Christmas Card Trees

Trees! Trees! And more Trees!

This is what I've been working on. This has been one of my favorite projects lately. And it only took me 2 days to make over 100!

Normally I dread Christmas Card time. With the invention of photo cards, it's easy. But the pressure to get a good photo of my kids is always a daunting task. They hate having their pictures taken. Hate having to load up somewhere to get "just the right spot" to snap that picture. I'm by no means even a decent photographer, so it's just a huge hassle. I hate it. What I love about photo cards though, is they are easy. Upload a picture or two, order 100, wait for them to come, address them and they're off. Easy. But….there is absolutely NO personalization to them. Yes, they have a picture of my kids on them. But that's it. What about my college friends that I send them to that have never even met my kids. Do they even care? My family and close friends obviously see my kids, so why do they care about a picture of them? Where are the days of actually writing a handwritten note in a Christmas Card to your friends and family? I miss that. Sometimes the only time a year I hear from a long lost friend is in the one and only Christmas card sent each year. Yet I get it and it's just a picture of their kid(s) I've never met. Yes, I do love to see the pictures, but I'd LOVE to actually hear how they are, what they've been up to, and so on. Some of those friends aren't on any social media, so I really have no updates.

 So I made REAL cards this year to send. Blank on the inside. So I am forced to actually WRITE a personalized note to each and every one of them! My Christmas Card list is ridiculous. It's at over 100. And that's with even trimming some each year. Here's why it so big: 1.) I still send cards to my parent's friends that I grew up with each holiday and special occasion. All my extended family lived in the MidWest, while we were in California and didn't have the money to fly to them every holiday. So my parent's friends were like my extended family. 2.) I still send to some of my high school friends. 3.) College friends. 4.) Family. Both my husband and I have a parent that is one of FIVE (husband's dad, one of SIX) kids. Plus all their kids and their kids=Big families. 5.) Military. With this past move being #8 in 12 years, we move a lot. We meet great friends in each and every duty station. My Christmas list grows every year. I've got friends in the States, in Germany, in Japan, and in Australia. So that's why the list is 100+

But I'm looking forward to hand-writing a personal note to each and every one of them. (I may be talking a different tune once I get started, but I'm trying to be positive!) 

As far as the cards go, they were SO FUN to make. I did lots of searching on Pinterest to get ideas and sort of pulled from here and there. I knew I wanted to do trees. I went through all my Christmas fabric and cut some triangles and then small little trunks out of brown. Sewed a simple line down the middle and that's it. 

I love them! I was able to go to my stash of stationary and found all sorts of blank note cards. So my cards this year didn't cost me a penny! Everything was pulled from my stash so that was great and the extra bonus is that I used up some stuff that I've been moving around with me for 10+ years!

Then I had some extra trees cut so I made some gift tags!