Maternity Leave + Minted

Hey guys, Minted sponsored this post and we also teamed up to gift one reader a $250 credit towards a future purchase at Minted.com! I couldn’t make this easier if I tried. The contest has since ended, but keep on reading. I’ve used affiliate links to redirect you to some related products.

Our summer, and our transition into becoming a family of five included lots of playground days, amusement park trips, picnics in the treehouse, and lazy evenings spent on our new patio, but as any of you who have birthed a child can attest, it has mostly been about finding time to buy more milk, and making an earnest effort to shower at least every 3 days. As we emerge from the fog of having a newborn (Sam is 10 weeks old now!), I’ve been able to get down and conquer all kinds of things, like digitally organizing the last 6-months of family photos, and making/freezing all of the recipes I bookmarked to make the most of our seasonal veggies. I also rewatched all 7 seasons of Gilmore Girls in anticipation of the Netflix episodes that release this fall, learned why everyone loves Fixer Upper (it’s shiplap… you may have seen it here first), and now we’re cranking through Friends, which Pete somehow managed to avoid in the mid-’90s to early 2000s when he was too cool to be watching primetime network television.

Between all of that, I ordered our boy these sweet birth announcements via Minted.

Minted contacted me last winter to see if I would like to help them promote Valentine’s Day ideas, and while it wasn’t the right fit for me at the time, I did counter and ask if they would be interested in printing our baby announcements once we were ready to do so – they said yes, and then suggested that I offer one of you guys the chance to win $250 too. :) It’s been a long time since I voluntarily hosted a giveaway because frankly it has to be a *great* giveaway to pique my interest. $250 on Minted goes a long way, and I hope the lucky winner finds something fun.

The site has 700 birth announcement templates available for customization – among thousands of other customizable holiday/birthday/all-occasion stationary, home accessories, fabrics, and high-quality art prints. It’s all well-curated with designs from independent artists, and perusing the possibilities is a nice escape. Minted is an awesome wormhole on the internet.

We did our own photo shoot of Sam when he was about 7-weeks old, post-baby acne and about the time that his cheeks rounded out to be as large as peaches. I uploaded that photo to Minted and engaged the find it fast feature to take the guesswork out of determining which template worked with our photo, using the filters to make it easy to narrow down the options… Boy vs. Girl, Portrait vs. Landscape, 1-image vs. 4-images, $ vs. $$$, moveable text vs. locked-in-place, color theme selection, etc.

Our printed cards shown up above include a foil-pressed detail in the word “introducing,” but the real luxury I embraced was having the envelopes printed with recipient addresses (it was a free promotional offer at the time I ordered). It saved me hours of time hand-addressing envelopes when they arrived, and frankly, they’re the best looking envelopes I’ve ever had the opportunity to stick in the mail… even better than our wedding invites. Stoked! Totally doing this for our Christmas cards in a few months too; it’s a life changing perk, perfect for a busy parent.

This post contains affiliate links; I’ll only get a compensation credit if you purchase from Minted. I was not compensated for this post, only given free product.