Warm Holiday Greetings

I've been wanting to share my holiday cards here, but decided to wait long enough for everyone to receive them in their mailbox first. This morning I uploaded all the pics, planning to write the post later in the day. I realized the post was meant to be today because a) it's actually WARM and sunny here today, so it truly is a Warm Holiday Greeting and b) many other of the blogs I follow also shared their holiday card today!

My only real plan for making holiday cards this year was to use materials I had on hand, which included a large pack of festive holiday paper. I saw these cute cards ideas from Paper Source and was planning to use them as inspiration. 

Over Thanksgiving we took this nice photo in Laguna Beach and I got to thinking...why not use the photo for our cards. I mean, who wouldn't want to see B and I arrive in their mailbox? :) 

While there are many wonderful websites that will produce beautiful photo cards, I still wanted to make the cards myself (need to use up that holiday paper!). Using Picasa I added the Warm Holiday Greetings as seen below. In less than an hour Wallgreens had my photos ready for pick-up! 

I mounted the pictures on dark brown cardstock. Using my cherry Divine Twine (I know, I am obsessed with it) I wrapped the photos to look like a package. 

Using 12x12 sheets of holiday paper, I cut a festive base for the card. I attached the holiday paper to a flat piece of Kraft paper.

With scraps from the paper above, I made coordinated envelopes! 

I attached the two pieces of paper together, added labels and stamps to the envelopes and viola - a Warm Holiday Greeting from our house to yours! I'm really happy with how the cards turned out and have received so many sweet comments from friends and family. 

I wanted to make something smaller but similar for a few of my co-workers. Here is what I came up with...

While I truly enjoy making and mailing holiday cards, there is nothing I love more than coming home to holiday mail. Our Happy Holidays garland is filling up nicely!

Here are a few of the presents I wrapped last night. Cute tags, eh? I decided to use simple paper this year (it's actually packaging paper from CVS) with the tags I made and festive ribbon. Easy breasy. Now hoping they all travel well on the airplane! 

Tonight we're off to Colorado! I am SO EXCITED to be home for the holidays!!