergonomically split keyboard) to take a screenshot and (because I am fancy) paste the screenshot into Microsoft Paint; crop it to just be the card and save it as a PNG or JPG.
Sometimes I’ll take three digital photos: 1) the front of the card, 2) the back of the card, and 3) a vertical collage with the front of the card on top and the back of the card on the bottom.
Just Google “how to take a screenshot” if you’re having trouble; for example this is the top result for how to take a screenshot on a Mac.
Tip #7: A Few Ways to Use Old Family Holiday Cards
I don’t know if this is just me, but I always feel like I’ve spent time on these things and want to be able to “enjoy” them at a later date. One thing we tried a while ago was laminating old family holiday cards, punching a hole in the corner and putting a ribbon through them — voilà, ornaments!
But we’ve only got 8 right now and our Christmas tree already looks a little crazy with holiday cards hanging off them, so I’m not sure that’s the best project to recommend.
I was walking through Target late last year and saw a tiny project binder with sleeves — I grabbed it and thought it would be perfect for storing old family holiday cards, and it was. (All of our cards fit but one, in a year where I’d chosen what apparently is an unusually huge card.)
It’s not the most elegant thing but it works. My binder is 7.5 inches wide by 8.75 inches tall, and the sleeves are 5.5 x 8.5, so I think if you’re looking on Amazon I believe this binder is the same one. (Does anyone know of a more elegant solution? There’s got to be one…)
Of course, there are a zillion craft projects out there with old holiday cards; this is a nice roundup from Country Living on ways to upcycle/recycle Christmas cards.
You can also send them to the troops!
If you’ve got enough room to write a message on your card, you may consider using some of your holiday cards for messages to your elected officials — it’s a nice personalized touch compared to the cold efficiency of a Resistbot fax or email.
8. Bonus Tip: What To Do With Other People’s Holiday Cards
One final tip: I hate to throw away other people’s holiday cards (the ones we’ve received), but at a certain point they just become clutter.
If I were enterprising enough I might put them in a binder, but instead what I do with them is take photos on my iPhone of the card (all sides that are interesting, at least), and add them to whichever holiday digital slideshows we’ve got. (I’ve tried scanning them but a) the colors come out better on the iPhone and b) it’s muuuuuch faster to just snap a picture with my phone.)
Current Deals on Family Holiday Cards
Readers, do you do family holiday cards every season — or is that a NOPE for you? Do you prefer to use a few poignant moments from the past year, or do you prefer doing a holiday photo shoot with your family? What are your best tips on family holiday cards?
Anonymous says
I LOVE holiday photo cards (to the point where when I get non-photo cards, I’m like what is the point of this) so I have many thoughts.
We actually love CVS for cards- I got a 60% off deal this year and paid $30 for 80 cards. They are not super fancy but I figure most people just throw them out anyway. Plus no shipping fees if you ship to store- the ridic shipping fees Shutterfly charges is one of my main gripes with that site (although i love their calendars and photo books so always end up buying from them this time of year anyway).
We are too cheap to pay for pre-addressed, plus I like to write a note on the envelope, so I bought a stamp with our address on it which is really cute and also a fun job for my daughter to do.
For our own purposes, we each write a long note about highlights of the year on the envelope and than save that years card. My parents did something similar and it was so fun as a child to look at the cards and read all the highlights of the previous years.
Anon says
Funny story – I bought a stamp, but either the quality wasn’t good, the typesetting wasn’t great or user error. 5 years later, we still get mail addressed to us that uses a 3 instead of a 9 (thankfully our postal lady has no problem delivering to us). I switched to printed labels with very clear type after that.
shortperson says
i always use minted because they print addresses for free. my handwriting is terrible, i have no time or patients, and we usually send out about 200 cards. the cards may be more expensive than other places but not crazy. last night i went through the spreadsheet i used last year, confirmed addresses for people that i know did not use, added addresses i had handy for people that moved, and texted the rest to get addresses. this took less than an hour. i will order stamps today, order the cards on cyber monday, and stuff and mail them second week of december.
we get family photos because our kids are so little and cute and changing fast (2 and 5) but i think this or next year will be the last time. in the meantime, it makes putting a card together fast too. i made our card in ~20 minutes with photos from our october session.
shortperson says
also i make an annual photo album for each kid and a family photo album, and i just glue a holiday card in the back so everyone will have that too.
