Growing up, we were never a holiday photo card family.  With the exception of school photos, we never had any professional photos taken — as a Russian-Jewish family, it just wasn’t something that was done.  Secretly, I always envied our American family friends around the holidays — those adorable family photo cards that we received, with the little updates on the goings-on of the year just seemed like such a special way to celebrate family milestones and share holiday cheer with friends.

Now that we have our own little family, I finally have the opportunity to partake in this distinctly American holiday tradition, and every year since our little one was born, we’ve created our holiday cards with Minted. I love their beautiful designs, ranging from minimal and modern to traditional and glitzy; I love how easy the cards are to customize; and I especially love the awesome perks, like free address labeling and maintaining a digital address book.

As a professional blogger and content creator, I certainly have my fair share of photo shoots throughout the year (one of the fun perks of the job ; ).  Around the holidays, I’ve often tacked on some family photos to an existing content shoot, and we’ve done a few holiday mini-shoots with photographers.  Both of these options can get really pricey, especially when you can’t bundle a holiday shoot in with work. Really great photographers are expensive, and dropping $200-300 on a 20 minute family photo shoot every year  can be tough for a lot of families (especially around the holidays!).

Thankfully, our favorite holiday card destination has come to the rescue!  Minted has just launched Photo-Op, beautiful in-home photography with awesome photographers, for a super affordable price.  Starting at just $100, you can book a 30 minute shoot in your home, neighborhood, or local landmark, get 10 expertly retouched photos, and complimentary holiday card styling.  The service is currently available in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and the New York Metropolitan Area.

We met with our photographer, Molly, at the Santa Monica Pier for 30 minutes of photographic fun.  She was so great with little M, and had a great eye for finding the best spots for our shots.  We got some ocean, some mountains, some amusement park backdrops, and of course, some bubbles on the beach — all of which made for an amazing shoot and gorgeous options for our holiday card this year.  And the best part is, in addition to the 10 included retouched photos, we also get downloads of all the photos we took (almost 200!), so we have sweet family photos to use, gift, create with and share all year long!

I also loved the card styling!  Minted picked a few card styles that matched our aesthetic best and inserted some of our best retouched photos into the preview to make things even simpler.  Seriously, you can go from zero to beautifully styled, professional holiday photos in the mail in 7 to 10 days flat.  Nothing could be easier (or more doable)!  I can’t WAIT to send out our beautiful new photos!

Today only, Minted also has an awesome Cyber Monday deal going too, where you can get 25% OFF Holiday Card orders with code CM2017 until 11/28 at 9am PST.