One of our favorite things about the Holiday Season is the influx of snail mail full of Christmas Cards! We love to see family pictures, read snippets about the past year and squeal at any exciting announcements (like Vanessa’s friend Kevin Fisher who announced he and his wife are expecting a little bundle!)
Here are a few of our favorite cards from 2011! BUTTTTT before we get into our favorite cards, here is a picture of the Christmas Card Holder Vanessa DIY’d (watch out Elizabeth!)
I purchased the Christmas sign from Hobby Lobby for 50% off and also purchased clothespins and white rope. I painted the clothes pins red and green with Caroline’s finger paints and clipped them on the white rope that I hot glued to the back of the sign. This was taken on Christmas Eve–full of cards! The Christmas Card holder was a great addition to our home and made us smile all season and cost less than $15!
Now…on to some of Vanessa and Allison’s favorite cards of 2011 and the ole Barry Family Christmas Card reveal.
Vanessa’s Favs:
The Patterson Family. I love the “bright” theme (you can see it in the lettering and the family’s attire) and I love that Keating is dressed up as Santa. A couple of years ago their card said, “Merry Christmas From Our Crib to Yours” and it showcased the gorgeous family in the nursery. So cute and creative!
The LaMantia Family. Don’t you just want to squeal at the sight of those gorgeous twins? They are beautiful! I love how elegant this card looks and I love how they squeezed several pictures of their gorgeous family in. This is the LaMantia’s first Christmas as a party of four (well five if you include the pup) and I am sure they had a blast!
The Huffman Family. I love this family. They are just the greatest people. Not only are their kids picture perfect but they are so respectful and well-behaved. My favorite thing about this card is the “Alleluia”. Just a clean reminder for the reason of the season. The back had a short paragraph about what the family has been up to the past year with three other candids of the cuties. Note: Elizabeth embroidered those shirts on her own! I’m telling you…she is superwoman!
And here’s our card. The good ole Barry update! I was inspired by a card I found on minted.com and decided to work with SoloShoe Communications to make it our own. Craig Boleman, the owner of SoloShoe is one of my favorite people in the entire world and I knew he would make my vision a reality. I hoped we could include Caroline’s picture with Santa as the main pic, but as you may have read here, that wasn’t an option. We opted to focus more on some annual highlights than a family picture this year. In case you can’t read the goodness that happened in 2011–we purchased 37 bows, moved 127 boxes, sent more than 3,000 e-mails, updated our Facebook accounts more than 650 times and blogged 94 times! We announced that Matt and I tied the knot, we moved to Austin, Caroline started waking and talking, that I launched AMB and that I joined CrossFit RoundRock!
Allison’s Favs:
The Brown Family. I love love love the Brown Family to pieces! There was actually MORE of the card, but I didn’t want to flood today’s blog with nothing but the Browns. I look forward to reading updates from their year and grin at the fact that this year The Macks were with The Browns during 2 of the 4 photos featured in their card. Our friendship continues to grow every year and this card made my list, because it was full of fun family photos!
The Landrum Family. I haven’t seen Ashlea since I was 8 weeks pregnant with Lincoln (she moved to Oklahoma), but I love keeping up with her through email, phone calls, and of course Facebook! I have a love for chalkboards and love how they incorporated one into their card. And even though I haven’t met their bundle, Avery I’m in love with those blue eyes and I’m just elated that it’s his very first Christmas!
The Moore Family. I adore this family for so many reasons. Not only did Shelley and Joseph host a dinner for The Macks, which included alcohol, but Joseph is a pastor and helped officiate our wedding! Joseph has written a daddy blog for AMB and his kids are the most adorable boys with personalities even bigger than their infectious smiles.
The Redmond Family. Look at their children and re-read their last name. All 4 members of this family have RED hair AND their last name is Redmond! What are the odds? I’ve known this couple since middle school and I’m so tickled that they recently grew their family with the addition of Brinkley. This card also has more photos, but again, I didn’t want to make it The Redmond show 🙂
The Macks decided not to do a Christmas card this year. Honestly, my husband isn’t really into Christmas cards. And while yes, I could have done a simple card with candid photos and old photos, that’s just not my style. If I’m going to do it I want it to be festive and Christmas”y”!!! So we decided we “may” do a Happy New Year card. Oh and I had already taken a photo of Vanessa’s Christmas card to upload to today’s blog as one of my favs, but when I realized she included hers I removed it from my list. It’s still one of my favs, because it was HANDS DOWN the MOST original, unique, and comedic card… I expected nothing less!
What was your favorite card this season?
my christmas card would be on both of your lists. if i would hurry up and get the dang things in the mail. i expect a blogpost all of my own.