Christmas Card Picture

I have to confess, I am obsessive about my Christmas card. (Have I mentioned that already?) Every year (except last year) I hand make my own cards. I start with the Christmas picture, of course. That determines everything: the color, the layout, the feel. Will it be three separate pictures of the kids? One picture? A family picture? Formal? Informal? Several pictures from throughout the year? Black and white or color? There are lots of picture decisions. Then I choose the color and layout. One year it was bright green and red. One year blue and silver. One year navy and gold. And one was red and yellow. The layout is also complicated. I usually have a verse and kid art, plus something blingy, like a star or something like that. The kid art takes a while--we start in the Fall trying to come up with different Christmas scenes. When we finally pick the best one from each kid we have to scan it and shrink it. Then we copy it. (Oh, and when I say "we" I actually mean "I." I do the prodding of the art and the choosing and the copying. But that is ok, because that's what I like to do. I could easily skip all these steps and upload a picture to Snapfish, but I don't.) The final step is assembling them, which takes forever. The cutting and the pasting and sometimes even the glittering. Oh, but I love it.

So we started the first step yesterday: the picture (see above). We took showers and blow dried hair and dressed up in our favorite outfits (I've stopped trying to match--each other or even their own clothes. It's not the essence of my kids.) We went to Centennial park. I took 150 pictures. None of them is CC worthy. Sigh. All that work with nothing to show for it. But we really did have a fun day, because after the photo session was some time on the playground, Hog Heaven on a picnic bench, and ice cream. All in all, a great day with some pretty cute pictures to remember it by. Next week we will (cross my fingers) get a PERFECT Christmas card picture at the beach!