Christmas Cards through the years!

If you know me well, you know that I L-O-V-E Christmas cards! Having worked at a stationery store now for over 5 years, they have always been my favorite part of my job. Something about picking the perfect picture and then picking an even better card to go with it...oh, and don't even get me started on how you should word it!

LOVE them!

Anyways, I thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane and see all of our Christmas cards through the years...I keep one of each on the side of the 'fridge, and I just love to look at how much our lives (and my hair-dos!) have changed!

So....here we go!

2006 Christmas

B and I were to be married in a few short months, so we wanted to send out a few cards to our family and close friends...nothing special, something cute! And of course, we had to include our "fur babies"! I loved that we put "the soon to be" family!

2007 Christmas

We married in May 2007, and although it had been several months since we married, I was determined to use a wedding picture! We picked a card with a ribbon this year, too, and I remember telling B that we would NEVER do that again. Tying ribbons on 100+ Christmas cards is toooooo much! And we used our verse that we were using a lot that Christmas, "Every good and perfect gift is from above."

2008 Christmas

This was the year that the digital Christmas card came out. No actual picture prints to go on the card...just print the image digitally, and voila! We had a ROUGH year in 2008, and I was bound and determined to have a fun card, and put our new fur baby, Turner, on it! I think we accomplished our idea of fun!

2009 Christmas

This year, I went back to the picture print card - my mom complained that she didn't like the fact that you couldn't take the picture off and frame it. Plus, I had already picked the picture that I LOVED, but couldn't find exactly what I wanted in a digital card. So, we went with a different color scheme (blue) to match the picture and chose a non-traditional Christmas verse, "Come, let us bow down in worship. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for He is our God"

(Psalm 95:5-6).

We were still hurting from a miscarriage earlier that year, so this verse was very comforting for us at that time.

2010 Christmas

Major drama this year. We had a newborn, and we were coming the heels of sending our birth announcements...what do you do?! Do something COMPLETELY different and girly and absolutely adorable! I saw this card and immediately called our photographer, Joy, to see if we could do a photo to match the card at Annie Louise's upcoming 3-month pictures. She, of course, was all for it, and ta-da, we had the absolute SWEEEEEEEEETEST Christmas card that year!

And yes, 'tis so sweet to trust in Jesus!

2011 Christmas

So, when you put a lot of thought and time into something year after year, people start to expect something amazing. I knew I had to BRING IT this year for our card. And I had NO idea what I was going to do. I toyed with the idea of doing a collage of pictures because we had so many great ones from Joy, but that was just too overwhelming. I decided to wait until after we had our family photo shoot at the end of October (because, hello, I start thinking about Christmas cards in like, July...doesn't everyone???)...we had a great session, and I couldn't make myself pick one picture. I enlisted the help of my very good friend, Susan at The Write Impression, to help me. Well, what we came up with was beyond perfect. I was obsessed with this picture, but didn't know if it would be too cheese-y to use it. I'm glad I went with my gut and just went for it, because it's my absolute favorite card. And for the first time, I didn't let ANYONE see it beforehand, not my mama, not my sister, NO ONE. It was a complete surprise, and my email and text message box blew up the day everyone got them.

What in the world am I going to do NEXT year?! Oh, Lord help us!

I hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane! Have you ordered your own Christmas cards? Are you a neurotic about them as I am...PLEASE fill me in! Or better yet, show me your own cards!