We were thrilled to see over 300 people join the event and share inspiration, photos of projects, and tips on our Facebook event page.

Here are a few of the things people had to say about the event and how Evernote came into play (shared on our event page):

• Raven M said, “I created a ‘Master To Do List’ note and listed each task that needed to be completed each day leading up to Christmas, including links to tutorials, recipes and ideas. It has definitely helped me stay on task!”
• Amy Vander Vorste said, “I’ve already completed my Christmas projects. But Evernote helps me keep all my crafting notes and research in one place and easy to hunt through!”
• Gwen Wafer said, “I can keep my knitting patterns and notes on my tablet and phone instead of having my projects *and* various pieces of paper floating around in my bag.”
• Sherrie Lee Escue said, “I learned a lot about using Evernote because of the Christmas craft project.”

For more tips on using Evernote for crafting, check out Craft Ambassador Jenni Lathrop’s tips document (save it to your Evernote account for handy access from any computer or mobile device)

We were overwhelmed by the number of fantastic submissions we received. Below are a few that our team selected as our favorites.

Above from left to right: Homemade client gifts (pup treats) submitted by Natalia Martinez, ‘It had to have ears’ submitted by Coral Pearce, Tea Wreath submitted by Betsy Kaage, holiday floral arrangement submitted by Sherri Smith.

Thanks to Chronicle Books for teaming up with us to put together a fantastic prize pack. Without further ado, the winner of the Evernote & Chronicle Books Craft-Along is… Nicole Valentine! Check out more photos of her project, Greenery, here.

Above: The winning entry, ‘Greenery’ submitted by Nicole Valentine

Wrapping up your holidays with Evernote

Now that the holidays are all said and done, check out some tips for wrapping up the holiday season and preparing for an even better one next year.

Join our public note to see this and other tips. >>>

Stay tuned for more community events

Stay tuned for a lot more community activities to help you do more in your work and your life with Evernote’s products and partners. Is there a community event you’d like to see us host? We’d love to know your ideas. Please share them in the comments.

For eleven months out of the year, people love to hate on snail mail (or, as I like to call it, “Mail Classic”). Come December though, people begin to enjoy having their mailboxes stuffed with holiday cheer in the form of catalogs, cards, and yes, even the Family Letter. Loved by some and reviled by others, the Family Letter is the fruitcake of holiday mail. I say, if you’re going to distribute a letter that chronicles the last 12 months of your family’s life (whether via snail mail or email, as it’s getting close to that time!), it’s your duty to write responsibly— keep the bragging to a minimum, keep it short, and please, pleeease, make it halfway interesting.

That’s where Evernote comes in. There are so many tips and tricks I use to help me collect great memories I can tap into when it comes time to write my end-of-year declaration. Here are some tips on how to use Evernote to make your Family Letter shine.

• DON’T: Include a 365 day play-by-play. A lot happens in a year…where to start? Go for highlights. Scan your family’s Tweets, blog posts, Facebook, or Google Plus status updates, using Evernote to capture the best ones which you can mine for newsletter fodder. You could begin now (or start prep for next year) by using a service like IFTTT or Zapier to auto-publish an RSS feed to an Evernote notebook, automatically putting all those updates in one place.
• DO: Add telling visuals. When you capture pictures with Evernote’s iPhone app, each pic automatically gets a geo-location label as well as time and date stamp, so you won’t find yourself wondering when exactly it was that your tiny dancer had her first ballet recital, where that family hike was, or the exact day someone passed his driver’s test. This will also make things easy on you when you want to put events in chronological order.
• DON’T stop at family photos. Concert tickets, hotel matchbooks — they all represent special  memories and create a bit more variety than yet another picture of you and the kids mugging to the camera.
• DON’T: Weigh down your letter with bad news. If you feel it’s important to let people know about some of the less fortunate things that happened over the year, that’s fine. Just keep it brief and consider countering it with positive news like how far you’ve come with your goals. Just look back on your progress-related notes (maybe you’ve been working on fitness, saving, or job goals) and see how far you’ve come.
• DO: Include other voices. One route you might take? Ask each family member to contribute a short anecdote (5 sentences or so). You could have them contribute voice recordings or written notes to a Shared Notebook so they’re easy to collect and collate for the newsletter.
• DON’T: Write a novel. Break things up into short paragraphs (this is easier to read), and try to keep your updates to a page, two pages max. Seriously, if your Family Letter reads more like a chapter book, you probably want to do a serious edit.
• DO: Let inspiration strike. Once you begin brainstorming, you’ll find memories pop up in the most unlikely of places. Use one of Evernote’s mobile apps to make an audio note on-the-go that you can incorporate later.

