My family loves getting the onslaught of photo holiday cards every year from all of our friends and family from near and far.  It has become a tradition that we all look forward to.  I have never thrown out one of these treasured photo cards.

Each year, when I open up all the containers of holiday trimmings, there is the one that holds those treasured holiday photo cards.  Within the next few days, our entire family gathers around; the kids with their hot chocolates, my hubby and I with our wine and we pour over the pictures and look at how everyone has changed from year to year.  There are always lots of laughs and “oh my gosh, look how big they are now” and “that’s a scary one!”  I even include my own children’s holiday photo cards that we have sent through the years.  It has become a ritual we all look forward to each season.

We keep all the old photo cards in a basket on a table and as we get the new holiday photo cards, we ooh and ahh over them and hang them around the house.  At the end of the season, when it is time to take down all the holiday decorations, we add the current year’s photo Christmas cards to the basket to await the next year’s opening.

Every holiday season we spend time as a family looking through hundreds upon hundreds of pictures saved on the family PC.  The reason: someone in our household must be good at taking digital photos to send out to friends and family!

Sure enough, every year it seems to be our kids who take the best pictures.  I am not sure if it is the angle of the picture due to their height, the focal point of the picture from the perspective of a youngster, or the steady hand of a child. (Dad, your pictures are all fuzzy.  You shake the camera too much!)

It seems no matter the technological advances of a camera, I cannot take a picture on par with my kids.  Even my wife does not take a picture worthy of putting on photo Christmas cards. (According to the kids anyway.)

So once again this holiday season, we are sending out our photo holiday cards with a picture taken by the kids.  As bad as our pictures can be, it sure is nice to be in the age of taking digital photos.  For every fifty pictures I take, one or two are good.  I can’t imagine paying to develop all those sub-par prints in this economy!

The best idea I ever had was when I received some pictures from my niece, she is 10 years old and has her own digital camera. I must add she is very technologically savvy, as most youngsters are today. She was on a camping trip with her Girl Scout troop and snapped numerous pictures, uploaded them to an email and sent them to me. There were pictures of her and all her friends laughing, cooking, hiking and sleeping. But the ones that really caught my attention were a few that were of the sunset and sunrise. Some were taken while hiking that I thought might work for my photo Christmas cards this year since they were in the woods.

The nature photos were so beautiful. She said her guide advised they quietly walk up a labeled path and then go off the trail just a short way when they stumbled upon a mother doe with her two babies that looked like they were sleeping. The guide must have known this was a special spot and my niece was thrilled beyond belief! There were about 25 shots of those deer, but then they moved on and many others were absolutely gorgeous. It didn’t take me very long to decide which I would use for my photo cards this year.  It saved me from having to get the dog in holiday gear. My niece was so excited when I asked her if I could use it and to know her picture will be sent to all my friends and all our family.

My family, which includes my husband and two children, send out photo Christmas cards every year. We are not talking about your traditional family photo card where everyone is dressed up nice and pretty. The first year we did this I used the picture that we had taken on vacation in Mexico. We were all wearing sombreros and ponchos, my children were each sitting on a donkey, and my husband and son had fake mustaches! When we vacationed in Niagara Falls we had a picture taken of the kids going over the falls (fake of course).  We also went to a Renaissance Faire where they had a costume photo booth. My daughter and I were wenches and my son and husband were jesters!

A few years ago we found a gentleman in Seaside Heights, on the boardwalk, who does superimposed pictures. He takes a picture of just your face, and with a computer he superimposes your face on the bodies of characters that you choose. We have done the Wizard of Oz, the Osbournes, the Addams Family and last year we did the Jersey Shore gang. Our friends and family cannot wait until they get our Christmas cards each year. We had a friend tell us that he was outside and his wife yelled out the window that our card had arrived! Of course, he ran in the house to see it. My poor cousin came home late from work, sat at the kitchen table, poured herself something to drink and proceeded to open up the mail. When she saw our card she actually spit her juice out all over the table. After I mail the cards out we wait for the calls and messages to begin. Family and friends tell us that they look forward to our card each year. We think that with all the stress preparing for the Holidays everyone looks forward to this little outlet. Now we are under the pressure each year to try and outdo the last year. I don’t know how long we will be able to do this since my daughter is now 23 and my son is 19. I let both of them know that when they move out they still need to come home to do the Christmas card!

