Christmas card demographics

Normally I get this post up the first or second week in January, if not earlier.  This year has been nuts, so it's the 2nd week in February before I'm getting around to writing it...  Ugh.

Anyway, here goes:

This year I sent 140 Christmas cards out, and we received 70.  I made a nifty little spreadsheet on Google Docs to keep track of them all.

Here's where they all went:

In the US
IL - 24
IA - 23
CO- 7
WI & FL - 6 each
AZ - 5
TX & OK - 4 each
IN, MO & VA - 3 each
NC, SC, CA & MS - 2 each
NE, TN, NV, WA, UT, NM, AR & MN - 1 each

Outside the US
Italy - 33 (mostly APO addresses though)
South Korea - 2
Australia - 1
Japan - 1
Germany - 1
Spain - 1
Switzerland - 1
Vatican City - 1
Belgium - 1
Sweden - 1

If you want to check out 2011's card demographics, they're here.

It'll be interesting to see how this changes next year since we're moving back to the States and quite a few of our friends from Italy will be moving before next Christmas also.  I'm already excited about Christmas next year.  9 more months and I can start working on my Christmas cards for this year!

2011 Christmas card demographics

I love doing Christmas cards.  This year was a little different because I wasn’t sure if I should wait until after the baby is born, or do them before.  I decided to send Christmas cards out before and then I’ll do birth announcements later on.  I thought I had done the demographics on my blog for my 2010 cards, but I can’t find them anywhere.  I did find the demographics for 2009 though.  I sent out 116 cards in 2009, and I think it was a few more than that last year.  This year I’ve sent out 150 and they’re all officially mailed!

Here’s where they went.

43 of them went to APO addresses here in Italy.  (Most of these are people in our squadron.)  I sent 25 to IL, and 24 to IA. 8 went to CO, 7 went to WI, 5 went to FL, 4 went to OK and 3 went to AZ, IN and VA.  Two went to MO, NC, SC, TX and UT.  And I sent 1 card to CA, GA, MI, NE, MN, NM, NV, SD, TN, and WA.

I also sent one to an APO address in Germany and one to an APO address in Japan.  And then one to Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Vatican City and Italy.  The nice thing about sending mail from an APO address to an APO address is that it’s free!  You don’t need to buy stamps, which saved me quite a bit of money.

So I sent cards to 8 different countries and 24 different states!  Part of the fun being involved with the military is that you end up knowing people from ALL over the place.  I’m going to try to keep track of where I receive them from this year.  I’ve only received one so far, unless you count the one I already got back in the mail that I’d sent…  I’ll have to resend that one.

There are probably few people in this world that love sending out Christmas cards (or any mail) as much as I do.  I get so excited when I get the cards I’ve ordered in the mail and I’m pretty happy with the way the Shutterfly ones turned out.  And I love hanging all the cards and pictures I receive all over my window sills for the holiday season.  I actually keep them all and put them in dated plastic bags.  Hopefully someday I’ll get around to actually organizing them all, but I have a bunch of other stuff to organize first.

Happy mailing and happy receiving to those of you that like Christmas cards as much as I do!