by Gail Kavanagh

Created on: December 18, 2011   Last Updated: December 21, 2011

A great way for families and friends to keep in touch over long distances during the holiday season is by exchanging newsletters with the latest news, achievements and plans for the year ahead. It doesn’t have to be just a long, dreary letter either – it can be a bright, breezy and eye-catching newsletter that your family and friends will love to receive.

You should be planning your holiday newsletter throughout the year. Save memorable items like vacation notes and ephemera, prizes and awards, photos and memories to share. You can keep them in a box, ready to be scanned and typed up, or you can scan and type as you go, saving everything in a special folder on your computer.

Why not give your newsletter a cute name? You can call it after your family – the Smith Gazette – or after the place you live – the Oregon Bulletin – or anything catchy and fun, and uniquely yours. Anyone with computer knowledge can manage a simple graphics program or word processor these days, and create a fun text header for the newsletter. You can download free fonts from sites like DaFont, and find free clip art to complement your design.

Prepare your newsletter a month or so in advance so there is plenty of time to mail and email your copies. Choose your material and put it into categories labelled news, features and briefs. These are newspaper terms which are very handy in helping you decide what goes where in your newsletter. News goes up front and that consists of the year’s really big stories – weddings, moving house, new car, new babies and so on. Features are in-depth stories about vacations, family members, hobbies and so on. Briefs are short, one or two paragraph items of interest.

You don’t have to write the whole thing up yourself. Get the family to write the items of particular interest to each one of them – for example, if the eldest is going to college next year, he or she can boast of getting into the very college they were dreaming of, while the Mom who welcomed a new baby will be happy to fill everyone in on the beauty and intelligence of the newcomer.

You won’t need fancy software – a free word processor like OpenOffice will suffice, as it allows you to create a page with text and images, but if you want something more spectacular you can download PagePlus Starter edition for free. It’s easy to use and will make your newsletter look fabulous. You can print out and mail your PagePlus newsletter, or email it as a .pdf attachment or as an epub document.

However you choose to send it, this is one family newsletter everyone will love to receive.

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