Christmas Cards

One of my favorite things about Christmas is receiving Christmas cards.  I LOVE going to the mailbox and getting each card.  I love seeing the family pictures, pictures of new babies, and the fun designs!  I also love when people write a letter.  It doesn't happen as often and I've found it to be something that my parents' generation does.  Maybe when our family is more active- baseball games, swim meets, and summer camp- we will write a letter too but until then, we do just pictures, like so many of our friends.

This year, I wanted our Christmas card to double as Colin's birth announcement.  I found a vendor on Etsy who had exactly what I wanted.  She made is so simple and easy!  The chalkboard theme that I used in so much of Colin's baby book and my bump updates had to be put to use in his announcement as well.  And I loved it!

And the back...

Usually I collect our Christmas cards in a festive basket, sitting in the corner of our dining room.  But this year, I wanted to display all of the cards so we could really enjoy them all season long!  So I searched Pinterest for a creative way to display them and this is what I came up with...

Our front closet doors became the Christmas card display area.  This was really simple and so fun to fill up as the cards arrived.  I just put two holiday, red and gold ribbons on the doors (taped on the inside of the door at the top and bottom) and using some clothes pins I was able to put up the cards.

On Sunday, when I took down all the Christmas decorations I enjoyed looking at the cards one last time.  In years past, I take all the cards and they end up in a pile in the guest bedroom closet.  I decided I needed a better way to keep them so once again I called on Pinterest.  I found a fun idea of making a book of the cards and so here is my end product...

I just hole punched the cards and then made a book with ribbon to hold it together.  Now all of the 2013 cards are all together in one place and I can bring this out each year to display, perhaps in that old basket I didn't use this year :)

One last thing I wanted to do this year was to display all of our Hannay Christmas cards.  I think as the years go by, it will be really fun to see how our family changes, grows and all of our life experiences captured in one card.  Here is my mini display this year.. 2011, 2012, 2013

Do you have any fun ways of displaying your Christmas cards?  And what do you do at the end of the Christmas season with all the cards your received?  I love fun new ideas!

Cheers,