Homemade Christmas Cards

The frantic pace of the Christmas holiday season may leave you feeling like you can't wait for it to be over. All of the last minute shopping, preparations for parties you are hosting, parties you are going to, family gatherings, office gatherings, it just keeps coming.

While this may be at least part of the reality of the Christmas holiday, you can set the tone and make things different for your family by planning fun activities that everyone can be a part of. You may already do this with some things, like trimming the tree, but all too often chances for family activity are swept aside due to lack of time.

One family activity that can bring the whole gang together and give you memories for years to come is making homemade Christmas cards. This is perfect because it is incredibly flexible and can therefore be fit into almost anyone's holiday schedule.

Before you disagree and tell me there is no way you can fit this in, stop and think for a minute. If you can't fit a few hours in all at once, you can split this up into several sessions. You can task the kids with doing things between sessions like finding fun shapes and pictures, or coming up with fun poses for the family portrait.

And if you already send out Christmas cards, you already have to go to the store to find the right ones, write them out (including the envelopes), etc. While making the cards yourself won't necessarily save you a lot of time, you could design them and then send them to a copy shop for printing and folding, which shouldn't take any more time than you already spend.

Stuck for ideas? Check out this gallery of cards which were made by people all over the world and submitted there. You're sure to find inspiration there.

http://familycrafts.about.com/od/homemadechristmascards/ig/Christmas-Card-Gallery/

And if not, the Family Fun site from Disney has a section on homemade Christmas cards at this site here.

http://familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts/season/specialfeature/holiday_cards_ms/

My personal favorite is this one:

http://jas.familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts?page=CraftDisplay&craftid=11560

So, use this time wisely and make as many memories as you can with your kids. They will thank you for it, and have one more reason to think of this season as special.