Return Address Labels After New Edition to Family

I don't list my son on the address labels, unless it is from him, then get personalized labels. You can just go with "Smith's" or "The Smith Family"

I agree with the other posters...we never put the children's names on the address labels. Generally mail is coming and going on account of business.
Don't sweat the small stuff!

I LOVE etsy.com. Just search labels. I'm a huge fan of circle labels and don't have the creativity myself to do them. You could spend hours looking at all the design ideas. Plus you are supporting mostly other moms who are working from home.

I use vistaprint.com for my address labels. We have labels with my name and my husband's name on them and a picture of us at our wedding. My daughter has butterfly labels with her name on them for thank you notes from her 1st birthday party. They offered me 100 labels for $.99 at checkout and they matched her invitations, so I couldn't resist, but otherwise I wouldn't have felt it necessary to buy her her own labels. When we run out of our "married couple" labels, I'll just buy "F... Family" labels.
Please consider this whatever you decide: If you put your child's name on the labels, anyone who sees your outgoing mail now has your child's name and address. If you personalize them with a picture of your family, they will now know that a child lives at that address. PLEASE do not put your family/child's picture AND their name on your address labels. To me, that's just begging for trouble and I'm not an anxious or overly cautious person. Sex offenders are everywhere, working in many different positions, and you don't want to put any ideas into anyone's head by advertising your child's picture, name and address on all of your outgoing mail.
Good luck!

We ordered ours online, but I can't remember the site. I thought about adding my daughter to the label, but I could never figure out exactly how to word it either. I decided to compromise and just keep it as my and my husbands name, but instead of the generic cartoon picture or monogram, I used a picture of our daughter. Even though she is a year older now than in the picture, it is still very cute. Everyone loves seeing her little face when they receive mail from us.

*We are on vacation right now, but when we get home, I can get you the name of the company we used if you still need it. They were very reasonably priced.

ok -today I am computer challenger and have already accidentally erased this reply twice- third time's a charm, I hope!
When we moved into our house 11 years ago I ordered return address labels for each of my three children with just their names. They use them for birthday invitations and thank yous. I also ordered generic "The Smiths" labels for everyday use.
Now that there are so many cute labels and programs to print your own, that is what I do. At Christmas I print them in red and green- but still just with "The Smiths" or "The Smith Family". I have ones for my personal use that have "First Maiden Smith" . Then "The Smiths" for business, bills or joint mailings from me and my husband. I agree- dont' sweat the small stuff- there are plenty of other options to put your child's name on! Here are a couple I have found handy.
Gift labels. At Christmas I print larger red/green labels that say "Merry Christmas! Love, Bob, Jane, John, Mary and Ann Smith" or if I am amazingly organized I will print up individual ones - put the generic message on all labels then go back and add the "To Grandma", "To The Houston Smiths", "To Uncle Bob" at the top. It's also nice to have some labels from your kid to slap on birthday presents. "Happy Birthday from Elmo Smith". Make those a little larger- shipping label size.
Business cards for you and for your child once he gets older. Put your name, kid's names, phone contacts and if there is room add your address. These are really handy once that kid starts Mother's Day Out, Gymboree, preschool, daycare, whatever. Much better than scribbling your name and number on a piece of paper that will get lost or misunderstood. (I once had a woman call me asking who I was. I didn't understand what she wanted until she mentioned that she had found my name and phone number in her husband's wallet and she demanded to know what my "relationship" was with her husband who she was in the process of divorcing. I had to wrack my brain and I kept throwing out questions- I really did NOT recognize the man's name. Turns out he was the stepfather of one of my son's friends who had spent the night maybe a year before.They were in middle school, it was the first time the kid had been over and of course the stepdad had been instructed to get our phone number and name. Which he stuck in his wallet and forgot about until his soon-to-be-ex wife found it!) Anyway, business cards are handy to pass out when you meet new moms or even for baby sitters-you'll be surprised how convenient those are.
So- don't sweat the return address labels but there are plenty of other things to label with all of your names! When I am feeling flush I order labels from stationery.com - otherwise I go to Office Depot and browse their computer labels. Don't just stick with their basic white return labels- they have a whole section of cute, printed, colored labels to personalize, also.
Good luck.

Hi W.-

I actually make my own. I purchase Avery labels & use their free program. I can make different labels for different events, like Christmas with my own picture from Clip Arts.

I like it this way, and it's not that expensive. Then you can also try different name lay outs.

R. Magby

Go to Office Max or Office Depot and get the labels. You can make them at home yourself for a fraction of the cost and download all kinds of graphics. Have fun with it. I think Avery makes the labels.

New family member
Newest member
first addition
our son

do this for family or very good friends, print you own.

I would go with The Smith Family ... I don't think its too generic, the other way is too casual and gives strangers too much information about your family. I gave a small donation to a couple of charities and have very nice labels that supported a good cause and is giving visibility to that cause to family and friends. If you wanted personalized labels for special occasions (i.e. Christmas cards or a party invitation) you can make them using a computer and clear stickers that make the envelope look like they are engraved. A good online website is Lillian Vernon. Good luck

My daughter has her own labels. This way when she sends out cards and thank you notes she has her own return label. I went on ebay and got her minnie mouse. She also has mickey mouse that we used for her first birthday thank you cards.
I usually make my own labels. Mostly for holidays. Much cheaper that way and you can put whatever picture you want on it. But alot of my labels are from ones that I get in the mail from charities. They are taking the time to send them so why not use them.

I have never seen children's names included on return address labels...how about Sarah and John Smith and family...then you won't have to worry about changing it as other little ones arrive!!! We always just had "John and Mary Doe" on ours...no mention of the children since the mail wasn't coming from them!!!

