52 Card Project 2022: Week 49: Cards
Dec. 9th, 2022 04:06 pmThis week, as I have done every year since 1986, I started preparing my annual holiday letter, which I send out with a photo card of my family. The girls still put up with this, although assembling us all for a photo is getting more and more difficult. This year, our respective sweeties (Eric, Alona, and Chris) were included in the photo, too, thanks to my brother-in-law good-naturedly snapping a few pics at our Thanksgiving gathering.
Updating the addresses on my list and getting the cards assembled and sent can be a little bit of a pain, but sending the letters and photos out is important to me. I am in touch with some people only this one time a year. I thought a lot about this when Rob passed away, and I continued to send the cards out to my husband's friends, too: his law school buddies, his college buddies, guys on the bowling team he was on years ago, his cousins, aunts, and uncles. Even the people I've never met. I enjoyed getting family news every year because I liked seeing pictures from those trips to Paris, and I wondered who beat that cancer, and where the kids ended up.
This year, I decided to use a format for the letter I've sometimes used before: It's a sort of impressionistic thing, just short words and phrases, snippets of things my girls and I have sent to each other in Snapchats, etc. Small sample:
• best hoodie ever • puzzle rings • getting rid of books • new kitchen floor • repainting • visiting Mom each weekend • Aldi’s • the kindness of friends • Zoom writing sessions • mentoring •
I closed the holiday letter the same way I always do when I use this format (see below):
Frame: a holiday letter border with gold/brass foil Christmas trees. Within that border: top: french horns tied with Christmas greens. Lower left: corner holly greens Lower right: a smiling snowman gestures toward the center of the card. Center reads "this is our life / this is what we say / this is what we do / this is how we love."
Cards

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.
Click here to see the 2021 gallery.
Updating the addresses on my list and getting the cards assembled and sent can be a little bit of a pain, but sending the letters and photos out is important to me. I am in touch with some people only this one time a year. I thought a lot about this when Rob passed away, and I continued to send the cards out to my husband's friends, too: his law school buddies, his college buddies, guys on the bowling team he was on years ago, his cousins, aunts, and uncles. Even the people I've never met. I enjoyed getting family news every year because I liked seeing pictures from those trips to Paris, and I wondered who beat that cancer, and where the kids ended up.
This year, I decided to use a format for the letter I've sometimes used before: It's a sort of impressionistic thing, just short words and phrases, snippets of things my girls and I have sent to each other in Snapchats, etc. Small sample:
I closed the holiday letter the same way I always do when I use this format (see below):
Frame: a holiday letter border with gold/brass foil Christmas trees. Within that border: top: french horns tied with Christmas greens. Lower left: corner holly greens Lower right: a smiling snowman gestures toward the center of the card. Center reads "this is our life / this is what we say / this is what we do / this is how we love."

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.
Click here to see the 2021 gallery.