Kids Christmas Cards

One of my favourite aspects of opening Christmas cards as they arrive in the post are getting the ones with drawings by kids on. Some schools do this as a fundraising project and I imagine parents are made to feel they should buy these cards. Well, if that's you, then I hope you know they're appreciated here. 

We had five cards that were designed by kids and an additional two handmade cards made by kids. I thought it would be nice to show them off in a blog post. I'm going to put them up in alphabetical order, starting with a card designed by Alba.

Anna's card also featured in my blogpost featuring my 10 favourite cards. I'm including it again here for completeness sake. Also, because I love it.

My niece Iona drew Santa in his sleigh with a huuuuuuuuuge present to be delivered. 

This card is handmade and comes from Jimmy and Freddie's family. I'm not sure if the work was done by Jimmy or Freddie. I suspect Jimmy because Freddie is very little and this card has stickers stuck on it.  And googly eyes!

Solid work here from Lola. I think she may have had some help. 

There is a lot going on in this card designed by Robyn. A deconstructed Santa Claus, with his sleigh above and a tree below for him to put presents under. I'm genuinely impressed with how much is in this drawing. It's the entire story of Santa delivering presents. And he's sprinkling magical sparkles.

And finally a card from my nephew, Zac, with a very neat tree on it. We ended up with two copies of this card because he wrote a second one to us.

That's the last of the posts about Christmas cards for this ACCA season. I hope you enjoyed these cards as much as I did. 

10 cards from the ACCA2020

A selection of Christmas cards that we received for Christmas 2020. It's harder to make this selection than to do the actual audit!

One of the categories that we usually get a few entries in is "Christmas Food". Unusually this year we didn't get any cards of Christmas puddings or mince pies. We did, however get a picture of these adorable cupcakes.

(Pretty sure that says Merry Christmas, although the font makes it look like Messy Christmas at first glance.)

Staying on the theme of food, there's always a very good chance of your card making it into the selection for my blog if it includes a pun, as this one does. This card made me hungry every time I looked at it.

Speaking of puns, this year was the first time I got a card with a Welsh pun on it. Unfortunately I didn't say the greeting out loud until I had already asked what the joke was. Then I got the joke before the reply text arrived.

Some of these scans are a bit wonky and odd (like the one of E.T. there) because I set up my overhead scanner to scan one card and then tried to scan them all using it. This next card was the reason I set up the overhead scanner. If I'm a sucker for puns, I'm a ma-hoosive sucker for googly eyes.

That's tinsel on the bottom as well. I didn't know how it would work squashing it into a flatbed scanner. 

That card is the reason the ACCA2020 records 4.5 penguin cards and 0.5 Snowpeople cards. I couldn't assign it to just the one category.

Penguins are popular on Christmas cards, even though they aren't North Pole animals. They're cute though.

That one at the bottom right looks like he is shouting "Hooray!" Probably because he's been able to swivel his wings in an utterly unnatural direction for a penguin.

I always try to include at least one religious-themed card in the selection. Truthfully, they tend to be quite dull. However the following card was a bit different and the only card received this year to mention Jesus on the front.

The lettering is foil and shiny, but hasn't scanned very well. I couldn't get this to scan properly under the overhead scanner so resorted to the flatbed.

"Sport" was a new category this year, occasioned by a card from a fellow baseball card collector. This card has featured on my baseball card blog as well - it was my Christmas Day post.

For those who don't know, I collect baseball cards featuring Tony Gwynn (over 570 so far!), but this is the only one in my collection that's been doctored to show him in a Santa hat!

Talking of Santa hats, there was another returning category this year - dogs! We had two cards with pictures of dogs wearing Santa hats, but my favourite one had several hatless dogs on.

I must admit, it surprises even me that I chose to show off hatless dogs rather than behatted dogs, but that card's just too cute.

Another new category this year was 'References to the Pandemic'. We had one card in the category, and I really liked it. Everyone, meet Rudolph the Red Masked Reindeer.

And if that's got you humming a tune, this final card might well have the same effect. This was actually the card that Cathy gave me and as usual, she brought some strong game. A cute design, a cracking pun, and raccoons. Gotta love raccoons!

