I have been getting Christmas photo cards for years from friends and relatives with small children. Most of my friends have kids and it is lovely to have the holiday cards hanging every year. When you enter my house the first thing you see is the closet door straight ahead and this is where I hang all my holiday photo cards surrounded by the regular Christmas cards. This year is a little different because in pride of place at the center is a picture of my friend Sara and her husband, Bob, even though it is a long time since they were children. It seems a little strange to some people that adults would send a picture of themselves, until you look closely at the picture. That’s when I tell them the story.

Sara is past 50 and I won’t go any further than that; of course if you ask her age she will tell you, but that’s her choice not mine. Anyway, Sara has worked in a doctor’s office as a receptionist for the past 30 years. Every year I would ask her where she is taking her vacation, and every year she said her and Bob may go to China, but instead they’d go to Ship Bottom, a small town on the Jersey shore. They certainly enjoy themselves, but their dream vacation had been to go to China and see the Great Wall. When they saw the pictures from space that showed the Great Wall of China, they started planning. It seemed something always came up: they had children, the children needed education, the furnace needed to be replaced, etc. And so the vacation was always delayed. When they sent out their photo Christmas cards, the note inside would always say “Maybe we’ll see China next year.” Well the kids were finally grown and last year they made the trek, and after 30 years, they were able to stand on the Great Wall of China. A dream realized is always something that should be shared.

My favorite photo Christmas cards are no longer going to be of cute children or adorable puppies, but of two aging friends who have finally lived their dream. Sara and Bob grinning from ear to ear on the Great Wall of China shows that holiday photo cards can celebrate the joy of living…something you can feel at any age. This year Sara and Bob are going on a safari and I can’t wait to see what their photo will be on their Christmas cards.

Is it wrong that I am jealous of my family and friends’ Christmas photo cards? Let me rephrase that, I am not actually jealous of the Christmas cards themselves but of the many happy images they represent. Maybe it isn’t necessarily wrong but it sure makes me sound bitter and that just isn’t the case. I chose to rent an apartment that doesn’t allow pets and chose to focus on enjoying my 20s and waiting to settle down and start a family. I don’t have any regrets but in turn, I don’t have any cute images to include on photo holiday cards when Christmas rolls around. I know people send photo cards of themselves or with their significant other but without an adorable pet or child, the photos just look creepy and weird.

If it were up to my husband, our Christmas photo cards would feature a picture of his most prized possession - his snowmobile.

I have visions of a bull dog named Tallulah with fake reindeer ears adorning my future Christmas cards, but my fiancé is allergic and thinks bull dogs are ugly. Why am I marrying him again? Oh yes, that darn falling in love thing made me overlook this very unlikeable quality he possesses. Children are in our future but not in our present. We have decided, quite practically, to wait and start our family once we have a little nest egg and a couple years of married life under our belts before a mini-us enters into the picture.

I guess our future adorable Christmas photo cards are going to have to wait a few years. We will continue to send out jolly, happy messages including snowmen, snowflakes, trees with snow, cabins with snow-covered roofs, or snow covered streams (did I mention my fiancé is really into snow sports?), and I will just have to push those little pings of jealousy aside when opening up all those adorable photo cards. To my future husband, the snowmobiles are not our babies and we are not naming any future pet IQ or Turbo.

Something happened these past few years
   that has caused me to shed quite a few tears…
The things I knew and always trusted
   got so very old and rusted!

It seems that overnight my camera had become
   some thing dated and really quite dumb.
Photo greeting cards had become the rage
   and digital cameras were space age.

I was now forced to learn this new technique
   because Christmas photo cards were really quite neat!
I considered my options and decided to jump in;
   otherwise this just wasn’t going to happen.

Off I went to the internet to buy me a camera,
   but I didn’t realize I’d need so much stamina!
Different sizes, different shapes, dpi? – oy vey!
   What would be my fate?

It took some time for me to decipher,
   but I finally got it done and mastered.
Now I can take pictures of my beautiful grandkids,
   and order photo cards to show off my talents!

Every year, my family and I spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s at the beach. It is the only time of year that we all have days off from work, school, and other responsibilities, and can all successfully coordinate a vacation together without too many headaches (missing luggage excluded, of course). We also send beach-themed Christmas photo cards every year to other relatives and friends and this is an opportune moment to take the family picture without any added hassles. One year we tried taking a scheduled family picture at a studio, and between people running late, crying children, and a novice photographer, it turned out to be a complete disaster!

In addition to seeing my family all together and actually enjoying each other’s company, the highlight of my winter vacation is taking beach photos. There are so many photos that a person can take at the beach over the course of any day. Sunrise is always different than sunset, high tide differs from low tide. No two pictures ever look the same! Sitting and watching the tide come in is not only a great time for rest and relaxation and a time to commune with nature, but also an excellent time for photography practice.

