Christmas Cards and Pears

My friend Francie M. posted on Facebook that she didn't feel inspired to make Christmas cards this year, despite having purchased new product to work with, so she'd be sending out store-bought cards.

I love this. 

We need to listen to ourselves and take care of ourselves at all times, but especially during the holidays. The insidious push to have a perfectly Pinterest Christmas is unkind to us. Do we hold others to such unrealistic expectations? No. Yet we expect we can "do it all"...and exhaust ourselves.

Last Christmas, I shifted some things around and had a mostly minimalist Christmas, although I gave in to my enthusiasm for decorating our house. It was delightful and balanced! This year, I'm actually excited about shopping for presents for the first time in years, and I've already started. Not sure where this enthusiasm is coming from, but it's there, so I'm taking advantage. The thought of decorating, however, seems less interesting, so the halls won't be nearly as decked this year as last.

It's all good. 

I knew months ago that I'd never have enough Christmas cards made for this year. Our list is very long (a consequence of my husband's military career), so today I bought my first box of cards at Barnes & Noble. No guilt. No stress.

The fact that people still send cards is wonderful. Who cares if they are handmade, store-bought, or unsigned photo cards? Someone thinks enough of me to spend time and postage. I'm so very grateful!!! I hope they are, too.

On an unrelated topic, my friend Joan posted recently about making cards for non-crafters, offering a refreshingly honest look at what we do and how some people just don't get it. Her words got me thinking and made me look at the Crane and Papyrus notecards...the "quality" brands people spend gobs of money on...for inspiration.

What I saw dovetailed nicely with a strategy I've used to produce more Christmas cards faster by coming up with an extremely simple design and making 6 or 8 of them. 

Today's card is one of a set of eight I made using a Papertrey set called Wet Paint Holidays. 

Card Size: 4 7/8" x 3 3/8"

The envelope has the earth map stamp from Masculine Motifs, also from Papertrey. 

Keeping it simple makes me so very, very happy. And hopefully, the thick card stock and crisp stamping give the impression of a nice Papyrus card. 

Now, onto the pears. Some of you may not know about my pear "issue." If you're curious, check out this post from 2009. Since that post, people have sent me LOTS of cards with pears on them, some pear stamps, links to particularly disturbing pears, and pear jokes. 

I can't eat a pear without laughing...or cutting it up into slices first. 

Anyway, my friend Leslie H. has her own popular blog and was stamping with friends when she made this card. Her friends, who also read Simplicity, told her to send it to me. She did. And it's now hanging next to this card on my inspiration board. 

Because life is short, and pears make me laugh!

Thanks, Leslie! 

Supplies

stamps: Papertrey Wet Paint Holiday, Masculine Motifs

ink: Hero Arts cornflower, Memento Danube blue

paper: Papertrey White

accessories: none