Laura's Holiday Card - 2021

Laura never disappoints with unique and creative ideas for her family’s holiday card. Every year she jokes about doing a “normal” card and freaking out their friends and family thinking there’s some kind of hidden Easter egg of kookiness. Nope!!

This year Laura had fun with Photoshop and some fun, fake book cover ideas. I helped out with some Photoshop too; especially getting her son’s head and their pug, Mr Bean into the Last Action Hero poster and coming up with the book type. I also threw together the plaid background and the actual books that each cover is part of. This was SO much fun to work on!!

A little zoomed-in action. Thanks for this EPIC holiday card concept, Laura!!

Valentine's Day 2022

Happy Valentine’s Day to those who celebrate! This is not a holiday we typically do anything for; feeling that’s it’s mostly driven by retail companies. That being said, creating fun valentines for school parties has become something I do look forward to each year.

This year my oldest son proclaimed “we don’t do valentines in middle school.” I rolled my eyes at him, but whatever.

At least my second grader still does valentines! We opted to go with non-food valentines again this year right when Sticker Mule was having a great sale on 3x3 inch holographic stickers. So he and I worked on a quick and fun design and I got them ordered. Have I mentioned that he loves bacon?

Next up was some kind of card to put the stickers on to give out at his party. We needed something for folks to know who these were from. I created a 4x5 inch card so I could print four on a page. I added a bacon border that matched the sticker and added his name. I had them printed and trimmed at my local Office Depot and they were ready within an hour.

I LOVE how these turned out! Here’s a breakdown of the pricing:

• 50 vinyl, holographic stickers, roughly 3x3 inch - on sale - $31.10 (incl tax, shipping was free)

• 12 pages printed on card stock (4 cards per page) and trimmed - $11.84

• double-sided tape (we already had some)

• Total: $42.94

That came out to $.89 cents per valentine for 48 valentines. There are only 25 kids in my son’s class, but he will also give one to his teacher, the class aides, specials teachers (music, PE, art, Spanish, etc), and the two administrative assistants. The minimum order for the deal on Sticker Mule was 50 stickers, so even if he only gave them out in his class, we’ll have leftover stickers to share with friends or I can list them in my sticker store for a few bucks.

Overall, this wasn’t crazy expensive and I love coming up with a fun way to do non-food, non-candy, allergen-free valentines.

April's Holiday Card - 2021

April’s holiday card for this past year was pretty awesome and I love how it turned out. She convinced her son to post in a bathrobe holding a soda can and I went to work in Photoshop to turn him into Uncle Eddie from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

I was able to include their two dogs in there as well and it was so much fun to work on. It was actually an interesting challenge to get the photos to match since any photos I could find of this scene from the film were quite grainy.

What a fun and hilarious idea for a holiday card, thank you, April!

Custom Valentines on Etsy

I have had so much fun creating valentines for my kids’ elementary school Valentine’s Day parties. Every year I expect them to ask for cartoon-branded, big box store valentines and every year they surprise me by wanting something custom-made by their mom.

I have made three of these valentines available for purchase in my Etsy shop. See below for instructions on how to order. This post contains a few affiliate links. Shopping through these links earns me a few cents and it’s greatly appreciated to keep my little business running.

Airplane-themed valentines! These are about 8x2.5 inches after they’ve been folded in half. They are designed to be stapled to snack-size baggies filled with valentine treats. You can consider sending non-candy, non-food, and allergen-free valentines to school and order foam airplane kits like pictured. You can order them from Amazon here. Just staple to the top of the poly bags. These were a HUGE hit in my kids’ classes last year. I add their salutation to the back written in “clouds”.

Link to this listing

Expo Marker Valentines! These were our valentines for 2021. We opted to go non-edible again and gave each classmate a dry erase marker; which was a hot commodity that school year. For their teachers, they got a Ziplock back with 6 Expo markers and 4 Sharpies. The cards are set up 4 to a page and there is enough space to adhere a thick or thin dry erase marker to the card with double-stick tape or washi tape. Choose from four different color schemes. You can buy dry erase markers from Amazon or your local Costco or Sam’s Club.

Link to this listing

Fishing Themed Valentines! These were so much fun to create. My boys love fishing; my oldest especially. So it was only fitting to opt for a fishing-themed valentine. These are approximately 8x2.5 inches when folded in half. I turn your child into a fishing cartoon and after these are trimmed and folded in half, they can easily be stapled to a snack-size Ziplock bag. You can go sandwich-size if you’d like. Fill these with Goldfish crackers, Swedish fish, or maybe gummy worms.

Link to this listing

When I create new valentines, I’ll try to add them to my shop if they’re worth it. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Our Holiday Cards - 2020 & 2021

I realized that I never shared my family’s holiday card from 2020. It was an interesting year for sure. It was also the first year we opted to skip the professional photos with Santa that we’d been doing for the past six years and instead we just put my iPhone on a tripod and took photos in our bedroom. It was a year of unintended togetherness and we all survived. The photo quality wasn’t great, but it kind of fit for how 2020 went.

On the back I shared a bit about what we were all up to during the year.

This year I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. 2021 was a year of road trips for us since my husband spent the whole year on sabbatical, so we traveled during every school break and a few times during the summer. Then the second half of the year was dedicated to my oldest and I training for our taekwondo black belt test.

So we decided to have our travels be the focus of our holiday card this year. I put together a collage of Polaroid photos from some of our adventures and then the back listed some of the highlights of our year and a salutation.

The photo on the back was taken at Sand Hollow State Park by the amazing Arika Bauer from Zion Adventure Photog. She took wonderful family photos for us just after Christmas last year and I adore how they turned out. If you’re ever in southern Utah and want some fantastic photos to document your travels, or even just a beautiful backdrop for family photos, give her a call. She works great with kids and she’s even done engagements and proposals.

Both this year and last year, I had my cards printed at my local Office Depot. They’ve done a good job every time I’ve had something printed and they get it done quickly; usually done the same day. When I have the time to place an online order, I usually go with Overnight Prints.

Here’s to getting further through a pandemic and hopefully moving closer to a life that’s closer to the normal we had before. Happy New Year!