My Christmas Card Fix

I am in LOVE with getting Christmas cards. I mean, who isn't, really?? Normally I just wait and let Eric get the mail when he gets home from work. But even in this 0 degree weather, I will bundle up during December and run to the mail box mid afternoon to check whose cards came in the mail that day.

I also look at all my cards every day. Until this year, I taped all the cards to our closet door so that I could look at them as often as I wanted. There were two problems last year with this approach...1) the kids continually ripped them off the doors and I'd have to retape them up and 2) as we get older and more of our friends send out picture cards we outgrew our closet doors and had to start taping them on the walls surrounding the door.

I decided this was by no means the best way to do this, so I came up with an idea.

I started with a plain old piece of plywood from Lowes, cut to 16 inches by 3 feet (they will cut it for you at the store to whatever size you need). Eric's dad owns a router and finished the corners off for me for a more polished look. I then painted the board a vintage white color, giving it two coats so the grain of the board didn't show through...I purchased a vinyl wall expression from an Uppercase Living party at a friend's house, though you can get vinyl wall decals everywhere these days. I have bought a few off Etsy and had just as good of luck. You can custom design your own phrase so it can pretty much say whatever you'd like it to...Then I bought a hanging system from Ikea which I think is meant to be used with lightweight curtains, but worked perfect for this. It was fairly inexpensive as well. I also bought 100 clips that work with the system. I have to say, my husband helped me put this part on, not because I couldn't have done it, but he likes that kind of stuff and does a much better job than me. He also added picture hangers on the back of the board. He did a great job and in record speed, might I add!So here is the final product...I took a mirror down that normally hangs in our front hallway and replaced it for the Christmas season. As you can see, it looks good with just a couple photos at the beginning of December...
Or with lots of pictures at the end of December! I have 100 clips and approximately 85 cards on when this pic was taken...
I swear if I can do it, you can do it! Besides getting the materials and taking it to Eric's dad to finish the edges, we did this whole project in one day. More later today...it's Avery's birthday!