Design Crafters

What’s your pleasure?  By that I mean, what’s your favorite way of keeping track of who all you are sending out holiday greetings to? Some people use old-fashioned address books, some sync up their PDAs and use mail merge or similar to create address labels for their home printers, and some write it out all long-hand.  The ways and means of keeping your Christmas card list are many and varied.

Trust me…while I’ll never be one to knock hand-written lists on pads of legal paper, I do agree that after a certain point, it’s time to go as automatic as you can.  By automatic I mean you could type out the list on a typewriter (if you can find one), in a Microsoft Word document, or an Excel spreadsheet.  Yes, the romance of sending out holiday wishes and cheer to friends and family is taken away a tad when Excel spreadsheets get involved, but if you are estimating you’ll be sending out a significant number of Christmas cards this year, the convenience and ease of going automated truly can’t be beat.

For those more traditional purists who are adamant that your Christmas cards be as personal and heartfelt as possible – and are therefore steadfastly against using peel-and-stick address labels that you’ve printed card recipients’ addresses onto – then one nice alternative option would be to use pre-printed return address labels, or even a rubber stamp, at least.  Addressing 150 Christmas card envelopes by hand is an admirable feat, but do your poor writing hand a favor and leave the return address to the professionals.  Don’t forget, even after you’ve finished addressing the envelopes, there’s still the cards to sign, stamp, and seal!But it’s all worth it, both to you and your cards’ recipients.