Low-Stress Christmas Cards

With all the extra work involved in managing your special-needs child's behavioral or health needs over the holidays, it's no surprise that Christmas cards get lost in the shuffle. All that signing and stuffing and stamping and sealing seems like a good idea now, but more often than not you wind up looking at boxes of unsent cards on January 2 and wondering if Valentine cards would be okay instead. While computer eCards may lack the personal and time-intensive touch of the paper variety, they're probably preferable to your friends and loved ones thinking you've forgotten them altogether. The e-mail missives have the advantage of being quick to set up, quick to send to a large number of folks at once, and quick to schedule so that you can do them now and have them delivered on an appropriate day in December. Hallmark has a large variety of free animated designs you can shoot out to 75 addresses at once. Blue Mountain Arts and American Greetings have fewer free designs available, but allow you a message of unlimited length (Hallmark's limit is 500 characters), so if you want to do the family newsletter thing, you're on. Although you may still have to send paper cards out to the traditionalists of your acquaintance who don't have e-mail addresses, this high-tech option lets you take care of most of your list without delay, and without paper cuts on your tongue from licking all those envelopes.