Our 2017 Holiday Card with Minted

Product for this post was provided by Minted and Seraphine. As always, all opinions are my own.
Thank you for supporting the brands that support Simply Nicole.

I’m a huge fan of Christmas cards. Call it old fashioned, but I get joy from picking out a card design, writing a short note on the back of each, and going to the post office to mail them out. Sending cards is a little tradition that I started for myself a few years ago. It gets me in the Christmas spirit. 

For me, sending cards is nostalgic. I remember when I was younger, my mom would take us to Clover or Kmart to pick out a box of Christmas cards. {I always loved the glittery ones, but she hated them because glitter was a mess and got on everything.} After picking out our cards, we would come home and I’d watch her sign and assemble them at our dining room table. 

My sister and I loved getting the mail in December, because we’d fight over who would get the open the next Christmas card. The cards acted sort of like a piece of decoration for our family. We’d tape them to the inside of our front door so we could look at them all season long. 

So yeah, Christmas cards were a big deal in my family. When Bryan and I got married, I knew I wanted to continue the tradition and send our own each year to our family and friends. 

Bryan’s Shirt: Express (old) | Bryan’s Pants: Gap | My Dress: Seraphine Maternity (c/o)

Minted makes ordering cards so incredibly easy. It took me less then an hour to import our photo, pick out a design, customize, edit our addresses and place the order. These are just some of the reasons why I go to Minted for our holiday cards each year: 

• There are hundreds of designs from artists all over the world. My favorite are the foil-pressed ones! 
• Minted offers FREE recipient addressing, which will save you so much time. 
• The “Find it Fast” feature is my all time favorite. It allows you to upload a photo to their system and see how it will look on each card design, without you having to click into each one. 
• You can save your addresses in their concierge address book, and refer to them year to year. You can add each address in manually or import them from Excel. Minted will even de-dupe your lists, so if you import a new spreadsheet it will pull only the new contacts. 

Minted makes ordering so easy, but taking a family photo is always a hassle. Just being honest! For whatever reason, I always wait until the last minute to start thinking about our Christmas cards. This year was no different, but at least I had an excuse. My mind has been cluttered lately with all the baby stuff to worry about.

At the end of November, my sister was kind enough to take our photo for us. Finding an outfit in my closet to wear took no time at all – which is super surprising since nothing in my closet fits well with my bump. I chose a black printed maternity dress from Seraphine that I felt 100% comfortable in. Since I was a bit more dressed up this year for our photos, Bryan did the same and wore a green button down and black pants. I think we looked festive, but not too matchy-matchy. 

After getting dressed, we drove over to Valley Forge Park on what seemed to be the coldest and windiest afternoon of the year. I complained pretty much the entire time. Big props to my sister and Bryan for not killing me. It was definitely a challenge to get a good photo to use {especially with my hair blowing all over the place}, but I was very happy with the one we ended up choosing. 

Our 2017 holiday card was a big success!