Happy Valentine's Day

 Our annual holiday card:

Did you  notice that I don't know how to spell "spot" in our blog address?  Let's be honest, not everything is exactly in the appropriate month because some months were more exciting than others!


Because Christmas is such a cRaZy time of year, we prefer sending out yearly Valentine's Day Card's. It's only our second year doing this, but we really do hope it will turn into a tradition.


I have Bower Power to thank this year for her creative way of posting one special event every month.  Who reads the 1 page letters people send out anyway?!?!


Let's talk about how we made these: first we beg Joel's dad to spend an afternoon taking pictures of us...he always agrees and literally took hundreds of photo's of us that I'll be posting this week. It's funny to see how much we "age" over the years!


Next, I search all over Tiny Print's website to see their adorable Valentine's Day Cards that I could never ever afford. 


I remake my own version on gimp (a free program similar to photo shop).


Then, print the cards.  


Let's talk about prices.  We like to do everything pretty cheap, including our yearly cards.  This year we went with postcards because postage is $0.28 compared to $0.44 each.  We used vista print because I could receive 100 of their basic postcards for free with an offer they were running.  I upgraded sections of the postcard, for example, used matte paper & uploading photo's brought the total to $26. Shipping was $13, but when they arrived, vista print had trimmed off one side of the postcard, so  they refunded everything but shipping. They weren't perfect, but they were FREE and I really doubt most people noticed. 


Postage to our 50 friends cost us $15.
Joel handed out 25 to his coworkers in person. Total cost of our annual cards: $30.
 Not bad for 100 personalized cards considering they would cost us close to $150 if we would have someone else make them!! 

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!!