7 Quick Takes: Christmas Card Edition

7 Quick Takes

My first round of Christmas cards (~110 of them) has been dropped in a few of the mailboxes in my subdivision. (We spread them out so as not to clog the slot on the dropbox where our mailbox is.) Here are the things that allow me to do that many cards in the matter of a few hours.

Also, there will be some Amazon affiliate links because I am an Amazon associate. (It supports my bullet journal habit.)

— 1 —

Photo cards from Shutterfly. I don’t have a Costco account, so Shutterfly is my BFF. I buy myself $25 gift cards for about 5-6 months during the year and those pay for my cards as well as any photobooks or prints of pictures that I need for the holidays.

Walgreens also usually has deals on photo cards as well.

— 2 —

The ability to order stamps by mail. The USPS website gives you the option of buying stamps online. You do have to pay shipping (usually $1.30), but that is worth avoiding long lines at the post office at this time of year. I usually order stamps with my November paycheck or get last year’s design over the period of a few months.

— 3 —

A big surface. I usually take over the dining room table at home or a table at $tarbux for this purpose. This allows me to create a system to streamline the process.

— 4 —

Envelope moisteners. These are invaluable, incredibly cheap, and save your tongue from papercuts it might get from licking all those envelopes. I’ve used this one and this one before.

— 5 —

YouTube. I didn’t watch anything on YouTube while doing them this year because I was watching my sister-in-law chase my nephew around. (My nephew is almost 18 months old and enjoys running at lightspeed around our house because we have an open floor plan that creates a track for him.) In previous years, I’ve watched lectures by Fr. James Martin S.J., Fr. Greg Boyle S.J., and various TED talks as well as Viperkeeper videos.

— 6 —

Microsoft Access. I keep a master list on OneDrive in an access file. You can even create forms in Access that allow you to put in information quickly. (I’m a Microsoft Access junkie.)

— 7 —

Avery.Com templates. Avery.Com has some really cool label templates that you can use when you create an Avery.Com account. I use their labels, so I can just put the label name in, and it gives me designs for that size of label.

For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.