How Cando the Christmas ______ Card Began

Many of you have received a Christmas card from me over these past few years.  Others have seen my craziness displayed on Facebook.  There are still others who first saw a card and then later met me exclaiming, “Oh, you’re Cando the ______!  I saw your picture at ______’s house."  

I thought it would be fun to give some background on where this started.  I spent two years working at a party store.  We also sold a ton of greeting cards and it was my job to order and stock the cards.  After a while the whole greeting card industry became a bit ridiculous.  I stocked cards addressed to:

Mom

Dad

Parents

Friend

Nephew

Grandmother

The Postman

the dog

From the cat to the dog

You get the point.  Little old ladies would come in and buy stacks and stacks of cards to send to each relative/pet.  It seemed to be so impersonal.  I resolved to be done with the silly things.  

Then one day I found a silly picture of myself and decided to glue it onto a piece of cardstock.  I decided that if I was going to give a greeting card, I would make it memorable, make it so the person never wanted to toss my card in the trash.  Below are a few birthday cards I sent:

I am the birthday fairy.  When I tap you with my wand
you get one year older.  Oh my!  I must have beaten
the crap out of you. (borrowed from another card)

I would sing Happy Birthday to you but I'm a little horse. (also borrowed)

I sent this for a friend born on St. Patrick's Day.

I made a rule to never give the same card twice.  I also decided that I would sit down at the beginning of the month and make cards for all the January birthdays.  This became problematic and laborious when I ran out of creative juices.  It also didn’t help that I forgot about making the February cards until March.  I quickly ran out of steam and my card making days came to a halt.  

Then one year around Christmas time, I was sitting around thinking about life.  I somehow found myself wearing reindeer antlers.  I mused that I could send out a single card to all my friends at Christmas time and it wouldn't be so time intensive.  I also decided that I would only do it if I could make them laugh with it.  So my first Christmas card looked like this:  

2008

Only a small handful of people received that first card.  I was testing out the reactions to see if those few people enjoyed the card.  They did.  Most thought it was hilarious and a few thought it was creepily funny.  The following years are below:

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013 - From the island of misfit toys on Rudolph.

2014

2015

2016

2017