It seems as though Christmas cards have come a long way from the old, standard card with the traditional family photograph attached. You know, it was the traditional family photo that we all remember and love where the parents and the kids had ear to ear smiles, they were dressed in red and sweaters and where they are strategically gathered around a cozy fireplace complete with Fido at their feet. Some still go for the traditional feel. However, with today’s photo Christmas cards, it has become very quick and easy to construct creative cards online and things have significantly changed to say the least.

Since it is now easier these days to create your own Christmas cards, more and more people seem to be getting into the act. Now, for some reason almost everyone feels that they need to send a photo card out for the holidays. With more and more photo cards hitting mailboxes each year, how does a well intentioned sentiment stand out in a crowd? How can you be sure that your card won’t be just more white noise and wind up at the bottom of a high stack of similar, mundane cards?

Here are a few thoughts that might help your card make a bigger impact this year and possibly even have yours standing out in the crowd and displayed prominently in your friend, family member or neighbors home. Think about the picture. Do you want one photo or do you want multiple photos? What about considering a collage? Think about the subject matter. What kind of theme are you going for? There are many styles and designs to choose from so you are really only limited by your imagination. Also, you might want to think about how the photo interacts or plays off of the card design or style. If the design is of an ornament framing a potential picture, maybe you can use a picture of a real ornament from your own Christmas tree. Maybe you can coordinate with a design in such a way as to make it look as though the person in the photo is talking with a bubble attached.

There are many, many ideas that you can come up with on your own. Try not to let your Christmas cards be boring or too similar to all the others. Think of the coming holiday season as an opportunity for you to share the true meaning of Christmas with friends, relatives and neighbors as you explore your artistic side and express yourself creatively while being true to the Christmas spirit. Thinking outside the box when it comes to photos, designs and text and how they can all work together to be heartfelt and unique should definitely help to make your Christmas card stand out in the crowd this year.

Early one morning in November many years ago, my sister Marie called to remind me of a pact the two of us had made the year before involving photo Christmas cards. We had decided that when my youngest child turned two we would take our kids (her two and my three) to have their photos taken for each family’s Christmas cards. It would mark the beginning of the end, so to speak, of our kids’ babyhood. They were now old enough and mature enough to sit while taking photos for a professional photo session. Or so we thought!

So off to the photographer we went…Marie with her two toddlers and me with my three little angels. Marie’s kids went first and in less than ten minutes they were done! The photographer was happy as a clam with the digital photos he had taken. He told Marie that he wished all children were as easy to pose when taking pictures as hers were. Marie was absolutely beaming!

Then it was our turn. Where do I begin to describe the nightmarish scene that followed? Should I start with my youngest, who for some unknown reason took an instant dislike to the photographer and screamed bloody murder whenever he got within ten feet of him? Or should I try to explain what happened when my middle one, at my insistence, removed his baseball cap. Now I was the one screaming. “What happened to your hair?” I yelled. Before he could answer, my oldest chimed in with “I cut it for the picture, but he kept moving so it’s a little crooked.” I was flabbergasted! “A little crooked? A little crooked!” I cried. You can understand my shock when I tell you that there was a chunk of hair missing that was half the size of his head! I wanted to tell him to put the darn cap back on, but it didn’t exactly match his little blue suit!

What can I say? The rest of the photo shoot was a disaster. The youngest one never did stop screaming (but I did, eventually). The middle one pouted his way through taking photos, and the oldest – the hair stylist – smiled easily, secure in the knowledge that she would look the best of the three of them in the family photo Christmas cards.

When we finally emerged from the studio, Marie, who had been waiting outside with her perfect little darlings, basking in their successful photo taking experience, asked innocently, “What took so long? What happened?” Worn out like an old dish rag, the only response I could muster was an almost inaudible, pitiful whimper. Did Marie know some secret photo tips for photographing kids and not feel the need to share that information with me? Sometimes it’s impossible for parents to predict how their children will behave when taking photos, especially the younger ones!

P.S.  Much to my surprise and delight, the photo cards turned out really cute and it was the beginning of an annual tradition!

