Adorable Mistick girls Christmas Card circa 1995.

There are so many traditions and projects to do every December. Shopping for gifts, decking the halls, finding time to see all your friends and family, cooking up a storm… and in my family, arguing over the Christmas card photo! We’ve done a Christmas card since my sisters and I were babies. Growing up, my mom always made us wear matching outfits or get dressed up in black tie (when we were like 8 years old!) for the official photo. This was an infamous activity because it was always so hard to get a good shot of everyone, and even harder to find one that everyone could agree to use for the card!

Thankfully, now we have digital cameras and beautiful designs from sites like Minted. I can’t remember how many years ago I got put in charge of creating the card, but for the last 3 or 4 years I’ve used Minted to create them. Even though we’re all grown (and my older sister is married and expecting a baby!), we still send out a sisters card at the holidays. We still argue over what photo to use, but now the challenge is getting us all together in one city to take a good photo!

This year we planned a surprise birthday party for our mom in May (I ordered the invites from Minted!). My friend photographed the event for us so we have a bunch of high quality, well lit photos where we’re all dressed up and looking our best to choose from. Below is a photo that shows the birthday party invite, the floral design was created by one of the independent artists featured on Minted. I love how on-trend it is! There’s a little peek of one of the addressed envelopes behind it in the lower photo. I love coordinating a beautifully designed address with the card every time I order.

I mentioned that my older sister is having a baby, and for her shower I found the most perfect ever invites with an owl sitting on a stack of books! Every time I order a new card I like to try out the various options, and for the shower invites I decided to try the skinny wrap address labels. You can see the part of the label that shows on the back of the envelope above (it says “Sloane’s having a baby!”). They were adorable and made the whole design that much more customized.

This year, thanks to the Alt Summit and Minted, I’m going to treat myself to a foil-pressed design. Here’s a close up of the sample card I got in the mail. The gold is really beautiful and very festive. Since the photo we’re going to use is from my mom’s Spring birthday party, I want to choose a card design with extra festive holiday flair!

See how amazing the coordinated addresses and cards are! According to Minted, one big trend in cards this year (based on the thousands of independent artist designs they carry) is dark grey and metallic. Since that basically describes my wardrobe and several of the rooms in my house, I can’t wait to design this year’s card!

I can’t end this post without showing you one more thing… I won’t be able to do this for our card, but one of the most fabulous new features that Minted has (this is a promoted post, but I’m seriously a huge fan) is the foil pressed drawing creations. Basically, you upload a drawing and they will turn it into a foil pressed card. Perfect for mermaid families, as you can see below. Mermaids would definitely order foil-pressed cards if they could. Duh!

I know many of your send out holiday cards with your fur-babies photos, and of course my Lola and Lucy  had their photo taken with Santa already this year! I always have their photo turned into an ornament. Stay tuned to see how it turns out this year! The photos were done by my friend Jenny Karlsson, so you know they are amazing!