There's only the first line there, so I've added to it.

"Raccoon around the Christmas Tree

In the Christmas Party bins

Eating the trash so merrily

With our furry bandit grins."

Seriously, someone needs to make that into an actual song.

So those are 10 cards that I really liked from the ones we were sent this year. Many thanks to everyone who sent us a card. Look out for some forthcoming extra posts about Christmas cards coming soon.

A dozen to end the decade - 12 cards from the ACCA '19

The Christmas Card Audit has been thrown into chaos with the arrival of a card yesterday, after publication, with important results-altering artwork. I will update that post shortly while bearing Cathy's admonishment that "I told you that you published it too early!"

Meanwhile here are some cards that arrived in time to be counted first time round.

I know some people send us cards just to see if they can get a mention in the Annual Christmas Card Audit blogpost. Talk about observation changing the system being observed! (That's a real known scientific principle, folks) Even more competitive are the people who go out of their way to pick cards they want to get featured in my eclectic selection blog post that follows the ACCA, when I scan the cards I want to mention, or liked the most. Some people even write in the card that they are doing this. It amuses me.

We've got some really cool cards here, and a few random ones. To kick off, this year I kept a note of "animals" cards that weren't deer, sheep, robins, penguins, bears, donkeys, llamas, dogs in Santa hats, or hares posing in the light of the moon. You'd think there wouldn't be many animals left. Well, I adored this hand-drawn piggy in a Santa hat.

The numbers are meant to be a countdown to Christmas, I think. Anyway, I thought he was great, and I'm including it here even though Anna only addressed the card to Cathee [sic].

Another animal, and this was a first for us, was a Christmassy narwhal.

What's Christmassy about a narwhal? Well there is that carol, isn't there? You know the one I mean! The First Narwhal! (Grooooaaaaaaannnnnn.)  I also liked this card because he has a googly eye. You can't beat googly eyes.

Cathy and I both gave each other cards featuring animals celebrating Christmas. See if you can guess who gave who these.

Deer or reindeer have their own category in the ACCA every year because there are so many of them. But this was new, and also won the 'Most Scientifically Accurate and Educational' category.

Cathy's cousin Adam blessed us with that. At first I thought it was showing us cuts of meat off a reindeer, so I was a bit relieved to see it was "just" the skeleton.

Speaking of scientifically accurate cards, this rainbow is slightly colour deficient. However I did really like it. I think "Yay! Christmas!" is probably the best wording on a Christmas card yet.

Santa wasn't very popular among the cards we received this year, but I quite liked this glittery card of Santa (or several Santas) learning to ice skate. The one bottom right is saying "I've fallen, and can't get up."

Time for the obligatory religious card in this selection. It is sometimes a struggle to find one worth including because they are often so boring. Cathy noted this year they almost all seemed to be exclusively in a blue palette. However, there was one that stood out, that was handmade by our friend Ailsa. It's a kind of batik and shows the magi following the star.

Another Christmas tradition is the special Christmas song. Terrorvision released a belter of a Christmas song this year and when Cathy bought the download, the band sent her a Christmas card as part of the deal. Had to include it here!

One person who made it very clear they were aiming for the blog post when she gave us this card was my sister in law, Abby. To be fair, this was an excellent card as she knows how much I love the Statue of Liberty. I thought this was very cute, so there you go, Abs, if you're reading this, you made it!

And finally, we have always had an ACCA category of "Christmas Food". Usually, it's puddings or mince pies, but this year it was exclusively sprouts. First off, we have Chris's effort which he claims he picked to try and get sprouts as a category in the ACCA. It was also slightly vulgar and the first card I've ever had that wished me a "Merry Fartmas". The sprout in the middle is on a small spring for that 3D effect which doesn't scan very well.

And then, the card that ticked the most boxes this year. Terrible pun - check. Personalisation - check. Welsh greeting - check (the only Welsh card in the ACCA this year). And it's the other sprout card, this time from our friends Sara and Leanne.

And that's the dozen for 2019! Thank you so much to everyone who sent us cards and newsletters this year!