What’s on your to-do list today?  Here is mine ->

If you’re wondering what my to-do list writing strategy is, I don’t have one. 🙂

As you can see at the bottom of my to-do list, I want to take photos of the kids for Christmas cards.  I was left inspired and motivated after creating a customized Christmas card on Cardstore.com yesterday.

In 2011 and 2013 I mailed Christmas cards to family.  Great job, I think to myself – better than the other 12 years since I’ve had kids when I didn’t mail Christmas cards out.. but they weren’t the cards I wanted or visioned.  I visioned a Christmas card with a gorgeous photo of the kids ON the front of the card with an inspiring holiday message of love and well wishes for our friends and family overlaying or above or below the message.  Instead I sent out standard stock holiday cards with a photos of the kids inside it.  Boring.

I am so grateful that I have Cardstore.com to turn to this year.   Cardstore.com allows users to choose from hundreds of gorgeous holiday card designs and customize the card with a photograph and text of their choice.

The great thing about creating a customized card where you embed a photograph ON it through a website like Cardstore.com is that their designs make any photograph look good.  Yes, that awkward photograph of your three kids, one with a clump of flyaway hair, one with cross-eyes, and one who isn’t smiling at all, will look good ON a Christmas card.

Here is the 1st Christmas card I created on Cardstore.com

It is very easy to create a personalized card on Cardstore.com.

To create a customized holiday card on Cardstore.com simply follow these steps:

1. Go to cardstore.com
2. Click on ‘Christmas’ in the top left
3. Click on photo cards in the drop down menu that appears
4. Choose to refine your search (select how many photos you’d like on your card, background color, etc)
5. Click the ‘make your card’ button to the right of the card you’d like to customize
6. When your card design opens, click on Your Photo Here with the + symbol
7. Choose how you’d like to upload your photo
   (Initial options are: your device, Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, and Flickr but if you click “see all options” you’ll see these options: Picasa, Google Drive, SkyDrive, Box, and Evernote!)
8. Browse your selected choice and click on the photo you’d like to upload
9. Once you click the photo, you will need to double-click it to add it to your card
10. Click the pink ‘done’ button
11. To change the default text on your card design, click directly on the text.  A text box will appear allowing you to change the text verbiage, font, color, and size.
12. Click Save at the top of the page when you are finished customizing your card and follow the steps as prompted.

The process of finding and customizing my Christmas card on Cardstore.com took about 10 minutes.

I had so much fun playing around with designs on Cardstore.com and already have card ideas in mind for other holidays!

I am going to create another custom card on Cardstore.com once I get a good photograph of the kids.  Wish me luck!  I’ll be searching Google for “how to take holiday photographs of kids” later today. 🙂

Cardstore.com stands out because of its clean, beautiful site and its ease of use and who doesn’t love pretty cards?

Cardstore.com can be a busy parent’s best friend year round!   Imagine the cards you can create for:

• birthdays
• Mother’s Day
• Father’s Day
• anniversaries
• and for your child’s teachers!

Create your own personalized holiday cards at http://po.st/PersonalizeYourCard today!  From November 21st – 26th Cardstore is offering 30% off holiday cards!

Here’s a tip from one parent to another:
Don’t worry about having the perfect photo for your Christmas cards!  
Your friends and family are going to love your Christmas card no matter what!  Enjoy a few minutes on Cardstore.com and you’ll see that even the most imperfect photos make for a great Christmas card!