What say you: Should family letters still exist?  And if so, what’s your best tip for writing one?

Take the Evernote Holiday Pledge

From now through the New Year, you can sign up for the Evernote Holiday Pledge and opt in to receive email tips and guidance from the Evernote team and our Ambassadors about ways you can get more out of Evernote. Participate in virtual events like the Evernote  & Chronicle Books Craft-Along and join our public notebook, which is updated regularly with fresh tips and guides. Stay tuned for new tips and challenges to help you start the new year right.

A few of the useful things you’ll find in our public notebook:

Save the Evernote Holiday Guide to your Evernote account >>>

See how you can create a holiday budget with Evernote >>>

All about the food

Evernote Food Evernote Food lets you capture, share and relive your memorable meals. Whether you’re eating at home with family or out at a restaurant with friends, use Evernote Food to snap photos of your meal, setting, and fellow diners to create a beautiful photo essay that you can relive anytime, or selectively share your experiences with those you care about. Add location, tags, and captions to note special details and make your meals easier to find later.

Punchfork The first step in preparing a special holiday meal is researching and finding the perfect recipes. Punchfork is a visual recipe search engine that makes it easy to discover popular recipes from top food sites and save your favorites to your Evernote account so you can access them whenever you need them.

Say Mmm  Use Say Mmm to plan your meals, organize recipes, and shop for groceries. By connecting Say Mmm with Evernote, you can automatically create organized grocery lists with nutritional estimates from your recipes and consolidate them into one easy list that you can pull up in Evernote while you grocery shop.

Finding the perfect gift

FastEver Snap This app makes it easy to quickly send pictures to your Evernote account. As you holiday shop, snap photos of gift ideas, assign photos to notebooks and tag them to find them later. You can also take pictures at holiday parties, then save and share them with everyone via a Shared Notebook. Even if you’re offline, FastEver will save the photos in queue to send to Evernote when you’re back online.

Evernote Clearly and Evernote Web Clipper For those who want to avoid long lines in stores and shop online, the Evernote Web Clipper and Evernote Clearly are lifesavers. Clip gift ideas from any site, and save them to Evernote with a simple click so you can compare prices and finalize purchase decisions in one place. Whether text, an image, or links, everything you need to refer to will be in Evernote on your phone, desktop, tablet, and the Web.

Staying organized

Kustom Note A finalist in Evernote’s 2012 Devcup, Kustom Note lets you easily create templates for your notes in Evernote so you can input necessary information quickly and create nicely-designed notes. You can browse public note templates or create your own, using simple fill-in forms with SmartFields. Use Kustom Note to plan your holiday party, create an invite, or share a potluck sign-up form with family and friends.

Piikki Piikki will help you manage all your receipts. Automatically save your receipts in Evernote so you can easily search for it if you need to return a gift or split costs associated with holiday meals among family. You can tag, categorize, and search for receipts based on location, making it easy to group receipts together so you can keep track of all your holiday expenses. A simple snap with your iPhone camera, and you’ll never lose another receipt.

Take the Evernote Holiday Pledge

From now through the New Year, you can sign up for the Evernote Holiday Pledge and opt in to receive email tips and guidance from the Evernote team and our Ambassadors about ways you can get more out of Evernote. Participate in virtual events like the Evernote  & Chronicle Books Craft-Along and join our public notebook, which is updated regularly with fresh tips and guides.

A few of the useful things you’ll find in our public notebook:

Save the Evernote Holiday Guide to your Evernote account >>>

See how you can create a holiday budget with Evernote >>>

This year, we introduced the Evernote Holiday Pledge; anyone who signs the Pledge opts in to receive useful tips and guidance from our team and our fabulous Ambassadors throughout the season. What’s more, we’re hosting a number of fun virtual events to help you be a better Evernote user, connect with the Evernote community and learn just how much you can do with your Evernote account, various Evernote products and partner products that extend the Evernote experience.

