Perfecting the perfect gift

This year for Christmas, I’m giving the gift of money to many of my loved ones and letting them do the whole shopping part. People love the shopping part! I made these little cash and/or check envelopes to match my holiday card.

Note to self: come up with a size that easily accommodates a check or folded cash. These are a little small. And create a template that allows the use of a rounded corner cutter for the rounded corners. Cutting a neat rounded corner with an exacto knife is just a little too zen for me.

Holiday card ‘07

Our holiday card for 2007. The design came in second place in a contest to create the holiday card for Governor and Mrs. Jim Doyle. Although in that iteration, the dog collars in the upper right hand corner of the cover were two little mittens shaped like the state of Wisconsin.

I haven’t seen what the winning card looks like yet. I’m sure, though, that if there were a national competition for best Governor’s holiday card, our guy would win. A couple of years ago a political blog had a post about governors’ holiday cards. Have a look. Clearly, the bar is pretty low.

Mike Huckabee’s card that year included “a family picture, a short New Testament passage and a detachable recipe for green bean bundles. The recipe from the famously health-conscious governor requires a pound of bacon and a cup of brown sugar.”

Wow. Congratulations to the Doyles for raising the design intelligence of the whole country!