Our Christmas Card & The 25 Days of Christmas

Yesterday as I was "reclaiming" my main floor from the toys that had taken over I stopped to admire all of the beautiful Christmas cards we received this year.  We have a wire Christmas-tree shaped card holder and it is always overflowing with cards from people we love by the end of December.  I love every single photograph, every personal note and every family update letter.  Receiving Christmas cards brings me so much joy during the holiday season!

I kept waiting to share our 2011 Christmas card until I had them all mailed.  There are still a few here that haven't gotten sent for one reason or another, but I'm excited to share our card today anyway.  Here is the front:

And here is the back:

I saw the idea to use letters to spell out "Joy" on pinterest and knew right away that I wanted to use that for our card.  There is nothing more wonderful to feel than true joy, and especially at Christmas time.  (Sidenote--"Joy" has inadvertently become the theme for my December.  It has come up in numerous conversations, was the topic of our Christmas Eve church service and has been mentioned a lot throughout social media that I've seen.  God thing?  I think YES!) 

I printed our cards through mixbook.com using groupons and ended up spending less than 35 cents per card.  They are printed on a nice sturdy cardstock.  I'm not being told or asked to say this, but if you haven't checked out mixbook.com for cards, digital photo books, and other photo gifts, you should!  We've been very happy with them having used them for three different sets of cards now.

On a completely different topic, this year I saw an idea on a blog I read (forgive me, I forget which one, but I'll give credit here once I figure it out!) to do one special activity on each day from December 1st until Christmas.  I thought it would be really fun for our family to do this, so I came up with my own list of the "25 days of Christmas"

1.  Elf on the Shelf Jack arrives w/ books
2.  Make hot chocolate and stir w/ candy canes
3.  Go to our preschool parents group Christmas party
4.  Have a Christmas-themed family movie night
5.  Pay for someone else's lunch as a Christmas surprise (to spread Joy of course!)
6.  Start using our new holiday pillowcases
7.  Go to Kraynak's, a holiday tradition from the time I was little

8.  Have a Christmas music dance party

9.  Color Christmas pictures

10.  Help to mail Christmas Cards
11.  Assemble and wrap whisks for special people  (We gave teachers / bus drivers / dance and little gym teachers / etc. whisks filled with hershey kisses and a note that said "We whisk you a Merry Kiss-Mas" as part of their gifts this year--I will share a photo later!)
12.  Shop for a little girl in need
13.  Take a drive to look at holiday lights
14.  Get Christmas photos taken
15.  Go to Jaden's school Christmas party AND Country Lights Event (both were happening on the same day)
16.  Give Christmas gifts to our teachers at school

17.  Make Reindeer craft

18.  Take gifts to neighbors
19.  Bake Christmas cookies together
20.  Go shopping for mom / dad / sisters
21.  Go to The Little Gym for holiday CAMP

22.  Leave a gift for our mailwoman

23.  Call our grandparents and sing them a Christmas carol

24.  Go to the Zetts family Christmas party

25.  Decorate and eat a birthday cake for Jesus

Those that are red actually did not get done for a variety of reasons.  #25 we are going to do tomorrow with my sisters and nephews at our belated Christmas celebration with them.  In lieu of the others, we did a few different things:

1.  Special visit from cousin Tomi

2.  Make gingerbread houses

3.  Watch the new Elf on the Shelf TV show

4.  Go to ZooLights at the Columbus Zoo

5.  Attend a special Christmas program with Grammy Pammy

We also had all the supplies out to make the reindeer craft, but made decorated popsicle stick frames instead.  Even the most perfectly laid plans don't go right 100% of the time, but we improvised and made it work :)

I'm really glad we implemented this 25 days into our December and would love to keep it up in future years!  I'd like to incorporate more items that spread Christmas joy as the girls get older.  At first they didn't understand why we were paying for the lunch of the person behind us in a drive-thru, but once they caught onto the concept they were really excited and we ended up actually doing it three different times.  It was funny when we'd just order drinks and then pay for an entire meal for the car behind us :)  Jaden also humored me with a comment one day when she said, "I wish someone would pay for US sometime!"--haha, the way the 6-year-old mind works!

I have photos of many of the events we did as part of our 25 days and will be sharing those shortly.  I'd love to have all of my December / holiday posts wrapped up before 2012--we'll see if that happens!