Now that Halloween is behind us it’s time for the rapid decent into the end-of-year holidays and one of my favorite traditions – the holiday card.

I LOVE holiday cards and look forward to them each year. I love picking photos, searching out the best designs and writing greetings. I also am like a kid in the candy store when it comes to receiving cards. I can’t wait to get to the mailbox each day and I have a huge stack of cards from previous years stashed away with our holiday decorations. If it has a photo I’m keeping it and I’ll pull it out each year and admire it.

I blame my parents for this. They do the dreaded “Christmas Letter” every year (and every year I’m surprised to see what they think my work title is – it changes annually and is never correct). But they also keep all the letters they receive and each year when we are celebrating Christmas at their house both my sister and I pour over the letters and photos. I marvel over old neighbors for whom I babysat – their kids now graduating from college. Or getting a once-a-year update from second or third cousins. I love this tradition.

With a husband who is a designer we’ve gone the custom route before. But, these days it both quicker (have you ever worked with a designer who is his own toughest critic on his personal projects? Good luck getting a final design) and cheaper to go the pre-made route. Plus with the number of layouts to choose from there is a slim chance people will see your card over and over again in their mailbox.

Enter Shutterfly.  I’ve been using Shutterfly since the days when you sent them your film and they sent back your photos. Remember film? Yeah – it’s been that long.  I’ve even managed to get my mom hooked on the site and if it’s easy enough for her to use then anyone can use it. She loves to make photo books for the grandkids – chronicling her adventures with them. Those are some serious treasures; M loves reading her special books as bedtime stores.

Anyway, we’ve used Shutterfly for holiday cards before and will be doing so again this year. Seriously, with over 500 designs to choose from how can you go wrong? But, yeah – 500 designs to chose from. I need you to help me pick. Here are the 3 I’ve narrowed it down to:

I love this one because we had Wonderful World played at our wedding. Plus I would give us the opportunity to show off some of the great photos Heather took of the kids.

I like how this one is part photo card part “family update letter”

I really like how simple this one is and how it doesn’t scream “holiday” from the outside. I could hang a card like this on the fridge and not worry about it being out of season.

So help me pick – tell me which one you like best. And tell me – are you a holiday card collector like me? Do you write a letter or just send a card? Or do you skip it altogether?

Disclosure: I received 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly for this post.  All opinions are 100% mine and based on previous services/products for which I paid.