Give Me Five Monday #3 - Christmas/Holiday cards

The topic for this week is, "Give Me Five things about Christmas/Holiday cards: buying them, getting them ready, sending them, receiving them, displaying them, tips for recycling them, getting/sending 'family newsletters', traditions, pictures, etc."

Christmas cards are one of my most and least favorite parts of the Christmas season. I love getting them, and I love the feeling of satisfaction I get after I've dropped all of ours off at the post office to go out. However, the process of getting them out - probably causes me more stress than almost any other part of the holidays. So here are my five things about Christmas cards!

1. I have multiple categories of different types of people who get different types of cards. For example, I send Hanukah cards to my dad's family since they're Jewish and it just wouldn't make sense to send Christmas cards to them, but I don't want to exclude them either. I send Christmas cards to everyone else. Some people get our annual holiday letter (usually those people we're not in regular contact with during the year), and some don't (obviously those people who we see or talk to often enough that they don't need the update). Just about everybody gets pictures, but some may get 'originals' versus the color photocopies that we make. Several years ago I created an Access database (yes, I am a geek!) to keep track of it all so I didn't go nuts just figuring what gets sent to whom.
   
   
2. I usually buy my cards on sale - as cheaply as possible, but only pick designs that I truly like. It's not uncommon for me to send out several designs if I can't find enough in one style for everyone. I think I usually send out somewhere around 75 cards total.
   
   
3. This year, we had our holiday pictures taken late, so they won't be ready until Thursday. I'm hoping to have everything else done before then, so I can just slip the pictures or copies into the envelopes, seal them and be good to go. We'll see if I get the time to do the rest before then. I need to buy more cards (including the Hanukah ones), hand-write a message and sign our names in each one, make, print and put on our address labels and return address labels, finish writing, proofreading and print the holiday letter, and buy and stick stamps on each envelope. Yikes.
   
   
4. I always display all of the cards that we receive - it's another form of holiday decoration in our house. When I was growing up, we had a certain portion of wall where we taped all of the cards up and I've adapted that in many of the apartments and such that I've lived in. In our previous house, we had an archway between the living and dining rooms and that's where I hung all of the cards that we received. I loved how festive it helped make the house look and feel. In our current house, it's been more of a challenge to find a good place to display our cards. I usually hang them off of the top of our slider in the kitchen and last year also was able to use the memo board that I put up in the living room as a solution for greeting cards as well. I do still miss having an archway though.
   
   
5. After Christmas is over, I sort through the cards as I'm taking them down. I keep the ones with designs that I really like and throw the rest away. I have vague ideas of fun holiday crafts that I could do with the ones that I keep, but unfortunately so far they just sit in piles in my craft cupboard. If I ever get caught up with my scrapbooking, I'd like to maybe incorporate some of them in with my holiday scrapbook pages.

Here's my memo board all full of cards last year:

And the ones I hung off of the slider. If people included photos of their families or kids, I stuck the picture right on the glass, so we could enjoy seeing all of them. The reason the pictures, and the snowman window clings, are all up so high was to keep small fingers and kitty paws from being able to reach them...

So what are your 5 likes or dislikes about Christmas/Holiday cards? Head on over to Becca's Buzz to share yours and check out more!