Beautiful Shutterfly Christmas cards coming at ya!

Capturing that perfect Christmas card picture has been hard. You can plan and plan but it all comes down to how the little ones are feeling that day. Check out these photos from the last few years:

Olivia's second Christmas. The first she was too young to be scared. This time around she was wondering who the heck this man is? I was about 5-6 weeks preggo with Alexis and was probably trying really hard not to barf on Santa.

Alexis's first Christmas. Olivia was still not loving Santa. Nobody, including me, wanted to be there.

Same Santa as two years ago. Back to Metrotown to try sitting on Santa's knee with no mom and dad. Nope, still not buying the whole deal about sitting on a strange man's knee. Good girls! I wish I had combed my hair though. And put on nice shoes.

So we decided to try Oakridge b/c there's never any line ups there. Um...$27 for one photo? Crap, too late to go to Metrotown. Damn, I didn't comb my hair again. At least you can't see what I"m wearing. Check out Olivia's self hair cut! I came home from work and after a few minutes, I see something on the floor. Is that hair? Wait a second.....Olivia!!! She had cut one side of her hair off, as well as the beautiful curls at the back of Lexie's head. At first I was so stressed out but then I realized I had to let it go. Plus, I can use it at her wedding and we can all laugh.

Do you see the theme for all our "BIG Holiday Family Photos"? Yup, Dan and I are in them. I take so much time to pick out the outfit for the girls, get them dressed and ready for the photo but I always forget about myself. You'd think by the 4th photo I'd learn my lesson and get myself dressed up in case I'm in the photo. I love all the photos but just this once I'd love to NOT be in the picture. I've got the dresses picked out, all the accessories picked out and I'm starting to prep the girls. (ie. Santa is AWESOME! Santa brings you such nice presents. Santa is a good guy.) This year we're going to take it a step further: we're going to do Christmas cards!!!! Thanks to Shutterfly that is. I always have grand ideas of what my Christmas card will look like and how I"ll get them out so early. But then stuff happens. Like I don't get the photo I want, I'm pregnant (past tense!), I'm tired etc etc.

So Shutterfly is doing a promtion for bloggers. 50 free holiday cards for doing a write up about the cards. Hey that's me! I'm a blogger now. Weird, who knew I had the extra time? I am so all over this one. I love their stuff and of course I love free stuff. Check it out here: http://blog.shutterfly.com/5358/holiday2010-blog-submission-form/

Shutterfly isn't new to me. I just had the opportunity to make a photo book through Shutterfly. http://www.shutterfly.com/photo-books It was so fun! It became my new obsession. Every night after the girls went to bed I would go on and work on my photo book. It was fairly easy too. They have this Storyboard feature where you can place your photos and play around with layouts easily. And at first it was just the layouts and backgrounds that I tinkered with. Then I discovered that I could play around with font and colour! I spent about 2 weeks on it and I'm starting a second book too.

Well, I need a little help choosing our Christmas card. I can't decide which card I'll use. Check them out here and let me know which you like: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/flat-stationery-cards

I tend to like ones where you can have multiple pictures. Now that we have 3 kids we need that.

I like this one: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/cards-stationery/elegant-cranberry-damask-christmas-card-5x7-flat?sortType=1&storeNode=93479

And I like this one too but maybe it's because it's the beach and that's where I wish I was at right now:

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/cards-stationery/peppermint-bliss-christmas-card-5x7-flat?sortType=1&storeNode=93479

On to another topic: little Miss Cassidy. She is getting so big. She's already 8 months old! I was going to look for birth announcements on Shutterfly but as I was looking I realized that she's closer to a year than she is to a newborn. I'm shedding a little tear as I type...I like to plan ahead so I might as well start now seeing as how we've now got 2 birthdays in March. I'm off to the link below to start planning her first birthday:

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/baby-birthday-invitations/baby-girls-1st-birthday-invitations