Christmas Card Plan B

November 25, 2011

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We had two great feasts; one on Wednesday night and one on Thursday. I just love having a fridge full of leftovers when I didn’t cook a single thing!

Wednesday before we headed to my mother-in-law’s house, I decided that we should take advantage of the warmish weather and get our family Christmas picture done. We all got dressed in the outfits I planned for us to wear and got outside just in time for the sun to start setting. Grrrr! I had this idea for my daughter to hold a bunch of balloons and my son to hold a chalkboard with the message – Happy Birthday Jesus. I had the whole thing planned, so how could it end up being a total flop? Well, the sun was going down, and the lighting in my backyard isn’t great. I was only able to salvage one decent photo out of the numerous shots we snapped.

I call this photo decent because you didn’t see the others. 😉 I did my best to make it work and was all set to use this not-great-but-not-bad photo on our Christmas cards. Then I went online to order and the photo wouldn’t fit in any of the cards I liked from Snapfish, Shutterfly, or Tiny Prints. I’d have to crop the photo to make it work and that would either cut off the balloons or the chalkboard. I’m not even going to tell you how much time I wasted trying to figure out what to do. We don’t really have the time to take another photo, and at this time of year the weather is hit or miss for an outdoor photo session anyway. So, I decided to scrap the original idea and just put together a little collage of photos from throughout the year. Once I decided to do this, I had the cards done and ordered in less than 30 minutes! Plan B was easy, simple, and ended up being better than Plan A.

I love this card! I put it together using Picasa – text and clip art via Picnik. I used a picture of my ikat stencil wall as the background. Then I just layered on a few of my favorite pics from the year. I ordered a plain 5×7 flat card from Tiny Prints taking advantage of their Black Friday sale and free shipping promo!

I’m pretty excited to get one of the big things crossed off my list. Do you send photo cards? Did any of you score any great Black Friday deals? None of the items I really wanted were going to be on sale, so I decided to skip the hoopla this year.

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i think the first one was beautiful, too, but i love the collage- it shows more glimpses into your real life and your family. adorable!

Oh my gosh! I can sympathize with you on the holiday card situation! I won 25 free cards from Shutterfly. I spent over an hour finding a decent family pic to use and then choosing a card to accommodate the pic was a whole other story! After I finished creating my card, I was told the pic res was too low! Had to choose a different pic!!! Then…my free code "did not apply" to this order!!!!! Talk about frustrating! UGH! Sorry for all the exclamation points, but thanks for letting me vent. Happy holidays! 😉

I love the final product. It gives a more detailed glimpse of your life as a family:) And the ikat? perfection!

Love this idea!!! I am seriously considering this for our plan B too! Thanks for the idea!!!

I've come across your blog several times the past couple of weeks. So, I am your newest follower. This whole blogging thing is new to me but I didn't want to be some kind of voyeur so I thought I'd say "hi." Hi." Also, I am in the beginning phase of building our new house and figure you'll be some inspiration to me. Thanks.

I think your Plan B turned out excellent! I love that you used your dining room wall as a background!

I love the Christmas card. So creative!

Tracy – It feels good to vent huh?! 😉
Split3ways- thanks for saying, "hi". Nice to "meet" you and congrats on the new house!

Thanks everyone. Maybe next year I'll pony up the money and just have a professional take our picture. 😉

Plan B came out beautifully. I love the idea of using your stenciled wall as background. I usually do a collage on kodak with just the kids. I usually skip Black Fri activities.

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