Haven't Sent Holiday Cards Yet? Make A Quick Video Holiday Card

I was ecstatic this year to have enough time to order our Christmas cards from Erin Condren designs. I've admired her design collections for the past two years, but never had our year-end wrap-up or photo pulled together in time to order them until this year. (Thanks to the Radio City Rockettes!) So I was able to order from ErinCondren.com the first week of October and I'm really pleased with our cards this year.

However, this year is an anomaly for us, and if you're feeling the stressful pinch as the days until Christmas wind down, take a deep breath and maybe re-assess your means to a card-sending solution. In less than an hour, I created the above little holiday diddy using Animoto. What I loved about using Animoto: it was quick, the process was simple and streamlined - without many decisions to make -so it sped up the process. The only reason it took an hour was because we had to find and decide upon the photos and video to throw into the video montage.

If you've already taken care of your holiday cards, then you may want to consider using Animoto to create meaningful and authentic thank-yous to send to people. Who hasn't nagged a child to write their thank-yous, or fully dictated thank-yous for them to send out? Why not capture their excitment upon opening their gifts, record them thanking the gift-giver with a close-up shot, and take a photo of your child using or wearing the item later on? It's personalized and compelling, and may just bring a smile to the recipient's face. Check out my piece on Techlicious to prepare your own video thank-you.