Send holiday greetings this weekend: You supply Word (and the eggnog!)

Buy holiday lights. Check. Decorate the house. Check. Send out holiday greetings. Oh no!

Never fear. This weekend is not too late to complete the holiday card or newsletter that you've been meaning to get out the door since Thanksgiving.

Stuff cards in mailboxes not inboxes

If you want your cards to be displayed on living room mantles instead of inboxes, start with a Word template and the right card stock.

In his blog post about making your own holiday cards, Ron Owens suggests using blank cards such as Avery 3265, 3266 or high-quality matte-coated card stock so you get vivid color and great-looking photos.

To add borders, backgrounds, and other professional looking razzle-dazzle to your cards read: Artistic effects in Word for your holiday cards.

To avoid hand cramps from addressing envelopes, try this handy PowerPoint reference called Mail Merge Made Easy to create mailing labels.

Save trees (and stamps): Use email merge

My goal this year is to finally go green (well, and actually send a holiday greeting), so I'm planning to create an email holiday card and use an email merge to send it to everyone in my Outlook address book.

These are the best instructions I've found for sending an email card: Use mail merge to send personalized email messages to your email address list

If you want additional instructions for adding pictures to email cards and sending them using email merge, read Joannie Stangeland's blog post Create email holiday cards in Word.

Good luck this weekend, and happy holidays!