"You Have Such A Pretty Face. You Should be on a Christmas Card!"

Yay, Elf! Also, yay Christmas cards! Who doesn't love mail that isn't bills? Growing up my mom always sent pretty store bought cards. As did I when I was single. I suspect photo Christmas card have grown substantially since the invention and common use of digital photography and the internet. We began the tradition of a family photo Christmas card the year Riley was born.

We hosted Thanksgiving that year and used it as an excuse to get a tree very early. We had it up and lit by Thanksgiving so we could take a family photo for the Christmas card. Lara graciously accepted the task of taking the photo that year (and each one since, so far).

I put it on a green and blue background with reindeer and sent it out. Notice we chose a seated pose. Everyone in my family towers above me. It was very simple. Seated in front of a Christmas tree in holiday clothes. Classic. I think the card said Merry Christmas and our names.

Last year I had this idea to take a picture of Mike & I unwrapping the kids. Sounded fun and fairly simple.

First of all, Lara is amazing some of the best pictures of my kids ever taken came from this Christmas card photo session. Amazingly, good pictures. Second, nothing is ever as simple as you think it will be. Getting four people to smile and look at the camera at all is a challenge let alone getting a 1yr old and an 8 year old to pop out of a box. Sigh.. Like I said despite all the work getting the group shot we got a lot of beautiful pictures.

I put this one a red background that said This is What Jolly Looks Like! It came out nice. I decided I really enjoy knowing we'll have a family photo once a year. Just look at the difference from 2009-2010. The kids grew a lot and I no longer have the ragged look of the mother of a newborn.

This year I told Mike over the summer I wanted to do something different. We'd had an inside joke for awhile about being Mr & Mrs Nerdelmeier. So we decided to take a nerdy family photo. It wasn't that big of stretch

This was our best idea, yet. It's different, but not over complicated. It wasn't a Christmas-y picture so we took it right before Halloween (before my surgery). A+ once again for Lara's photography. We got a few really fun pictures of the kids and Mike and I.

The pictures were really fun. This year for the first time I didn't choose a ready made layout from CVS. In past years at Mike's insistence I always started making the entire card myself, but gave up. The first year I just didn't have time with a 3mo old. Last year I found out that there wasn't an upload your own option in the Christmas card section of the photo sites and 5x7's in the quantity I needed for cards was ridiculously expensive.

This year Mike and I made our card in photoshop and uploaded it to Vistaprint which does have an upload your own option. I had a coupon for 20 cards for 1.99. I got 40 cards for $4 and it was exactly what we wanted because we made it ourselves. It was so freeing to do a non-dressed up, Christmas themed photo. Best card experience so far start to finish. It really got my wheels turning for next year. The response has been wonderful.