Kat G says
nice! i just print labels using my home printer — i should add a link to the Avery labels I keep rebuying.
Buble says
Around $1 per card is a good rate for pre-printed cards, yeah. In past years, I’ve ordered about 150 for around $200. This year, I decided to go with plain holiday cards ($.33/ea) and insert a printed family photo ($.05/ea) rather than do the preprinted thing.
I also decided that instead of sending to my whole Christmas list as in past years, I’m going to send to immediate family and then to anyone additional who sends one to us first. I recognize that if everyone adopted this system, no Christmas cards would get sent at all, but maybe that’s okay, too.
CCLA says
We started doing photo cards several years ago when DH and I had moved far away as a fun way to send to family, but since having kids we’ve upped the quality and quantity. I usually (and yes, it’s usually me, though I’m the one who cares more about this so I don’t begrudge DH not working on it) write a short blurb with maybe 4 sentences on the back saying we welcomed a new baby, big sis is now 2 and doing well, DH started new job, happy holidays, etc. Always non-religious. I think I used minted the last couple of years, which I’ll continue to do because it’s easiest to stick with the same. I far prefer getting photo cards vs regular holiday cards from other people, especially with a blurb update or at least captions on the photos.
On the point of what to do with cards from others, we just recycle after the season is over. I figure they have served their purpose. I used to be into snapping photos of things like that (hello kid artwork, too), but I found I never went back to look at them, and all of those photos of things we wanted to not feel bad about tossing just turn into digital clutter. I make a few exceptions for things like cards that DH and I write to our kids, so we have them if the house burns down, but otherwise I’ve been making a really concerted effort to unclutter my photos archive in the same way I’ve uncluttered our paper stashes.
Mary says
I do a family photo “yearbook” as the grandparent gift every year. Last year, we tried doing them at Costco since the company we had been using went out of business. While the price and convenience of picking them up was great, I didn’t like the actual books we got. My biggest issue is that we do the smallest books possible, which I think was 30 pages. They don’t vary the thickness of the binding, so our yearbooks have a wide spine that could accommodate 100 pages. I’m a print designer, so it really bugs me.
I think this year we will try Shutterfly instead and see if they are better.
Sal says
I’ve done shutterfly and think the mpix ones are much better quality than the shutterfly ones, so would recommend mpix.
anon says
Mpix is my favorite vendor for any photo prints or gifts. I use Shutterfly exclusively for cards because they make it so easy, but the photo quality is much better with Mpix.
Anonymous says
Send New Year’s or Valentine’s Day cards so you can do it in January (or over Christmas break)
Boston Legal Eagle says
Last year was the first year we had family photos professionally done and they went on our holiday card. We created it on Shutterfly and had Shutterfly address and even mail these because we were pressed for time. Though we’ll probably do the same this year even if we have more time as it’s so convenient!
I actually really like keeping old greeting cards and holiday cards in a little card box because it’s fun to look back on them and see what we wrote for random birthdays or now to see my friends’ kids grow up. We also do a family end of year photobook, also on Shutterfly, and our card goes in there.
anon says
All good tips. I’ve stuck with Shutterfly because I can always find a design I like, and I’ve been using the interface for more than a decade at this point.
My best tip is to design your card early (like in October) and then buy when the sales roll around in November. Having it out of the way means I’ll actually get it done. Shutterfly has even sent me a 50% coupon when I have a pending project. Also, the print quality on my earlier projects has been better than any job I’ve sent in December. I’m in a communications/marketing, so that matters to me.