A photo of the sunrise at the beach makes for memorable Christmas photo cards.

Taking pictures of the tide coming in and going out is a good time to practice with different camera settings as well. In addition to experimenting with different camera speeds, different settings such as landscape or motion, you can experiment with whether or not to use your flash. Capturing the perfect moment can take years of practice and even the most experienced photographers still do not take the best pictures every single time they take a photo. Since I live in a relatively urban area, going to the beach is always a special experience and a good time to take a break from the busy day-to-day “ebb and flow” of life. The pictures that I take are a pleasant reminder of a restful and relaxing vacation filled with good memories that will last a lifetime.

My husband and I got married on December 7, 1991, which was the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and we went to Hawaii for our honeymoon. We picked a December wedding date because we love the Christmas season and felt what better way to celebrate it then by taking pictures of a sunset and sending them out as our Christmas photo cards to all our family and friends.

When we got to Hawaii the weather was beautiful (of course), the air smelled like flowers and there was a warm breeze. Palm trees were decorated with Christmas tree lights. There were beautiful parrots flying loose in the lobby of our hotel along with Santa Claus ringing his bell with one of his elves and “Mele Kalikimaka,” the Hawaiian Christmas song, was playing everywhere. Seeing Santa in this environment was a strange sight for us, as we always associated Father Christmas with cold weather and there he was in a tropical and sunny setting.

We were in Honolulu, so our first stop was to visit Pearl Harbor and because of the anniversary, there were many special ceremonies going on, making the visit a very emotional experience. After spending a few days in Honolulu, we went to Kauai, nick named the “Garden Isle” because of its endless beauty. We took a helicopter tour to see the beautiful cascading waterfalls, canyons, and lush green mountains. Then we were off to Maui for the remainder of our honeymoon. Maui was also beautiful. We went whale watching and saw a Humpback whale breech right in front of our boat; it was truly amazing! We also visited many art galleries and shops.

One of our favorite places in Maui was when we went to Haleakala Crater to see a sunset, and it is there that we took the most beautiful sunset photo ever, which later became the cover for our first Christmas photo cards as newlyweds. We went with a tour group from our hotel. The tour took us all the way to the top of the summit of this inactive volcano. It took almost three hours to get up there by bus. We brought the blankets from our bed as people warned us it would be very cold up there…and they weren’t kidding! On the way down from the summit there was a lodge we stopped in. It was called Kula Lodge and there I bought a coffee mug. I still have that mug and to this day. Every time I have coffee in it, I think of that beautiful sunset and that wonderful Hawaiian experience.

I am the go-to photographer for my family and friends (as a matter of fact, one of my friends would have no family photos of her children if it weren’t for me), and I had just recently gotten my first really good camera. My reason for buying this camera was to take a good family photo…using the automatic timer so that I could be in it.

I have taken a lot of pictures of my dog, generally more than she would have liked and occasionally with her in some sort of outfit…or posed with household objects. There is one of her “reading” The Night before Christmas that I should have used for my Christmas photo cards! But she wasn’t in my plans for this particular family photo.

It was Christmas day, and while I had played with my camera quite a bit…the moment had arrived for it to serve the purpose for which it was bought. I gently broke the news to my father and aunt that we were going to take just ONE more picture. I asked them to both sit on the couch and started to set up the camera so that the picture would be correctly framed. I set the automatic timer as a rehearsal to make sure it worked before I hurried into the picture. And then…the moment arrived. I set the timer again and made a mad dash to the couch to sit between my dad and aunt, and ever so slowly, Molly got up from where she had been sleeping and ambled over to the couch. She looked at us, and turned around to face the camera, and then sat. There were still a few seconds before the timer went off, but still she sat…and stayed. The picture snapped, and then she went back to the sunny spot on the rug where she had been sleeping and the three of us all looked at each other and asked if that had really happened.

The picture was perfect. If we had tried to get Molly in the picture, we couldn’t have gotten her to look at the camera at the right time, and she probably would have been moving. But since she decided she wanted to be in it, she posed perfectly. It is the best family photo that I have because of the story that went with it. And the next year, when my family and friends received my holiday photo cards, they loved the story as well!

In my opinion, digital cameras trump most other technology as one of the best inventions in a long time, though I do really love my DVR. I enjoy taking family photos and viewing them either on the TV, computer or Nintendo Wii system which is also very cool! My children love to make puzzles out of the photos and put the puzzle pieces together. What I don’t enjoy so much, however, is trying to take that perfect family photo to use on my Christmas photo cards.

