Every year we take a family picture. And every year, we bust them all out, in their dated frames and display them during the holiday season. This is a tradition borrowed from my family and it's super funny to look back. Our first pic, from five years ago...yeah let's just say we've changed (and aged) a lot since that first picture. Obviously it was just the two of us for a few years and now the addition of Zola for the past three years has been great. I've learned that if you make the annual Christmas Card taking picture time a fun event, no one is upset and everyone walks away happy and smiling.
As our family grows, I'm sure we'll share some hilarious ones, as I can remember being from a family of four kids and someone would always end up crying during this annual tradition. Long story short, I love this year's card. Hubby loves this year's card. And Zola, well she made sure that I share with everyone that she totally gives it two tiny paws up! You already got a sneak peek at the outtake reel HERE so now let us unveil the real thang! Drumroll please...
Zah Cullen Family 2010 Greeting Card:
We used the printing company Pear Tree Greetings and are so pleased with the final product. We loved the fact that we could caption each picture (click it to enlarge and you'll see) and the two-tone blue background was right up our alley. They actually forgot to include the correct amount of envelopes (we were short about 10) so they overnighted extra prints and envelopes to us, free of charge. Gotta give a shout out to Amanda in their customer service department, she was amazing! So do they punch that little heart into the design? Read on...
No way jose...that was all US! I raided the $1 bin at Michael's and scored this sweet little heart punch and just knew it would add that small and mighty touch to our cards this year. Something special like this is a great way to personalize those standard greeting cards, don't you think?
We also jazzed up the envelopes with a sweet row of bright blue trees...so festive and cheery! The trees, another Michael's $1 bin find. Man, I love that store!
Lastly, we put a sweet little stamp on the front right corner of the envelope. Yep, good eye, it's totally the same one from Zola's dog treat baggie tag HERE. Truthfully, this festive and tiny holiday stamp got some serious mileage this Christmas for us. Check out our gift wrapping tags below, ha!
PS - Oh and I just have to mention our return address stamp this year was also the same shade of gorgeous bright blue and was gifted to us from our good friends The Rileys and their sweet twin angels. Make sure to check out their blog HERE too! For obvious reasons, we like to keep our address private so although we aren't able to share that gorgeous return address stamp, we just have to tell them publicly how much we love/adore it and how perfect it was for this year's cards! Thanks again, rockin' Rileys!
Wrapping Design 2010:
We loved our wrapping design this year and there's that trusty lil' stamp again! First up, the name tags. We simply cut up some full pages of card stock into 1"x3" tag size and stamped one side of the tag in brown.
Then we punched a hole in the other end, leaving room to write the receiver's name!
Green and red sharpie's were put to good use and so was some of CC Hubby's garage twine!
So here's one of the finished tags, sitting pretty on a package! All wrapped up and held together with one round of twine. What do you think?
Here's the deets on our gorgeous wrapping paper. We were wandering the aisles of Hobby Lobby and low and behold, they had their 100 foot rolls of wrapping paper on sale so we scooped up a red and a green. It literally took me 15 minutes to pick the perfect duo, because there were so many complimentary and stunning prints! This particular paper, by Brother Sister Design Studios, is the fancy, thick kind with the great cutting lines on the reverse side. One thing we know for sure, we'll always be hitting up the HL for our paper in future years. This paper is magical!
The finished product! CC Hubby even said, 'Wow, our presents look really cool this year!"
We must've been good this year!