I try to carve out some time Thanksgiving weekend to start hand-addressing everything. Is that terribly old-fashioned? I know labels would be so much simpler, but I know that I personally enjoy seeing familiar handwriting on an envelope. Especially far-flung relatives that I don’t see very often; it’s a tangible reminder of them.
Anon says
We typically use Vistaprint (best mix of price and quality I’ve found) and wait for either the BF or CM sale. I usually type a few sentences as an update about us (really kiddo). We DIY family photos typically around Thanksgiving (sometimes the day I order) – my mom will often come up that weekend and take them for us or we use the self-timer and a tripod on the DSLR in the backyard. This year we managed to get the entire family at the beach at one time, so a friend we were traveling with did our photos on the beach. Then I put a couple of small cute photos of kiddo from the year on the back around the couple of sentences.
I usually order 10-20 extra cards, and we usually do two sets – one that is a “Happy Holidays” card as we have a number of friends who do not celebrate Christmas (or for whom we don’t know their preferences) and a set of “Merry Christmas” cards for folks we know celebrate and would be upset if the card they received said “Happy Holidays” (yes, I know, ridiculous, but sometimes that’s the price of family peace).
Best tip: I keep as cloud documents our filled out address labels in a word template, and update them throughout the year (often from my phone) as I get word that people have moved, married, divorced, died, etc. Essentially a digital address book in label template form. It started as the address labels for our wedding invitations, then we used the same list for baby announcements, etc. and then it’s since been updated to include colleagues, etc. with whom we exchange holiday cards. About a week before, I order my stamps from USPS. I know that we have 4 full sheets of labels at 30 each, so I usually order enough for 120 plus a little extra depending on how the numbers play out.
Anon says
We also (like I did growing up) tape up the cards as they come in on the interior back door. They stay up until probably mid January and then go in the recycling bin, but it’s fun to walk by and see them all up there. Last year toddler kept taking them down so we could only post above her height, but I am hopefully this year that maybe she’ll leave them alone (also TBD – whether we still need to fence the tree).
christmas baby says
I’m thinking of trying Costco this year. But waiting on baby number 2 to arrive in 2 weeks and then adding a nice family pic for a joint baby/holiday card.
Anonymouse says
I think Costco is by far the cheapest – but you’re basically getting a 5×7 photo print, just with a design. But they’re thick enough to write a note on the back, the envelopes are lined, and they ship speedily.
Kate says
They also pre print your return address on the envelope for free! We get calendars there too, $20 for the really big deluxe one.
Alma5 says
We did Costco last year and the print quality was not great. Our photos also came out much darker than I was expecting.
Anonymous says
We’ve done Costco the past few years, and I’ve been happy with the quality and price. SO much less than we were paying on Shutterfly! They’ll also address them and do return addresses for free.
FVNC says
I’m so glad for this feedback! We are costco members for the first time this year and I was planning to do my cards there, but was hesitant based on their photobook quality (my sister uses costco for photobooks, and the quality is much worse than Shutterfly). This confirms I should look elsewhere.
CHL says
Counterpoint – they feel more cheap and lower quality…but they totally “check the box” for me and are so much cheaper that the trade off is great! I’m a satisficer and they are just fine if you are not looking for Top Shelf.
Anon says
All I can think about is Fiona Hill! Wow, did anyone else see her smarts and composure in the impeachment hearings today? Wow. Hero in the making.
Lily says
She was amazing.
Kara says
Last year we did a digital card and it was revelatory. We did it through paperless post and it felt so good to already have everyone’s email address and just “send”. I love receiving holiday cards and am grateful to receive cards to put on our mantle, but the digital card was soooo much easier. I’m never going back.
Elizabeth says
Me too! For me digital is 100% the way to go. Otherwise they probably wouldn’t happen. I also like that people respond to the email and I often have a nice back and forth with people I haven’t spoken to in awhile.