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Hi Pam - welcome to crestock,
we are glad when we can help you. Would you mind posting the numbers of your rejections?

Just some general guidelines.
Use the highest in camera quality setting (at best raw and convert the images in your preferred converter afterwards).
Use ISO 100 wherever possible.
Get the image well exposed in camera. Every post production you add is going to reduce the image quality. While sometimes it just isn´t possible (at least with standard equipment) because of too high contrast in a scene, most of the times it will be fine. Learn to read your histogram (if it is available in your camera).

Hope this already was a starting point.

All the best and enjoy the rest of the holidays!!!

It helps to use a high definition monitor, and always check your images at full size.

Are your skies grainy? Do bright highlights have color fringes?

Another quality check is to (temporarily) turn up the brightness on your image. Many flaws in dark areas will show up then. Even though you can't see them when you undo the brightness change, these flaws will show up if the image is printed.

Sometimes it helps to darken your dark spots by adjusting your exposure, brightness, contrast. You just have to play with it sometimes to get the right. Always look at your images at 100% before uploading to inspect for sharpness and noise and etc..