Note to Self: Gift Those Vaca Pix

Even the photo-phobic (like Moi!) have piles of vacation photos that no one wants to look at.  I love week-ends away with TBG, girls trips to SoFlo, and visiting friends who live in fabulous cities around the world. I hate cameras and photos. I’m not a scrapbooker. I don’t have photo albums. My shelves are not filled with framed photos of Moi in exotic locations looking happy and picture-perfect …except that TBG is a prolific photog fanatic. And now little M has acquired his father’s hobby, and snap snaps non-stop. And allllll my bffs are constantly taking pictures, making scrapbooks, and emailing wonderful photos of us lounging, eating, drinking or shopping in gorgeous settings.

Then, it happened: I crossed over to the dark side and bought an Iphone. With it’s built in camera. And it became all too easy to take pictures of things I wanted to share with friends and family…and anyone else I could bore via blogs, facebook, twitter or emails.

I don’t have too many actual photos, but my hard drive is on the verge of falling through my desk onto the floor under the weight of my virtual scrapbooks filled with virtual photos.

So what’s a clever girl to do? Shop for a solution, of course!

And Moi shopped right over to Shutterfly (thanks for the tip, CoMo BFF S) , and downloaded some gorgeous pictures of tulips and other flowers from my visit to Keukenhof Gardens and had them made into notecards, which I bought at a 50% promotional discount, with free shipping!

your photos make great notecards

I had 10 different designs made. I ordered 100 of each notecard. When they all arrived, I turned them over, and ran each one through my home printer, and printed on the back:

photographed by Moi  

       Keukenhof Gardens The Netherlands March 2008

btw…I tried to find one of the many online printing shops that would give me a quality notecard at a reasonable price with printing on the back, but couldn’t find it. I could have taken them to Kinkos or somewhere, but I opted to print them at home.

Then I sorted the notecards into packages of 10, each with a different picture. So I ended up with 100 stacks of 10 notecards. And I tied each with a ribbon. And then I gifted them at Christmas.

I gave them to my sisters, and sisters in law. To my daughter. To my aunts. To my nieces. To my BFFs. To my dog walker. As hostess gifts. As thank you gifts. Practically to every woman who came across my path in the month of December. And I used them all up. I paid just over $150 for all the notecards, which comes to less than $2 per gift. Plus a couple hours of time to print and sort.

And then, when Shutterfly had a sale on notecards in February, I ordered more because I’d given all of mine away.

I’m Shopping Now!

Moi tip: After a girls trip, baby shower, or other special event make souvenir notecards for everyone!