This post is in collaboration with Minted. All opinions are my own. 

I love Christmas. I also love Christmas cards.

I’ve sent Christmas cards since high school. I can remember wandering through the store looking for the perfect box of cards to hand out to my friends with their Christmas gifts. Of course, I could never decide on which cards I wanted to give so then I ended up with lots of extra cards at the end of the season. When Brad and I got married, it was around the time that photo cards were emerging. Each year, I contemplated between ordering photo cards, or making cards with stamps and scrap-booking paper. In more recent years, I have looked forward to picking out the perfect photo which represents the year, and finding a card which highlights this photo well.

Many years our photo for the card highlights a fun vacation (like a plane flying over our heads in St. Maarten) or life event (like our announcement that we were adopting). This year, our “big vacation” for the year was in January so Brad and I headed out to a local park to take photos.

Over the years, our Christmas card list has grown. Between friends and family, we regularly send out over 100 Christmas cards each year. A list this size may seem daunting; however, I have a few tips to make sending Christmas cards stress free and fun.

The most daunting thing about a Christmas card list is keeping track of all the addresses. Our Christmas card list started as our wedding invitation list, and over the years it has emerged as people move and new friends are added.  By maintaining a single list of addresses it is easy to pull up all these addresses for Christmas cards and quickly glance over it to see who you need updates from. I mail about 75% of these cards, the other are delivered during friend Holiday parties or into the mailboxes that each family has at church.

One of the best things about Minted is that they offer FREE recipient addressing. Since I’ve had my Christmas card list going for years, it was easy to convert it into the appropriate format to upload into the Minted address book. There were a few people who I knew had moved this past year so since I didn’t have their address quite yet, I just put their name into the address book with a blank address that I will fill in later. This allowed them to get the fun decorated envelope with their names.

This year, I also opted to have the return address printed on the envelopes. The return address isn’t a free option like the recipient addressing; however, it will make my life simpler; and when I’m ordering over 100 cards, making life simple is important.

Sometimes, the hardest part about picking the perfect card is finding one that works great with your photo composition. With Minted, you can upload your photo before you choose the card, and see how your photo will look in each one. Most elements of the cards can be moved as well, so if some words are going across your face, just shift it over. Because of the gold foil process, those elements can’t be moved so I definitely utilized the ability to preview my card before personalizing. I was so excited that the Merry Christmas Swirls design fit with our photo because it was one of my favorites when I was browsing the site.

For our Christmas photo this year, Brad and I headed out with some friends to a local park for a quick photo session. I had searched Pinterest for some outfit inspiration and I think that I pulled our outfits off pretty well. I really wanted to use a red tulle skirt in our photos so that was the base for both Brad and my outfits. I picked up this skirt from Amazon; however, it was more tea-length on me which makes me just look awkwardly short so I marked about 9″ up around the skirt and simply cut the tulle.

Kendra’s Outfit: Skirt, Top, Leggings, Booties. Brad’s Outfit: Jeans, Polo, SweaterI absolutely love our Christmas cards and Minted will definitely be at the top of the list for future card projects (make sure to check out how I used them for a co-ed baby shower, garden tea party bridal shower, and bachelorette party as well). If you like the look of foil-pressed, but would like a different color, you can opt for Rose Gold, Silver, Glittery Gold, or Glittery Silver as well.

Have you ordered your Christmas cards? What sort of style are you looking for this year?