It’s that time of the year. You know, that special time when you’re looking back at all your photos and trying to figure out if you have one of you and your significant other, looking carefree and happy. You think there might be a nice picture from a month back, but when you take a second glance your eyelids are half closed. You continue your search for something usable, until you realize, with horror, that you have no photos of the two of you. All of your holiday hopes and dreams have been crushed in one fell swoop! Well, that’s where I am. Minus the horror.

Last year we got married, so it was as easy as copy/paste. Observe the lovely, professional photo I used for our holiday card:

All my years as a stationery designer and I never made my own holiday card. I was usually just too damn busy and exhausted to muster up the energy. Finally, after all these years, I had one made! It’s the little victories ?

A post shared by Eva Grall (@evagrall) on Dec 19, 2016 at 12:41pm PST

Of course, now that we’ve actually gotten better at photography, I don’t have a single photo of the two of us. Except if you count the self-portrait we took huddled around our campfire in Maine, where I look angry and Jon looks disinterested. So, if I don’t have a photo of the two of us, what else do I do?

I thought I could skip this year, and wait until there’s another family event with photos worth sharing. No one would miss our card, given that we don’t have children and that’s usually why people send one out in the first place (“oh, look at how big they’ve gotten!”). But today I considered sending a card with a landscape photo from one of our trips. It could be like a little postcard from our travels, rather than a close-up photo of me and Jon, another year older (Ha!). Sharing a picture from our trip to Iceland, in particular, could be really fun. I looked back at the photos of Dyrhólaey, the ice caves, and the Northern Lights – thinking one of them might be worth sending out with an uplifting message for the New Year. It’s different than what’s expected, but I think I like that more.

Do you send out a holiday card every year?

P.S. I use Minted for all of my cards, as their company supports independent designers and they have a lot of options. They’re offering 15% Off Holiday Cards with code BEMERRY, so be sure to order soon. I’ve picked some of my favorite layouts for you below, including the one I used last year!