I am really excited to show off my holiday letter design for this year! A popular option for doing a holiday letter is the "Year in Review" style. Rather than sending a traditional letter out with your holiday cards this year, why not try something a bit different? The Year in Review style can include whatever you'd like to share with your family and friends that occurred in the last year. I'll elaborate below. But first, check out my finished product:
Of course, I have edited out my address for the Internet, but this is what I'll be sending my family and friends this year! For anyone who is interested, I used Microsoft Publisher to create my letter. There are lots of things you could include if you choose to do a Year in Review style holiday letter. First, allow me to share what I have included on mine.
Title Section: Our last name, the year and "Year In Review".
A section sharing how long my husband and I have been together along with how long we have been married.
Our new address. We moved this year so I included our new address for folks to make a note of.
Zachary Facts: Our 2 year old son is doing lots of new, fun things and so I included a section just for him. It's a bit hard to make out in the above photo but I included his "Sayings" and "Do you speak Zachanese?" We joke that this is a new language. Also, I put down a couple of his favorite activities. For each of the children, I included their exact age in December, like down to the decimal. I thought this was cute and informative!
Our other children's section begins with their age and then what they have been up to this year as well as their accomplishments.
Next I put in a section for Bill (my husband) and myself. I just wrote down the highlights of what we've been doing all year and what is on our Christmas lists. Note that all Bill wants is world peace. Tee-hee.
Thomas is our cat and our only pet right now. I wrote his age in both cat and human years. (There are charts online that help you figure out how old your cat is in human years-It's not 7:1). I also guesstimated how many times we snuggled him this year which is of course directly proportional to his number of purrs! (Really I have no idea!)
I decided to share some of our family's goals for 2014 in the next section. We've already begun working on some of them!
I shared 3 things I think are pretty darn cool about the holidays: love those Starbucks holiday drinks!
Lastly, I wanted to include a sincere holiday wish for our family and friends.
So that's my Year in Review. What would you include on yours? I have some additional ideas! Feel free to use as many or few as you want!
If you welcomed a new little one this year, you could also include all her baby stats: height, weight, time of birth, birthday, etc.
Also, if you have little ones, something else you could include is their favorite foods.
You could include a section entitled, "Things We Loved This Year..." Perhaps that's some current event or something you did as a family
In the same vein, how about a section called, "Awesome Things We Did This Year..." Include all the wonderful things your family did or accomplished.
For each family member you might want to put some info on their hobbies and favorite things.
Family Favorites may be a section you want to include. Things like favorite family meals, vacations, and past times make good sections.
Ask the kids why they each like the holidays and then record their quotes in a different section. Another option would be to include why you and your spouse/partner like the holidays.
Items on the kids' Christmas or Hanukkah lists.
A section I thought about including was one called "Random Numbers". Then I would put down the numbers and the meanings behind each. For example,
1 - # of college degrees obtained this year
3 - # of college students in our household
1234 - street number for our new house
8 - # of minutes it takes to drive to Super Target now that we've moved
22 - # of times Katie has been to Super Target since we moved in August
You get the idea. Be creative! Have a sense of humor and you can create a unique holiday letter this year! Have fun!
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And here's a picture of what vistaprint sent me: