How many snowmen can you punch?

Well, now that my self-imposed December 1st Postmark Deadline for our Holiday Letters has come and gone, and most everyone has received them, I’m going to share some steps of The Holiday Letter Project 2008.

This year, we sent 100 letters. It didn’t take me long to address the envelopes. Rather than fight with my printer, I wrote them out by hand. It wasn’t really that tedious and didn’t take me long to do.

I looked at the fancy holiday papers, and they were a little too expensive for my liking, so rather than go that route, I chose to print our letter on light blue paper and then used a snowman punch to make it festive.

Click photos to enlarge.

Snowman Punch

After composing and printing one letter on white paper, I signed it with our names. I then ran the copies through my laser printer onto the blue. I then used the Snowman Punch to punch one snowman, and then flipped it over to punch out the other snowman.

I used two sheets of paper at once, so I actually punched out two snowmen at the same time.

Something about typing “punch out the snowman” makes me laugh. It wasn’t nearly as violent as it appears on paper.

Fancy Snowman Paper

After all the snowmen were punched out, (Ha! There it is again!) I started folding.

I set up a box I had with my envelopes, folded letters, photos, and the printed letters. I kept those in a folder with my address list. This was my Holiday Letter Project Command Center, and it was nice to be mobile and still have all my things in one place.

Project Command Center

This way, I could easily work on my project in my office or the kitchen or the dining room, and I could start and stop my project without going completely crazy.

When I was done folding, it was time to stuff the envelopes. Inside each letter was tucked a photo. As you remember, here is the one we chose:

I got self-adhesive envelopes so the sealing part of the project would be super-quick and easy. Some people also received a photo from Claire’s 3rd Birthday. Those envelopes were set aside and finished after we had her photo taken, later than the rest, but still before my little deadline.

Self-adhesive envelopes, coupled with self-adhesive stamps made this holiday season bright!

Then, I decided to use the little snowmen that we’d punched out (brutally, and without cause…ha!) as stickers on the back of the envelopes.

This is what you need for this part of the project.

All you do is put the little snowman on the mailing tape (or packing tape, or whatever you call this type of clear tape).

Then, you cut him off with the scissors and affix it to the back of the sealed envelope.

A Snowman Sticker that is not really a sticker, but kinda is...

And, there you have it!

Now, if you were paying attention, you’ve probably already done the math in your head. Each of the 100 sheets yields 2 snowmen. One of the snowmen was then used on the back of the envelope, leaving an extra 100 snowmen.

100 Little Snowmen

Claire loves these little guys. Every week, I take a few out of the box, and she gets to play with a fresh new batch. We write names on them and color them and then put them in all kinds of precarious situations. But, for the record, not one of them has been punched out since.