Join the Holiday Craft-Along!

We’ve joined together with our Craft Ambassador Jenni Lathrop and our friends at Chronicle Books to bring you our first Holiday Craft-Along, an opportunity to use Evernote to help you add a handmade touch to your holiday season. Here’s how it’s going to work:

• RSVP to the Facebook Event page
• Complete one of the projects below by December 25th, and share photos of your creations on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #evernoteholiday.
• Be sure to email your best photos to evernoteholiday@evernote.com. We’ll select a random winner from among the email submissions to receive a pretty sweet Evernote + Chronicle Books goody bag (see below for everything that’s included).

Choose one of 5 craft projects to complete with Evernote:

1. Make a homemade gift
2. Create a homemade centerpiece
3. Create homemade table decorations
4. Create a holiday floral arrangement
5. Make a homemade party invitation

Use Evernote to:

• Create a Holidays 2012 Notebook or Notebook Stack
• Download Evernote to your mobile devices (if you haven’t already) for on-the-go access to your notes
• Create a shopping checklist
• Shop in-store and online for craft materials, checking items off your list as you purchase them
• Clip inspiration using the Evernote Web Clipper
• Snap photos of holiday inspiration you see at department stores and friends’ houses
• Create a to-do list for completing your project
• Share your project notes with a collaborator by sharing individual notes or creating a Shared Notebook
• Get organized around all of your holiday plans; download Evernote’s Holiday Guide

Submit photos of your handmade holiday craft, win the Evernote & Chronicle Books goody bag!

Email photos of your completed craft projects to evernoteholiday@evernote.com. We’ll select a random winner from among the email submissions to receive a pretty sweet Evernote + Chronicle Books goody bag (see below for everything that’s included). We’ll add our favorites to our Holiday notebook.

The prize pack includes the following book titles, along with Evernote goodies:

Holiday Crafting & Baking with Kids
A Life In Stitches
Stencil Style 101
Mom & Me Knits
Heart Felt Knits
Liberty Book of Home Sewing
So Pretty! Crochet

Find more tips for using Evernote this holiday season by joining our public notebook (updated regularly) and taking the Evernote Holiday Pledge to receive tips and guidance by email.

Take the Evernote Holiday Pledge

By taking the pledge, you’ll unlock opportunities to participate in a range of fun challenges and events, find tips from our Ambassadors, and opt to receive helpful guidance from the Evernote team throughout the holiday season. Visit our Evernote Holiday page to take the Pledge and find out what’s in store.

The BIG Evernote Potluck

With Thanksgiving only a few weeks away, we thought we’d kick things off with a BIG Evernote Potluck, led by our Home Cooking Ambassador, Lauren Atkins. You can participate online and also plan a real-life potluck with friends and family on Saturday, November 10th. 

Here’s what you need to do:

• RSVP to the BIG Evernote Potluck Facebook event, and while you’re at it, be sure to Like the Evernote and Evernote Food Facebook Pages!
• Join Lauren’s Holiday potluck notebook. You’ll find recipe ideas, potluck-planning tips, and more. When you open the link, click to Join the Notebook (you’ll be asked to sign into your Evernote account). After you’ve joined the notebook, you’ll be able to access it from your Shared Notebooks on any device where you have Evernote installed.
• Figure out what you’d like to bring to the potluck. Use our handy checklist to help you figure out ways to use Evernote and Evernote Food to plan, shop, cook, and capture your creations.
• Find Lauren’s tips for using Evernote and Evernote Food to organize your Thanksgiving dinner (use this potluck as your ‘test drive’)
• Prepare your potluck dish (s) anytime between today and November 10th. Be sure to capture the process and the final dish using Evernote and/or Evernote Food.
• Submit photos of your dishes to our public Holiday notebook by emailing them to evernoteholiday@evernote.com anytime between today and November 26th.
• Connect with Lauren and fellow Evernote users on the Facebook event page to discuss tips for planning your Thanksgiving, share favorite Thanksgiving recipes, and more. Use the hashtag #evernoteholiday when sharing your notes on Twitter or Instagram.

