Holiday cards have been a tradition in our family since we turned a late holiday card into a combination “Happy New Year” and birth announcement for our first daughter five years ago (I can’t believe she’ll be five this week!). Since then, I’ve partnered with Basic Invite to offer easy, beautiful and customizable cards for the holidays (and other occasions).

Use my partner code ASiarto to save 40% on your holiday card order this season and 20% off all non-holiday cards year round.

I look for a few things in a holiday card design. First, I’m a huge fan of turning holiday cards into “year in review” cards, which is one of the reasons I love Basic Invite. They have the option to add text, additional photos or both to the back of any card design, so it’s easy to share highlights from your year with friends and family (I LOVE getting cards with this personal touch—it’s so much fun to sit down and read holiday newsletters and highlights).

I also like designs that are clean with attractive fonts.

So let’s take a look at some of my favorite designs from Basic Invite this year—ranging from a single photo to a whole set of favorites.

All of the photos below are my own.

1. Modern Photo Collage Christmas Cards

This holiday card keeps it simple and lets you show off a few favorite images. Get it here.

2. Yearbook Photos Holiday Cards

3. Big Joy Foil Photo Holiday Cards

Here’s another design that will give you a chance to show off a few favorite photos—whether it’s close ups of each kid or highlights from the year. Get it here.

4. Editorial Photo Holiday Cards

I may be a bit biased toward “Joy” because it’s my daughter’s middle name, but I also like the simplicity of this card, along with the fact that it will work well with any horizontal image—you don’t have to worry about the text falling just right across the image. Get it here.

5. Sparkling Holiday Cards

Manage Your Address Book

Basic Invite makes it easy to manage your address book—you can share a link with friends and family, and they can enter or update their own information for you, and it’s easy to import addresses that you already have. They offer automatic address printing from your address book, which is an amazing time saver during the busy holiday season.

If you create a link to collect addresses, be sure to let me know. I’d love to see how your cards turn out!

And don’t forget to use my partner code, ASiarto at checkout to save 40% on your holiday card order this season and 20% off all non-holiday cards year round.

I can hardly believe that we’re already talking about the holiday season. Wasn’t I just out paddle boarding on Lake Michigan and digging holes in the sand with my kids?

I love giving personalized gifts for the holidays, but the more personal it is, the more time it takes to prepare. Let’s look at five personalized gifts that your family will absolutely adore.

1. Memory Box

This has been my go-to gift for my husband (and now my family) for the past seven years. It comes with a customized image on the front and text on the spine. The box comes with 50 proof print images (you can choose to print images from your session or wedding with me, or you can send me your images of choice through retransfer.com, even if you’re never worked with me as a client before). The box holds up to 200 prints. The thing I love most about the memory box is that you can leave room for little mementos from the year. I kept the hospital bracelets and knit hats from the years my daughters were born, and I’ve also kept little handprints and a few of my favorite little art pieces that they’ve created. Now the top shelf of our bookcase is like a little row of time capsules—we can pull each one down and dive right into our favorite memories from that year. Get in touch to learn more about having your own custom memory box designed.

2. Mounted Prints

Have you ever framed a print only to find that it slowly started to dimple or warp in the frame over time? Styrene mounted prints are mounted on a durable material that keeps them perfectly flat without worrying about bending, dimpling or warping in the frame. If you’re thinking about a single frame for a family member, consider a frame size or frame set that will cover at least 50% of the width of the visual space (for example, if you have a couch that’s seven feet long, you’ll want your frames to take up at least 3.5 feet above the couch; e.g. two). I offer professionally mounted prints for any photos that you have the rights to print (even if you’ve never worked with me before), but you can also create a 60 minute combined family session to share a session across family members and their families.

3. Framed Prints

The 20×20″ Storytelling frame with nine 5×5″ mounted prints is by far the most popular frame—it’s a great way to tell the story of the year (or display photos from a session or wedding) in one place. A large family print also makes a great gift. And again, consider sharing a session with adult siblings—it’s essentially like creating your own mini sessions for each family, and you’ll get the added bonus of getting a group family photo with everyone together. If your family won’t be together until cold weather sets in, I now have the option for indoor studio sessions. Get in touch to learn more.

4. Album

A copy of your wedding album makes a great gift, and many parents love to surprise their children with wedding albums at holiday time. Parents—if you want to leave the final design decisions to the happy couple, you can present them with the initial design and then give them 30 days to make photo swaps and choose their cover before the album goes to print.

But here’s something you may not have thought of—what about turning your parents’ loose wedding prints into a fully designed album? This holiday season, I’m offering photo scanning at no additional cost to give you the opportunity to save older photos and turn them into a brand new album.

Or here’s another fun idea—include scans of children’s artwork in your album to reflect your favorite memories from the year in one place. Get in touch to learn more about custom albums (these take a bit longer to produce and create through the lab, so you’ll want to order no later than November 15).

5. Folio Box

Folio boxes come in 8×10″ or 11×14″ with the option for shallow (10 matted prints) or deep (20 matted prints). Add cover imprinting to make it extra special. These boxes make a great base when you’re building out layers on your bookshelf. Add a small frame and/or a little succulent to add extra dimension (my succulents are all fake—I don’t want to get dirt on the fabric).

Get in touch to learn more about custom photo gifts.

Bonus: Record Your Favorite Stories

My daughter loves falling asleep to stories, but a lot of the story podcasts that she listens to are full of advertisements. This year, I’m recording short stories from her favorite books and asking family members to do the same. That way, she’ll have a variety of stories from people she loves. This would be a cute add-on gift for kids—record short stories and include them on a USB. Tuck the USB inside a memory box, or tuck it into a pretty print box with your mounted prints.

You could do the same with stories from your year. If you’re giving a memory box to a significant other, record audio of your favorite stories from the year, and include the USB with the audio in the box. The addition of audio makes your “time capsule” even more fun to look back at. I use the free app Audacity to record and export audio.

My new frames will have a few updates (largely the change from glass to acrylic, which makes the frames lighter and easier to ship, so frames will no longer be limited to East Lansing clients). With these updates, I’ll be sorting through the extra frames that I have in stock and setting up an overstock sale with huge discounts.

This sale will be available to anyone who can pick frames up in East Lansing, regardless of whether you’ve ever worked with me as a photography client. A lot of these will be large frames that would be perfect for displaying family photos from weddings or sessions.

Each frame will be fully prepped with your photo(s) and ready to hang on the wall. Sign up below to be the first to hear about the sale when it goes live. Supplies will be limited and sold on a “first come, first served” basis.