We have teamed up with one of our favorite photo companies, Artifact Uprising, to introduce you to some really fantastic holiday card options and give one of our readers $250 to their site to spend on cards, prints, photo gifts, art–anything you’d like. Everything is so beautiful!

Last weekend, we called up our friends, the Pugmires, and sold them the sweet deal that if they snap our family photo for our holiday card this year, we’ll snap theirs and then we can all come back to our house for dinner. They took the bait! I’ve found it is so much less stressful when a friend of family member is taking our photo. I also ease tensions by not regulating clothing too much (let’s all just wear something wintry! Sure, Greta, you can wear…Dad’s….hat. Ha!) and setting expectations–I’m not looking for 100 good photo options, I know with little ones and a dog, I will count my lucky stars if we get one! So I told Preston, we just need one good one.

We drove up the canyon until we found some evergreens and the tiniest bit of snow and after about 10 minutes, in two different settings, we got one!! (Not without a few outtakes, of course. Although, sometimes the outtake ends up being the one, you know?) One thing I love about Artifact Uprising’s cards compared to others is there is such a focus on your photo without any distracting fonts or cheesy words.

They even have 3-in-1 cards now that are a card, print and gift tag!

The photo focus makes sense since Artifact Uprising is a VSCO company, which if you haven’t heard, makes the most amazing photo filters. (You can download the VSCO app on your phone from the app store) In all of the examples, the photos are just so breathtaking and have depth and richness and a little bit of moodiness and sometime a vintage feel and that comes a lot from the VSCO presets they were process with. I’ve been using VSCO filters exclusively for my instagram photos (I’m a big a6 preset fan over there), so I decided to try some on our one good photo (literally, the only usable one! And I couldn’t be happier with it!)

^^Processed with VSCO a10 preset

^^Processed with VSCO a5 preset

In the end, the colors and vibe in the latter one felt the most us. We cropped it in a bit and settled on this red, 3-in-1, Merry Christmas card , but all of the holiday cards (they have over 100!), no matter which you choose, are printed on 100% recyclable paper and feature kraft envelopes.

Ready for a giveaway!? Win $250 to Artifact Uprising to spend on anything you choose. Just go browse Artifact Uprising’s holiday card collection (or any of the other products on the site) and leave a comment/link to which one you’d choose! Winner will be chosen November 18th! Take luck. ;)