The Great Christmas Card Debacle

I thought I was on the ball this year. Back in early November, I saw a “deal” on zulily.com to pay $16 for $45 worth of Christmas cards from on online publisher. I checked out their designs, liked what I saw, and jumped on that deal. You couldn’t beat saving $30 on Christmas cards! We got our Christmas pictures taken on November 20^th , which was early considering when we had our Christmas pictures taken last year. We got our CD of the pictures the next week and by December 1^st I had ordered our cards. Like I said, I thought I was on the ball.

The order status said they would be printed within 2 days and then shipped immediately. That means shipped by December 3^rd or 4^th at the latest, right? Wrong. They shipped on December 8^th. A week later. I tried to track the shipment using the FedEx tracking number that I’d been given, but it kept saying that no information had been received. I started stressing because I had to address all of these cards. FINALLY, on December 12^th, tracking information started showing up and our cards were to be delivered the following day.

On December 13^th I logged in to check the tracking information and it said that our cards had been delivered. Yay! Istopped by the post office on the way home to pick up lots of stamps and was planning on addressing all of our cards that evening. We were starting to cut it close. When I pulled into my driveway, I could see THIS in the yard. My stomach sank.

Our dogs definitely destroyed all of our cards. Kevin tried to salvage a few of them, but it was useless. I was so upset that Iwanted to cry! We have an underground fence and there is an area that they cannot get to. We’ve told our FedEx, UPS and post office people where to leave packages but apparently our Christmas cards were left on our front porch (where the dogs CAN get to). Apparently at age 3ish, they still haven’t outgrown the puppy-chewing stage. Here was my pretty card that ended up getting destroyed…

Anyway, after this I pretty much figured we weren’t going to be able to send out any Christmas cards this year. I quickly called the company that I ordered the cards from. They were based in Seattle (which I didn’t know prior to ordering the cards) and basically said they would reprint as quickly as possible but best-case scenario would mean I’d get the cards on December 21^st. That wouldn’t work. Plus, I’d used a 20% off coupon and my zulily coupon and gotten about $65 worth of cards (including shipping) for $16. They were going to make me re-pay, not allow me to use the coupons, and charge me $25 for 2 day shipping. No thank you. 

So I started checking out other options (Walgreens,Shutterfly, TinyPrints, Walmart, etc). I ended up settling on Walmart because they would do the cards as 1-hour photos. The quality wasn’t as great as the first cards, but you really can’t beat the whole 1-hour processing. We picked them up that night after dinner and I was still able to address all of my cards that night.  Thank you, Walmart.  Here are our 2nd cards...

See the similarities? I really wanted to use the same picture, so I was limited on which card I could pick out. The orientation had to be portrait and the card had to be formatted to use only 1 picture. Not easy to find, but I was lucky to find something similar to our original card on Walmart’s website.

So much for being “on the ball” this year. I tried; I really did. Maybe next year will be better. I’ll definitely not ship our cards to our house next year.

PS- I'm joining up with Faith's Christmas card carousel this year, so check out her page for lots of other cute Christmas cards!