While everyone is rifling through their photos trying to WIN A FREE SHIRT in the Annie’s Knight contest, I’ve been trying to capture that one, precious photo for the Royal Family Holiday Card.
As you can see, its been a less than perfect process. Doing it ourselves was a great idea in theory…the execution has been a little difficult.
I have a cousin back in Michigan who’s holiday card I dread. First of all, after four children she’s still a size 2. But worse yet-her family is unbelievable beautiful. And every single stinking year they look like the poster children for a GAP ad. I know where she gets her cards printed too, and lets just say if she skipped the photo this year and donated the money, she could feed a small, third-world nation. To top it all off, they are the nicest people you could every hope to be related too. So I can’t even bitch about her behind her back.
But what I really want to know is how does she keeps those kids so clean? And combed? And free of peanut butter and jelly stains on the face? All their pleats are intact. No one has a runny nose. Everyone has an award winning smile. And they always look like they are having the time of their life taking the photo.
Look at the first attempt at our photo…my kids aren’t even wearing shoes. And I was jumping up and down like a lunatic behind the camera trying to get both kids to A) look at me and B)smile.
Sure, in the end we “got” the shot. But why do I get the feeling it wasn’t so hard for my cousin and her clan…
*just a reminder, get your Annie’s Knight photo posted by Saturday! And don’t forget boys and nonMoms can play too! Play! Win free stuff!
Card envy, nice. I don’t even know if I’m doing a card… LOL… I want to see the final pic!! 🙂 Cute kiddos… does the prince laugh and giggle all of the time???
I promise I’ll post the final pic once my cards are out and gone. Maybe on xmas day or something.
Yeah…he’s a happy kid. Most of the time. And he also has a “cheese” face he make now whenever I bring out the camera!
I’ve got to tell you, I think those GAP ad photos are cute and precious, but honestly, my favorite pictures of little kids are the ones like you have posted. Giggling, running around, crying at the sheer devastation of having their picture taken, smearing that peanut butter on their face. My family is so warped that when we have baby photos done there’s almost always one chosen where the child is screaming at the top of their lungs or gazing tearfully into the camera. And they’re absolutely adorable!!
Yeah, we had a whole idea very much like what you described Angela that we were actually going to try and take a photo of..you know, to show the “real” us…we just couldn’t get our act together enough! Plus, I didn’t want to be in the photos!
4 kids and a size 2?
I don’t have any kids and I’m nowhere near a 2!
🙂
happy holidays
I need to get on that same project myself.
Why do we do this to ourselves???
Why not just buy generic xmas cards and be done with it???
sigh.
I have no idea. Somedays I tell myself its because I’m keeping in touch. Other days I say its because everyone should have an updated photo of the kids. We’re idiots, thats why.
OK, you take pro photos like I do.
Now, my tip–shove a camera in front of them every day. They start to pose just by you saying “cheese”, even saying cheese at random.
I had a friend whose son was a bit of an accident prone ruffian. One day, when she was waiting to take him to a pro photo place, he ended up bruised *in the face*. So, she stuck a hockey mask on him and just went with it 🙂
I spent an hour today posing my seven month old with a Santa hat, only to have my husband come home and tell me he thinks holiday photos are a bit tragic and I need to get out more. Ah well, all the photos sucked anyway!
If you ever find out the secret of how to take photos of a child with a clean face please be sure to share it. I have not ever taken a photo of a clean face on a child yet! LOL!
Perfect photos are for photo studios, lol. The one you have displayed is awesome, realistic, and would make a very cute card.
I’m sure it was the shotgun she was pointing at them while taking the picture! There’s no other way.
Ken
Your husband is probably editing snot off of my daughter’s face for my Holiday cards as I type this.
Nobody is perfect. If your family looked perfect all of the time your cousins would mock you on the interweb.
The picture you have posted is pretty cute, too!
We did our card photo the other weekend. Very interesting with a 6 month old! We settled on a goofy shot since we could not get the perfect smile shot (where we also looked good). I think the family will have a good laugh over Pumpkin’s face though, it is just so her. I will post it on my site for Christmas 🙂
How many rolls of film did you take? Last year after 6 rolls of pictures, I gave up! I’m not even bothering anymore… why stress when most of them will be tossed by the recipients.
The best year was when my son was 8 weeks old, and slept through the photoshoot. Nevertheless, it still too 3 rolls to find the picture that was “just right.”
Thank goodness, I don’t have any perfect photo relatives, I don’t even have any of them as friends!
I’m with those who say just send one out of you trying to get the “perfect” shot. They are much much more realistic, and make the rest of us feel better about our lives, normal, and all. We’ve just ditched the whole thing, as our third child has made it impossible to get’em all looking the same direction at once…