Like many other moms out there, I too went through the hardship of going through all the necessary motions to create perfect family photos that I could use for our photo cards. If you think hardship is too strong a word consider this – first you have to find the outfits (for each child mind you). Then you need to make sure that haircuts, bathing and other necessary grooming has taken place when donning the outfits that were selected. Then you have to pick your photo shoot location and if you’re like me, you picked several locations so that you would have options because who doesn’t like options? At that point, if you can get your children to cooperate, you can start snapping some family photos. If you are like me, it can take at least 100 photos before you can get something that you can work with. Thank goodness for the invention of digital cameras! Oh yeah, I already said that. Anyway, then comes what I call the dwindling down process of ten lovely finalists that will compete in the swimsuit competition, err, I mean compete to be the photo that is ultimately used for our Christmas photo cards.

All of these steps do usually result in a nice photo but then I read the book Confessions of a Slacker Mom and decided to stop being super perfect-picture-person and cut myself a break. It finally dawned on me that I have taken some excellent, spontaneous family photos throughout the years. Oftentimes, they are even better than those that have been posed for. So now when it comes time to pick the family photo for our digital photo cards at Christmas time or for birthday invitations or thank you notes, I just pick my favorite from ones I’ve already taken and then go spend the time I actually saved by playing with my kids!

I love the idea of Christmas photo cards, but I don’t have any young children and let’s face it – who really needs a photo of me? Looking through my old photographs I noticed that I often take sunset pictures. The colors are always gorgeous, so I thought, “Why not use one of these for my Christmas photo cards this year?” Which one I should use?

I have traveled all across the country and the one enduring picture from all of my travels is of a landscape highlighted by a myriad of colors present in every sunset. I love the purples, mauves, reds, yellows, oranges and all the different hues they carry. There is nothing more breathtaking to behold, and taking digital photos of a sunset has allowed me to capture that beauty for a long time to come.

Pictures of sunsets are perfect to use as your Christmas photo cards...especially beautiful images like this one!

The lovely soft mauve that fades into the peaceful serenity of Lake Tahoe paints a picture of waiting tranquility. The bold oranges and reds that appear upon the distant horizon of the Painted Desert bring the vivid starkness of desert life into bold relief just before total darkness envelops the emptiness. The feeling of awestruck wonder sets in when the setting sun tints the Grand Canyon walls with too many shades of red to count. The most amazing feeling of loneliness comes about while standing on a cliff to watch a ball of flame as it floats on the surface of the Pacific for the longest moment, and then falls instantly out of sight. Taking pictures of sunsets is a most rewarding practice. Ah, wouldn’t it be wonderful to share these images with my friends.

By taking pictures of a sunset on every vacation, I can now share these travels with my nearest and dearest. This year, I’m including a collage of sunsets on my photo Christmas cards.

Seems everyone has gotten on the sending Christmas photo cards bandwagon, myself included. While I started sending Christmas photo cards way before some of my friends and family did, mine is now just another photo card amongst the sea of them that I get every year. My brother also found himself in this position and decided to break away from the pack. I always like to complain that my brother got all the creative genes, leaving none for me. He did send out his usual Christmas cards with a photo of his lovely boys, but for a select few close family and friends, he decided to do something a little extra. Along with the photo Christmas cards, he sent each of us a drum. Yes, you read it correctly, a drum (as in the Little Drummer Boy).

Now I should say that when my brother gets an idea, he does like to go all out. I found out later that he spent many days locked away in his office during Christmastime making these drums much to my sister-in-law’s frustration. It was a beautiful, functioning drum and it had the Christmas card photo of the boys on the barrel of it! What a great idea! He also had the forethought of making it a miniature drum that could be hung as an ornament on our Christmas tree. So I will now always have my little drummer boys (nephews) on my Christmas tree, year after year, and my brother can continue to call himself the creative one.

I’ve lived overseas for the past three years because of my husband’s job. We keep in touch with our friends and family by e-mail and we’re always sending them digital photos from the holidays and from the vacations we take to other countries.

Last year we decided to send Christmas photo cards instead of emailing pictures. We have a new baby girl and a puppy now, both adorable. Mail to the USA takes so long that we decided to take the pictures before Thanksgiving!

The tree was decorated, the presents were wrapped, and I had strung garlands around the living room. I wanted us all dressed up for the photos. My husband was already setting up the camera when I suddenly realized Scout didn’t have anything to wear. Scout is our new Beagle puppy – not our daughter (I’m not Demi Moore!) – and a skimpy bow around his neck just wasn’t good enough. We postponed taking the pictures, I went shopping, and I bought a red turtleneck doggy sweater. Scout looked unbelievably cute. Next, I went to dress the baby in the gorgeous red velvet “Baby’s First Christmas” outfit I bought back in September, and of course it didn’t fit her. The next day I had to go back out and buy her a bigger dress.

It was lucky we started all the planning and posing so early because our digital Christmas photo cards arrived in the states right on time and everybody, especially the grandparents, loved them. I’m going to send Christmas photo cards again, but this year we’ll take the pictures while we’re on vacation in July – palm trees instead of evergreens!