Every year, a new family Christmas card has to be sent out.
Every year, the stress and anxiety of trying to think of an idea or theme for the card.
Every year, I'm always waiting until the last minute.
It's the procrastinator in me. Apparently, it's an ADHD trait.
Our annual Christmas cards are something a lot of people tell me they look forward to seeing. No pressure there right? I'm always telling my wife we'll get it done before Thanksgiving, so we'll have plenty of time to send the picture off to get holiday cards printed.
Every year it's already December, and we still haven't taken the photo lol,
This year was no different. I don't see how parents that have more than 2 kids handle life. My son is in 6th grade, plays soccer, and is in the gifted program. My daughter is in 3rd grade, and has dance twice a week. My wife and I both work full time. We have a 6 year dog, and just got an Australian Shepherd puppy (which is essentially like having a newborn all over again).
At least I can say that we planned this one months in advance (sort of). We had already decided on a theme, in this case, Wizard of Oz. Over the past several months we'd get a piece of clothing or a prop we planned to use. I had this image in my head as to what I wanted to: I wanted a "modern" Wizard of Oz look. My initial idea was to find an urban brick wall in the city (maybe an alleyway), and do a location shoot. My wife, who was going to be the Scarecrow, was going to be sitting perhaps on some steps, or a window frame, with a stack of books next to her, and one in her hand.
My daughter, who would be Dorothy, would be sitting on a big tin milk jug, with a couple glass bottles of milk at her feet, and one in her hand, sipping through a straw.
My son would be the Cowardly Lion, backpack of spray cans, leaning against a wall where (with photoshop magic) would be some graphiti,,, maybe a silhouette of a witch with the red Ghostbuster-type circle and slash through it, or maybe graphiti-type letters spelling "No place like home".
I would be the Tin Man, dressed in grey. Grey cane with an axe-like handle. Maybe looking at my phone with a red heart emoji above it.
Yeah.. that didn't happen.
Instead, we were running around in our driveway just trying to get a simple group shot, and I could photoshop us into a location.
I took the photo... now I had to find a setting. Pexels.com has a lot of great photos people have uploaded. I came across this fantasy-type forest image and thought it would look great.
Foggy Path · Free Stock Photo (pexels.com)
After I did a rush job to complete the photo, we were unable to send the photo off to a reputable print place. It was already December 14th. If we sent it off, we wouldn't have gotten them in time to mail out. We resorted to Walgreens' One Hour photo lol. The pictures came out darker than I wanted them to, but that was going to have to do for our needs.
Here is the family Christmas card:
Peep the silhouette of the witch lurking in the woods on the left. :P
Here is an edit I did a few days later that I liked much better, but we had already printed off the one above, and had already started passing them out and mailing them friends and family.
Now time to think of a theme for next year... and procrastinate until the very end again. ;)
Happy holidays everyone!