Christmas Card Cast-Offs

I've been playing around with GIMP (it's kind of like PhotoShop but it is open source) designing our Christmas cards for this year. See, the problem is my friend Nicole did such a great job with our family photos that I have been having a tough time deciding.

My husband helped me narrow it down this evening and we have a winner, so I decided it might be fun to show you the ones that didn't make the cut.

I went with orange and blue (War Eagle!) on all of the cards even though they aren't traditional colors because they match our clothes best. And I'm a little bit obsessive in that way.

This is the first one I tried. It's okay--kind of cute. I love this picture but Stretch does not like it because he thinks he looks like his eyes are closed. I told him he is just squinting but he isn't convinced. I also liked the filter Nicole used on this one. It's kind of dreamy.

This is the second one I did. I tried to pull some red into this one to make it more Christmasy. This is a great picture of our whole family but the card ended up looking more crowded and busy than what I was going for. Strike two.

 Here's the third one.There are hundreds of Christmas cards to choose from on commercial printing sites like Snapfish, Mint, TinyPrints and Shutterfly right now. The layout for this card was inspired by a card I saw on one of those sites. Unfortunately I honestly can't remember which site now (I shoulda pinned it!). I like the more classic look of this one. I felt like I was getting closer but still not exactly there yet. I won't call this one a strike--maybe a foul ball. 

I'm not going to show you the one we decided on yet. That would ruin the surprise for everyone who's on our list.  I have big plans to order them very soon. I'd love to have them mostly ready to mail by Thanksgiving this year.

Do you send out Christmas cards or are they too much hassle? If you send them, have you started thinking about getting them ready yet? Do you include a newsletter in your card? Let's hear it. I want the scoop. Sometimes I feel like I am one of the last of a dying breed because I still do cards. Anyone else feel this way?