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Our Simple Photo Christmas Card

When my kids were little, I’d faithfully take their “Christmas card picture” every year, usually in front of our Christmas tree.

I was a stickler for details when it came to the clothes for those photos – new outfits, candy cane tights for my daughter, and with her dresses, the “bow shoes” of course. I’m not sure why I thought they always had to be bow shoes. I wasn’t such a stickler for my son’s shoes, apparently (notice the sneakers in the second photo.) But then, he had no interest whatsoever in dressing up!

One year, we ended up at the mall for the shoot, amidst a zillion shoppers and the giant candy canes and fake snow. Fun pictures (but I need to find them and scan them. Yes, they were taken with film, just as all the photos were, when my kids were little.)

a simple photo christmas card
a simple photo christmas card
Mine are the two matchers on the sides (cousin in the middle)

As my kids grew older and life became more busy, the Christmas photo sessions became less frequent, and our relatives and friends mentioned that they missed the Christmas picture that I used to incorporate into the card (and sometimes they missed getting a card at all!)  Plus, some of the older relatives don’t have Facebook, so they haven’t seen pictures of our “kids” in a while.

an easy collage Christmas card on PicMonkey

A few days ago,  I put this photo collage together in a few minutes on PicMonkey, and I’m really happy to be sending a photo card this year.  In hindsight, I’d have made this a 5×7 style, as I already have 5×7 photo paper.  (Both of my kids also think it needs to be redone to include a picture of my husband and me! The problem is finding a recent picture of the two of us together. We need to work on that…)

I really like PicMonkey. It’s a site that allows you to edit your photos with basically no learning curve. I especially appreciate how easy it is to make photo collages there. (I’ve made blog banners in the past with the collage feature.)  I often use PicMonkey for my photo editing, instead of some of the photo editing programs I’ve actually paid for, because I like simple and fast. Plus it’s fun.

I hope you enjoyed some of my old film memories!  (Photo sessions were a lot more complicated before digital–I never knew what I had gotten until I had the film developed.)

I’d love to hear about your holiday photo stories!

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6 Comments

  1. I love PicMonkey – and I miss doing Christmas card photos with my siblings when we were little! We haven't quite gotten into a regular rhythm here, but I'd really love to. And your children are so good-looking!!

  2. It's nice that you found time to do this. We don't celebrate Christmas anymore, but I do enjoy receiving cards. I always send out a newsletter with photos each January. It's my annual non-braggy, non-annoying letter. It's just nice to get something in the mail that is not a bill or a solicitation. I wish more people enjoyed the art of fine stationery.

  3. Thanks Jen. I may send out a January newsletter next year–great idea. December is always so busy, it would be fun to sit down after Christmas and do that.

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