HELLO!!!
Happy Holidays!!!
To my sweet little following,
I owe you a..
HUGE THANK YOU
for hanging in there with me while
I have been remiss in posting for the last few months.
I am learning new things about blogging every day…and
I admire the successful bloggers with Beautiful thriving blogs
who make it look SOOOO easy.
Somehow they find a way to juggle it all…home, work, family
working DIY magic
and blogging and they
create Consistently Accessible blogs which connect
the dots and give us a picture of their life.
I am afraid if you connected my dots they might look a bit more like a
3 year old scribbled drawing.
Slow and steady….
One day at a Time.
and all that jazz.
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Christmas Card Photo 2011
For this long overdue Blog Post I would like to share one of our favorite Holiday Decorations. OUR FRAMED Christmas Cards.
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Years ago, when my firstborn child was 2,
and unbeknownst to me….I started a tradition.
Each year, I would buy a new frame, install our annual Christmas Card photo
and at the end of the season,
I would pack the photo and frame away,
bringing them all out again each year for Christmas.
About 5 years into the tradition,
my dear friend Lisa said that SHE wanted to give the frame
to me each year as a gift,
and so now usually mid way through December,
she gives me the frame, I pretend like I have NO idea what it is…
and off I go!!!
For the first few years of NEW Marriage
and the NEW baby years from 1994-1997
I had no frame
but here are our first few Christmas cards…
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| 1994 |
1995
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| 1996 and 1997 |
…now, let me remind you, that Digital Photography did not make it’s debut,
in my house anyway, until the birth of
my third child in 2000 and even then, I stuck with film for another two-three years or so.
Each Christmas card photo meant rolls of film bought and developed in the hopes of
having the best photo possible.
(ah that I could get that time back!)
When I look back on the albums of outtakes I have
from those, often times stress filled photo shoots,
ANY of the photos would have been perfect…
the most perfect shots in fact are
the IMPERFECT ones.
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| They capture the REAL US, the real moments. Like this one of my youngest with Santa… |
Photos of the “Santa Shots” decorate one mantle,
while the Christmas Card shot are scattered throughout the house.
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| 1998 Tate was 2 and Phoebe was 8 months |
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| 1999 |
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| 2000 and along came Cooper 3 months |
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| 2001 |
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| 2002 If you look real close you can see that Cooper had no pants on… just a diaper… |
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| 2003 |
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| 2004 |
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| 2005 |
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| 2006 |
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| 2007 |
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| 2008 |
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| 2009 |
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| 2010 |
and Now presenting!
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| 2011 – this is actually not our Christmas card shot, this years was Vertical so I grabbed another shot, the kids look so serious here! But moments later we had this….! |
HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YOU!!!!
I would love to hear some of YOUR decorating traditions –
especially the ones that have evolved over time…
although I guess, that is indeed the definition of tradition..
oh Lesli….
I will be back tomorrow!!!
Thank you for the journey back through the years! I remember most of these! You always get great pictures!
Great idea! We have a similar tradition which was started the year our first-born arrived. I had his photo taken and received like 100 postage stamp sized photos (well almost that small). I thought “what am I going to do with these?” I ended up making photo ornaments for us, his tree (each of our kids has their own tree in their room with their collection of ornaments), as well as the grandparents and great grandparents. I’ve kept the tradition going for 22 years and now have four kids in the ornament photo with an occasional guest appearance by myself and my man. They, of course, are our favorite ornaments and receive a place of prominence on our Christmas tree.