Our 2016 Family Holiday Cards

Those of you who are regular readers may remember me sharing our family's holiday cards last year, when, after many years of only sending cards from the Bubby and Bean Art shop that I designed myself, I decided to change things up. First off, I wanted to include a picture of Essley - because she's my kid, man, and I'm proud and stuff. And I also wanted to do something that alleviated some of the time and stress involved with the sending of the cards. I was very pregnant with Emmett at the time, smack dab in the middle of my busiest time of year with work, preparing for the holidays, and Robbie was getting ready to leave the country for work - and squeezing in the stuffing, sealing, addressing, stamping, and sending of holiday Christmas cards admittedly sounded a little like torture. I ended up finding the perfect solution (one that also included the option for a photo), and I was so pleased that I instantly knew I wanted to do the same thing this year. And I did.

The solution to my holiday card dilemmas ultimately came in the form of a company called Postable. I was instantly drawn to them because they have such a wide selection of designs to personalize, and they're all fun and stylish and hip and not lame. (Like to the point where it's kind of hard to choose just one. I may or may not have sent a total of 10 different cards to myself this year and then spent a week slowly narrowing them down to the winner you see here, but I'll never tell.) But the really bad ass thing about Postable is that, in addition to carrying the coolest customizable card designs on the planet, they print, stuff, stamp, address, and mail all of your cards directly to everyone on your list - which, as they say, basically saves you thousands of hours of agony and a life of carpel tunnel. Did I mention that they paper they use for their cards and envelopes is 100% post-consumer recycled or tree-free 100% cotton? So yeah, anyway, I had such a positive experience using them last year that it was a no brainer to use them again.

As I mentioned above, I couldn't decide which card to use so I ended up sending myself several and then took a ridiculously excessive amount of time to finally choose one. (Hey I never claimed not to be over the top, especially during the holidays.) And honestly, the process of personalizing the cards with our photo, names, and greeting on the back (a feature that's new this year; you can even include more photos along with or in place of text) was so easy and quick that even with initially designing so many cards, I was done in less than 10 minutes. For the address font I went with one of their "smart fonts" that looks eerily similar to my husband's handwriting. I then grabbed my address from the address book (which includes all my friends' and family members' addresses via an incredibly easy spreadsheet upload I did last year), checked out, and sent. In the end, I went with this one because the simple design really felt like our style, and because the word "JOY" so greatly sums up what my family is feeling this holiday season. After several months of stress and anguish over Emmett being diagnosed with epilepsy, he is in such a good place and we couldn't be happier. The picture of he and Essley along with the expression of joy just felt so perfect. My card design is now officially complete and will be sent out to my friends and fam at the end of the month via another ridiculously easy process. So many tidings of comfort and joy, guys.

I want to end this by saying that while I did team up with Postable for this project, I would have used them for our cards again this year regardless. Truly. We partner with a lot of really incredible brands here at Bubby and Bean, but this is one of them where the experience has been so great that I will continue to use them again and again regardless of our working relationship, and will recommend them with the highest regards to all the people I care about. Yep. They're that bad ass.

Oh yeah, and speaking of being bad ass, they're also offering all Bubby and Bean readers 15% off their entire order. (I told you they were great.) Just use code BUBBY15 when you check out on their website.  If you end up ordering through Postable, I'd love to see your cards!

This post is in collaboration with Postable.

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