project organization :: january cards

Last  week I shared about how I organize my card-hoarding collection... all of those zillions of cards you receive each year.  But what about the cards that you send out every year??  For you, this might be your family's annual Christmas card... for us, it's the infamous January card:)

We have been mailing out January cards for 7 years now... and for 7 years now I've been trying to figure out the best way to preserve these fun cards.  Then it hit me.  An album.  I've had this beautiful blank Kolo album sitting on my desk for months now...  just waiting for the perfect project.  And since I deemed February my "finish-all-those-unfinished-projects-month" I figured there was no time like the present...

This was by far the easiest project I've ever done.  The hardest part was managing to find all of our year's past January cards... 2010 and 2011 are completely MIA.  But once I was able to scrounge up most of our January cards, all I did was slap some acid-free tape on the card itself and stick them right to my album.  Technically I needed 2 copies of each year... one for the front and one for the back... which yeah... wasn't really a big deal until I realized I couldn't find 2 copies for the very fist year...

Welcome to 2007.  The birth of the January cards.  I hadn't quite perfected the font on the front yet.  This is also the year that I was obsessed with putting ribbon on everything.

2008.  We fixed the font and went all out with color photos on the front and the back... big time.

2009.  We scaled back this year and went solid black & white. 

 2010. And 2011.  Use your imagination... Hoping these bad boys surface very soon.

2012. We finally upgraded to professional photos.  2011 and 2012 cover photos are compliments of the talented Shaelyne Meadows.

2013.  My favorite year for sure... but I say this every year once I get my January card shipment in.  2013 cover photo compliments of Firm Anchor Photography.

So, there you have it.  My somewhat-completed January card album.  This should be a fairly simple project to keep up with over the coming years.  And I love seeing the "snapshot" of our year-to-year life with each turn of the page.  Even more excited to see our January cards fill up with children in the coming years:)  

If your family sends out holiday cards every year, this would be such an easy way to corral them all together.  Do you already do something similar?  I'd love to hear.