Mission Accomplished: Christmas Cards Sent Thanks to MyPublisher!

Everyone knows the third kid gets slighted. I remember the episode of Roseanne where DJ finds out that he doesn't have a Baby Book. Sad to say, neither does Princess E, yet. For both H&R, I made a photo album for their first birthday party chronicling the first year of their lives. In this day and age, nobody prints out photos. It has become especially difficult because you take 20 or 30 or 100 photos a time on any particular occasion because you can. The digital camera, the SLR, and now the super fast speed of the iPhone 5. So the thought of sifting through all the photos was so daunting, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Sorry E!

Boys are not amused

I thought, ok, I don't have a photo album from her first year, but I'll make a photo album out of all the great photos that will come out of her first birthday party. It was a great party but E was so exhausted she slept for 60% of it. The rest of the time, brothers H&R were jealous of all the attention E was getting so they were not cooperative with regards to photos. So no pretty photo album from her first birthday party.

What does all of this have to do with Christmas Cards? Well, I got it in my head that if I had a professional photographer (Christine Szeto, check her out!) take photos of our family, she would be able to get smiles out of my kids and some great shots which I could use for our Christmas Cards and to make a photo book for E, finally. The first time we scheduled the shoot was for the day before we were to drive 12 hours to Portland in August. I don't know what I was thinking! The day before the shoot, I called Christine begging her if we could postpone because I had a million things to take care of before our trip. Thankfully she understood and we agreed to rebook after we got back from Portland. We got back from Portland and, with Back to School activities and some crazy family drama, it was November before I got back in touch with Christine. The only date she had left was November 17th. November 17th-the Saturday before Thanksgiving. If you know that I was head manager of our college football team, then you understand what that morning means to me. The Game-the one game played by my alma mater that is televised every year, the Bulldogs vs. our hated rivals, the Cantabs. Anyway, I digress. I gave up watching The Game this year for the sake of the family Christmas photos.  I know, what a sacrifice!

My heels are covered in mud! Photo credit: Christine Szeto

Oh, but it gets better. It's raining. Just a few drops at first, but then downpour. Hey, I missed The Game for this, we are doing it! We're standing in the rain, smiling and praying that none of the kids slips in mud. Luckily Christine is standing under an awning surrounding our complex clubhouse so she doesn't get her $$$$$ camera wet. If the awning weren't there she would have had to turn back since a wet camera doesn't take very good pictures! But she's a pro and manages it. She got some great shots and we have the photos for our Christmas photo. Ok, the hard part should be over, right? No! Now I had to figure out where to get the cards done. There are so many online card services now and some of them have upwards of 200 different designs. Sometimes, more is not better. Especially when that increased choice means increased cost.

I finally decided to go with MyPublisher because it was one of the few that could get our card turned around within a week and because the prices of the individual cards were lower than that of the company we went with in the past.

Using MyPublisher was really easy, I picked the template that would go best with the photos I had in mind, uploaded the photos and then placed the photos into the card. When you place the photo you can crop and edit to make it what you want it to be. I really liked the fact that you could choose whether it would be a glossy photo or a matte card, which seems to be the trend these days. I don't know of any other site that gives you a choice per design.

MyPublisher My Projects View

I ordered the card on Monday, we received it on Saturday. We had one hour for Stewart and the boys to assemble everything and get it to the post office before it closed. So if you get a card from us before Christmas, please know that a LOT went into this card. If you don't get a card from us until afterwards or you don't get one, we were in a rush to get the addresses on so we may have missed you or made a mistake with your address, sorry! MyPublisher does offer the option to send them for you, but I knew that there were some that I needed to add things to (like H's 1st grade photo and R's drawing of a camel party) so that wouldn't work for me this time.

I'll be using MyPublisher to take the remaining photos from our family photo shoot and turn them into a memory book. I had asked Christine to take extra photos of E so she would know later that we did this mainly for her. Hopefully that will make up for the fact that she doesn't have a baby book! If you are looking for a site to create a 2012 yearbook for your family, MyPublisher currently has a promotion for new customers offering 2 for the price of 1. If you have a mother with a birthday in January like me, that might come in handy!   

I did not receive compensation for this post. I did use a coupon from MyPublisher that I received at BlogHer 2012 to facilitate my review. Founded in 1994, MyPublisher was the inventor and first marketer of high quality, single-copy, custom books at an affordable price. Since then, MyPublisher has evolved as a leading internet retailer of personalized Photo Applications to enable consumers to creatively customize, share, print, and preserve digital photographs.