It never occured to me to put children's name on address labels. Many are used for business correspondence, not personal, and that really wouldn't be appropriate. If you do some like that, I would suggest 2 lines
John & Sarah Smith
Tommy
Or just John & Sarah Smith
Current has always had good quality labels as well as cards and wrapping paper.

You don't need to put your children's name on your return address labels. Just put Mr and Mrs John Smith or The Smith's.

We now have two, so we just put our names and leave the kids off. I guess we thought it would just be too long otherwise!

I made my own labels. Bought clear or white labels at Walmart and got on Microsoft Word and went to "envelopes & labels" and clicked on the brand of labels I bought, then printed them myself. You could make some that said all three of y'alls names, some that says just "The smiths" or some that say Baby Boy Smith for thank you cards. Try out a few different ways of phrasing it and see which you end up using the most of. (ie, you might mail your bills with the "The Smiths" label. You may write thank you notes wth the "John, Sarah, & Tommy", you may prefer to write invitations for a party from just "John & Sarah Smith."
(If you're not computer savvy, that's fine - instructions are in the label package.)

OR

there are lots of websites that allow you to upload a picture and put that on your labels. Before baby, we bought some from www.colorfulimages.com . They were inexpensive and I uploaded a picture in color of me and hubby.

Go to zazzle.com. I ordered skinny business cards for my mother and they turned out great. You can personalize/custom make just about anything. I even made customized t-shirts for my son and his friends and they LOVED them. They are great about running specials so keep checking the website because you could get your labels for 50% off or get free shipping.

I buy lables from VistaPrint.com. they are cheap but be warned that they charge an arm and a leg for shipping! But their shipping policies are a scam. They say that regular mail will take 21 days and if you want it in any reasonable amount of time you pay a mountain (like over $20) for shipping. If you do not pony up the money, it actually does come as fast as anything else in the mail, so don't be fooled! There are a bunch of design options and if you don't pay the extra for shipping, it is worth it.

I have never heard of anyone putting a child's name on return address lables unless it is an older child and their own lables. I don't include my kids on my labels. Honestly, we wouldn't have enough room. Really, though, I've never seen that. But I don't see anything wrong with it if you want to do it. :)

Congrats on the addition to your family!

We use Vistaprint also, and have for a number of years. Our labels say "The ____ Family" and everyone always comments about how cute they are. I agree with previous posters about being cautious about placing your child's name on the labels, and to order regular shipping (they come very fast). We generally pay less than $8 with shipping for 140 labels. There are constant sales.

I buy the blank Avery labels from Walmart or an office supply store and make my own. I can change them up any time I choose, sometimes for things I don't want any first names on the address labels, I just use SMITH. I just got thru making some with a flag on them for 4th of July. We like to include our son on our labels too, On the labels I just printed I put:

SMITH FAMILY (or just put SMITH)
John * Sarah * Tommy
1234 Street Name
Littleton, CO 12345

You can find lots of super cute free clip art on the internet and use different pictures/images for the time of year, etc. You could also save a picture of your family or baby to a word document, crop it small and cut and paste it on to some address labels. I have done this before, nothing more fun for the family, grandparents when they receive something in the mail with their grandkid(s) picture on the address label. I have also had stamps made thru the post office with my sons picture on them...way cool!!

If you have a printer at home try Avery labels & use their free program to set it up (do not need to install anything). You can then put what ever you like on it picture wise, or no picture, or your last name inital (which is what we have). As far as names we still put just Mr & Mrs Ken [Lastname]... I really like the idea of having my daughter have her own address labels for anything she send, which another mom mentioned and will be whipping up a few of those in short order now.

I bought label paper at Staples or something and have made our own but have never tried it with our kids, I usually just write our family name. I also use them to label my husband's CDs and DVDs when he loans them out, so I like the versatility of making them myself. The first version (John, Sarah, and Tommy Smith) is perfectly appropriate and correct. You could try to be "cute" and write "Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Son" but that does not really save space and sounds like a business. :)

You don't have to include your children's names but you most certainly can. We have our children's names on our address stamp. I bought it on Ebay. Very cheap and cute! http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3907.m570.l1.... The guy I used is in Malaysia. I think his name was Chris. We emailed back and forth over the details and he was very responsive. It shipped very quickly too (I had never ordered from overseas before but it worked out fine). Middle initial/last name in the middle and names in a circle.

We just kept them the same: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, A.B. Smith for one spouse or C.D. Smith for the other. The "Mr. and Mrs." are for things from "us" and the indivdual names were for business or from just one of us. For holidays I'll print up something like "The Smith Family" or "The Smiths" with a cute picture/cartoon befitting the reason for the card. The only time I use labels with the kids' names is when we are sending out birthday invitations for one of them or thank you notes. If the thank yous are for Christmas, I'll put both of their names so that I can mail the thank you notes together but they BOTH feel grown-up about it. It saves on stamps :) Each child has their own labels since I design and print them myself unprofessionally. I let each one help with their labels. The only cost is my time, ink and label sheets, no s&h or set-up costs from a company. I can also only print what I need. I don't have to order 250 for each, I can even print "just one more" if I need to :) I don't put my kids' names on any of the "everyday" labels simply because they are usually going to businesses and I don't want to waste the cute ones on people who won't even be looking at them.

Also remember: as you have more kids you'll have to do the same for each (add them to the label) and if you have 5 like I do then you will run out of space and someone's gonna get their feelings hurt. It will end up looking like this example ~ not our real names, I just thought it was cute:
**Adam, Belinda, Carly, Doug, Elizabeth, Frank & Gloria Smith **
Most companies limit the number of characters (letters, punctation, symbols) and lines on a label.

Good luck deciding!