Christmas Card Curse

Our house is where Christmas Cards come to die.  We are 0 and 3 for successful Christmas Card mailings at our house.  Last year I was on a mission to get our Christmas Cards out before Jack arrived, and was so single-minded in my determination, I actually pulled an all-nighter which caused some serious sleep-deprived consequences which you can read all about here.

So, ironically my obsession with getting our Christmas cards out rendered our Christmas cards (that featured our smiling family of three) quite useless considering we were suddenly a smiling family of four.  Oops.  No biggie, I just scheduled a newborn session with the photographer, hopped on the computer and put a rush on holiday-themed baby announcements that were the exact size and in a complimentary design to our previous christmas cards.  A christmas card addendum so-to-speak since I just stuffed them into the envelopes right along with the original cards.

Sadly, even then, the cards never made it into circulation.  I could throw out excuses all day about the difficulties of juggling daily activities with a newborn, let alone a stuff-and-stamp session, but they would just be excuses.  Sure, a few choice family members (who happen to stop by) were handed their cards, but other than the few cards that were handed off or stuffed into a shoe box (you know, for the baby album that is still in cellophane), the majority of the christmas cards and christmas card addendum/baby announcements wound up in the recycle bin along with my pride.

It's hard to say what was more upsetting, the fact that I wasted all that money (not to mention paper and ink) on cards that didn't go out, or the fact that I basically never sent out a baby announcement for Jack.  I had vowed to never be one of THOSE moms that gypped baby #2 out of any of the pomp and circumstance baby #1 received, and here I was, barely a few months into Jack's life, and was already falling down on the job.

Fast forward a year to our Christmas Card endeavors this year.  I had grand visions of tying in a belated baby announcement in the form of "our 7lb 1oz, 19 and 3/4 inch baby boy is now a year old!" (with a cute excuse of why a proper baby announcement never went out), along with a "we've moved and here's our new address!" announcement.  I was well on my way to achieving half of my goal too - I gave up on the baby announcement and tied our Christmas card into an address update, but alas, the Christmas Card curse struck again.

The cards were designed by an amazing sister-in-law which left only the printing end of things up to me.  Just FYI, copymax and vistaprint SUUUUUCK!  Do not, I repeat DO NOT use them for anything you need to look like it was professionally printed.  Seriously I could do a better job on a dot matrix, blindfolded and standing on my head than these idiots.  So, strike one, strike two.  And since I can now no longer get anything printed in time for Christmas, the beautiful Christmas cards we had designed for us are now a bit pointless.  Steeee-rike three, you're out!  ***heavy sigh of defeat***

I ordered new cards directly from minted.com since I have heard nothing but wonderful things about their quality and was in need of a 'happy new year' themed card along with a reliable printing service that could put a rush on things.  All of this is coming at a price of course (sorry Mr. C), but I did get 15% off thanks to their current promotion (15% off holiday cards using HOLIDAY15 at checkout) so here's to hoping we'll get SOMETHING out this year even though it may be the death of me, and here's to hoping next year we can end the curse of the Christmas Card once and for all.