Be sure to join our Holiday notebook to find tips for using Evernote and our family of products to make this your best holiday season yet. We’ll be updating it regularly throughout the season.

Enter our BIG Potluck contest

Submit your best dish to the BIG Evernote Potluck contest. We’ll select 5 random winners on Monday, November 26th to win a sweet Evernote goody bag.

Don’t forget to download our Holiday Guide»

The logistics

Before you start figuring out your menu and vendors, consider your budget. Once you’ve set a budget, it’s time to start planning!

1. Scout locations. Unless you know you’ll be throwing a party in your home, use Evernote to find your perfect location. Snap photos with your mobile device, jot down notes and ideas, and compare locations back home on your computer. Remember that notes taken with your mobile phone are geo-tagged, making it easier to keep track of locations.
2. Research your vendor options. Clip information about catering companies, party supply stores and more using the Evernote Web Clipper for the browser of your choice. Be sure to capture information like phone numbers and addresses.[Learn more about web clipping with Evernote]
3. Make your guest list. Use Evernote to come up with your guest list, and keep track of emails and addresses by adding them to your ‘Guest List’ note in your ‘Party’ notebook.
4. Sketch out your table settings. Planning a dinner party? Use pen and paper to draw your table settings. Annotate your photos with Skitch, to add more detail. Snap a photo of your drawing with Evernote to make it searchable. [Learn how to use Evernote + Skitch, together]
5. Create your playlist. Whenever you come across a great band or song you’d like to add to your playlist, add it to your ‘Party Music’ note or notebook. It will make compiling your party playlist a breeze.
6. Figure out your party menu. Snap photos of cocktail menus at restaurants, clip recipes from the web, and scan in magazine articles to your menu inspiration notebook.
7. Join forces. Plan your party with a co-conspirator! Share your party-planning notebook to exchange ideas, share guest lists, menu plans, and more. [Learn more about sharing in Evernote]

Party time!

Once you’ve gotten everything planned, it’s time to enjoy the party. On the day of the party, use Evernote to:

1. Prepare your meal, appetizers, and cocktails. Use Evernote on your tablet or mobile device to access the recipes you’ve collected to pull together delicious bites and sips.
2. Organize your decorations. Refer to your sketches and outlines in Evernote to put up your party decorations, place settings and more.
3. Capture memories. Use Evernote and Evernote Food to capture the things you want to remember from your party: photos with friends, tasty treats, and more. [Get Evernote Food for iPhone]
4. Find information when you need it. Need to call a guest or the bakery that’s making dessert for your party? Access the information you need from your Evernote account, even if you’re not at your computer.
5. Remember the people you meet. Meeting someone new at your party? Use Evernote Hello to remember new people and reconnect with them later. [Get Evernote Hello for iPhone]
6. Pass on the good stuff. Share your drink recipes, vendor contact info, and more, with guests, straight from your Evernote account. Email individual notes, and post to Twitter and Facebook.

These are just a few of the ways you can use Evernote to help you plan your party (holiday-themed, or otherwise). How do you use Evernote to plan a party? Are you a party planner that uses Evernote to organize events? Share your ideas in the comments.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this series on using Evernote for planning your holidays. We hope you have a fantastic holiday season and a happy New Year!

Creating a master budget in Evernote

Make a plan for your holiday spending and keep track of it in Evernote:

• Figure out your spending categories. If you’re flying somewhere, make sure to include costs of transportation, dog sitters, winter coats, etc.
• Come up with a gift budget. Make a list of people you’ll be buying gifts for and come up with a reasonable budget for each person.
• Plan your holiday dinner. Have a big family dinner? Figure out your food and drink expenses (hint: menu plan by clipping recipes and menu ideas from the web using the Web Clipper). Keep everything in one place, in Evernote. [Learn more about web clipping with Evernote]

• Organize your holiday party. Whether you’re throwing a blowout bash, or a modest cocktail party, you can use Evernote to collaborate on a budget. Create a Shared Notebook where you can work with a co-host on splitting costs and assigning tasks. [Learn more about sharing in Evernote]

Keep track of your spending

Did you know that you can keep track of your spending using Evernote?