What makes you choose a photo for photo greeting cards?  There seem to be lots of occasions for which, looking back, I realize that I’d forgotten to bring the camera or (I sincerely hope I’m not the only one who has done this) actually did bring the camera, carried it around all day, and never once remembered to take a picture!  The most extreme case of all (please don’t tell anyone I did something so empty-headed) was when I was snapping away while my visiting relatives posed, only to discover later that there was no film in the camera and no photos to mail to them.  Mortified?  Believe it!

So, what can you do with all the photos you do have, besides (if you’re organized) putting them in albums or (if you’re me) putting them in boxes until you “find time” to organize them?  With birthday photos, I’m thinking you could make a neat collage, something along the lines of those “school days” frames where you install the child’s school photo from each grade, with their high school graduation photo in the middle.  No reason you couldn’t do that at home with birthday photos, right?

With more than one child in the family, you could do a wildly immense collage, and throw in some photos of the old folks from their childhood birthdays.  (Got any old photos at your house with someone seated atop a pony?)  By the way, making a collage is a great way to save and display photo Christmas cards, whether for yourself or as a gift for someone else.

One way to treasure, save, share and display your favorite photos is to have them made into photo cards.  It’s so easy now to upload or scan photos for the face of your photo cards, made to say whatever you want inside of them (for instance as birthday cards or birthday party invitations), or to be blank inside for multi-purpose note cards.  Let your imagination run free and think of all the photo ops you have seized and how the resultant photos would make great thank you cards, anniversary cards, get well cards, and definitely some cool welcome cards or congratulations cards!  The possibilities are endless when it comes to photo cards!

I love receiving photo cards of my friends and family. Really, I do. I love that more and more people are sending photo cards as the way they say Happy Holidays or as invitations and other imaginative uses. Really, I do. It’s great to see photo Christmas cards of the little ones and how they grow so much from year to year. Often times, with friends and family that you aren’t as close with, it’s the one chance you have to actually see them. Photo cards of babies are especially cute to see when they are first announced to the world or used as party invites. It’s even become standard practice to send photo thank you cards for weddings and other occasions in which gifts are given.

But as with most things, there is a line that can be crossed and my friends and family seem to be oblivious of the line, let alone the fact that they have crossed it, leaped over it, in fact! I know pets are like children to some but do I really need to see a photo card of your pet snake “Rattles” wishing me a Merry Christmas? Or a photo card with a picture of your house? Not the house you just purchased (which would make more sense) but the house that you have lived in for 20 years and I have been to 1,000 times! And if you are going to do that, at least clean up the toys on your front lawn and maybe take some time for a little power-washing on your siding to make it look a little more put together when you’re taking pictures for your photo greeting cards

Oh and please, take a good long look at your photo before you decide to send it out as photo greeting cards to hundreds of people. In fact, have someone else look at the photo card just to make sure. Some of you may recall the Seinfeld episode with the photo card Elaine sent out? I have received photo cards of children with fireplaces in the backdrop that made it look as if the child was on fire. And how about photo cards with so many people in the shot that I can’t even tell who they are. This photo was actually posted up on my fridge for a few days before I realized that the photo card was sent to us in error and we actually didn’t know anyone in the photo! One birth announcement that I received had such a strange cut-out of the baby’s photo that it appeared as if the baby was suspended in air. This may not sound that strange but it was really eerie!

In closing, don’t stop sending me your photo greeting cards, just pay attention to “the line” and try to stay on the safe side. Check back for my next installment when I talk about crossing the line with your “informative” Christmas newsletters…

Some pictures used for photo cards are traditional and elegant while other photos display fun and creativity.  I’ve received many photo Christmas cards over the years but I just received a photo card from my great niece that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

It is a photo card of her two boys, baby girl, and three dogs.  I wish the whole world could see these rascals as they are portrayed!  The oldest boy, Jim, is shaking the paw of Sunny the retriever, and holding a sign saying WE.  The middle boy, Drew, is hugging Sunny’s daughter Belle and holding the sign saying LOVE.  The baby, Alexis, is giggling heartily and is trying to hold on to Snoopy the 5-month-old Beagle pup and the sign saying YOU!

The caption for the photo card was, “Signs, dogs, girl & boys – How many ways to wish you JOYS.”  What a cute idea for photo cards.  I’m sure everyone who received these photo Christmas cards from the family were impressed with their originality.

I am very busy now trying to come up with something creative for the photo cards for my sister’s 65th birthday party invitations.  Sifting through the old family photo album will surely inspire me.