I start every November with grand plans. I pull out my truffle recipes, devise holiday crafts, and pledge that this will be the year I get my Christmas cards out on time–no, early! In short, I momentarily forget that I have kids, a job, shopping, and a million other things to do. Before you know it, it’s early January and I’m trying to avoid eye contact with the pile of blank envelopes sitting on my desk.

The holidays have a way of gobbling up our best intentions– not to mention our free time. But I remain an optimist. This year, with a new baby to show off, I’m truly determined to get my cards out on time. And if not by Christmas, then definitely by New Year’s. Though really, anything before Groundhog Day would still count as a success, right?

If you’re thinking of creating your own holiday cards, be sure to read Diana Day’s tutorial on page 27. She not only shows you how to create a card from scratch, but also offers up lots of ideas and tips for customizing it. Speaking of the holidays, nothing evokes the season like snowy photos. But if the weather won’t cooperate, Liz Ness shows you how to fake it on page 7.

In this issue, you’ll also find lots of great work by you, our subscribers. As a part of Subscriber Showcase, we’ve included a few of our favorite entries from the August and September Photo Challenges. There were so many great shots, I wish we had the space to include them all. I encourage you to check out the rest of our Top Picks online. And I hope you’ll join us for future challenges: The theme for November is “Motion;” December’s theme is “Lights.” (Remember that photos must be submitted within the appropriate challenge month.)

In addition, the lovely image on the cover is by subscriber Julie McLeod. Julie tells us that the late summer produce was simply calling out to her to make a still life–and we’re glad she listened. After processing the raw photo in Lightroom 3, Julie brought it into Elements 8, added two textures, and then carefully removed them from the foreground objects. She then returned to Lightroom and added a vintage preset by photographer Sarah Ji.

Finally, if you haven’t heard, Adobe recently released Photoshop Elements 10. You can learn about the biggest changes on page 23. One of my favorites is that the Type tool can now fill any shape with text–opening the door to lots of creative potential. But remember that you don’t have to upgrade to continue taking advantage of our great tutorials. We do our best to support all recent versions of Elements, both on the Mac and Windows, and that won’t change.

Have a warm and wonderful holiday!

Kelly Turner