• Scan or snap photos of your receipts. Evernote can search for text in images so you can quickly scan through your receipts and subtract costs to your budget. You’ll also have them on hand in case you have to deal with returns.
• Email your travel-related purchases to Evernote. Anytime you purchase something online and get an email receipt, send it to your Evernote account to keep your spending under control.
• Get a handle on all of those holiday deals. Don’t miss your chance to save some money by capturing deals you see and saving them to your Evernote account.
• Comparison shop. Don’t just settle on the first deal you see. Do your research by clipping articles from the web, product deals from sites like BestBuy.com, and scan in magazine articles.

• Plan your route using Evernote + Skitch and save costs on gas. If you’re traveling by car over the holidays, plan out your route ahead of time: save a map to Evernote, then annotate it in Skitch, marking the route, any stops you want to make, and roads to take between the in-laws’ houses. [Learn how to use Evernote + Skitch, together]

This post is part of a series on using Evernote for the holidays. Check out the first post in the series: Evernote, Your One-Stop Tool for Surviving the Holidays: Gift-Giving

For more ideas, check out our Holiday Guide. Download the Evernote Holiday Guide >>>

Download our Holiday Guide*

*You can save it straight to your Evernote account, for easy reference. [Learn how to attach a file to your note]

How to use Evernote for holiday gift giving

If you’re like my mother-in-law, you implore everyone in the family to send you their gift ideas before the holidays. Lists come in different forms — from emails to handwritten notes — and they’re always a pain to manage. Use Evernote to get ahead with your holiday shopping:

• Forward gift lists from your email to your Evernote account by emailing them to your Evernote email address (found in your Preferences).
• Use Evernote to snap a photo or scan in paper lists. Add titles and tags to make searching easier. You can also search inside of images and PDFs so if you’re at the store and see something you recall seeing on a gift list, just type in the item name into your search box.
• Create a checklist associated with gifts you plan to purchase. When you’re at the store and want to cross something off your list, just pull it up in Evernote on your mobile device. [Learn how to create a checklist in Evernote]
• Doing some comparison shopping? Use Evernote to keep track of great deals by clipping products from the web using the Evernote Web Clipper and snap photos of items (and price tags) in store. Search through your research from any computer or device to finalize your decisions.

Evernote for finding the perfect gift, any time of year

Figuring out what to get for people that seem to never have a list can be kind of stressful. Take advantage of the moments when friends and family hint at things they’d like to receive.

• When you’re at lunch with your mom and she mentions that she really wishes she had a nice wool sweater, jot down a discreet note in Evernote on your smartphone.
• Out shopping with a friend and notice her eying a certain dress? Snap a photo of it using the snapshot feature in Evernote on your phone.
• Whenever you’re browsing the web and come across something that you think your dad, brother, or uncle may appreciate it, clip it using the Evernote Web clipper. Tag it with a memorable tag like ‘gift ideas: dad’ or jot down a few notes to go along with the clip. Search through your clips anytime, anywhere. [Learn how to use the Evernote Web Clipper]

No one says you can’t do a little shopping for yourself. Take note of gift ideas for yourself and link all of them (using Note Links) into a single note titled ‘Holiday Wish List.’ [Learn how to use Note Links]

ShopAdvisor recently launched a gift list feature that helps you find products, shows reviews and alerts you when the price of something you’ve been eyeing meets your budget. The app’s new Evernote integration allows you to create your gift list in Evernote and lets ShopAdvisor ‘watch’ this list for you. You can also save watched items to Evernote using ShopAdvisor on your iPhone or Android — a great way to comparison shop. A personal shopping assistant sure can take the stress off holiday gift-buying! To start using ShopAdvisor with Evernote, you’ll want to link your account by first going here.

Don’t Forget: Evernote for the holidays Twitter Party

Come chat with Carley, our new Parenting Ambassador, about ways to stay sane during the holidays and focus on family. Learn more here. For more holiday talk, head to our Evernote for the Holidays forum discussion.

Read how other Evernote users use Evernote for planning the holidays, and share your ideas!

Next up: we’ll be talking about ways to manage your budget during the holiday season, followed by planning the perfect holiday party.