Novice

For those of you who produce a beautiful Christmas card with pictures of your family each year...

For those of you who produce a wonderfully condensed letter of the year in review on pretty Christmas letterhead...

It's not as easy as it looks. It wasn't simple for me anyway.

I wrote a letter. Four pages long. There were plans to condense it, but I've always hated condensing what I've written. It's never been a simple thing for me. Procrastination set in.

My last day here before going South for Christmas, I knew I had to finish my Christmas cards and get them in the mail. Procrastination had to meet its end. 

Since Matt read and liked the letter just as it was, it was just a matter of getting the printing, assembly and mailing done. I went online and found an option to make a Christmas card with a picture collage. The background selection was limited to a few solid colors. I wanted to seek out other card options. I wanted something nicer, but I waited too long.

With no printer set up at home, there wasn't the option of printing a test page of the letter to see if it was necessary to shift the text. With no office supply store close by and no mailing labels, all the envelopes had to be handwritten. 

Needless to say, producing this year's Christmas cards became an all day event. Matt even chipped in with the folding, stuffing, sealing and stamping in the evening so I wouldn't be up past midnight. We had to be up at 5 a.m. the next morning to get ready and go to the airport for my flight.

This was the end result (I used two different kinds of Christmas letterhead, only one appears below):

 A respectable result, I think. For a novice. 

The conclusion: Procrastination is not my friend, especially when I am new at the task. I will be starting the Christmas card process earlier next year.