Have you ever gone on vacation, come home, downloaded all your photos onto the computer, and then promptly forgot about them? Then comes the holidays and you run around like a chicken without a head trying to set everyone up for a family photo for the annual photo Christmas cards.

Why not take out those photos from family vacations for a second look. Some of the most natural and candid pictures are taken during a fun filled vacation. Whether it’s everyone covered in sand lounging on a beach, or with backpacks hiking up a trail. The fact remains, your family photo portrays the family doing what they love most. Who cares if they’re not all dressed up in their holiday best with a Santa hat? Your photo card, using your vacation shot, will portray the family in the best possible light.

I recently went on a vacation to Ireland. While I have been there before, it had been a very long time between trips. Besides touring some of the most photogenic places on earth, I also visited my Grannie’s cottage where my mother grew up and where I took my first steps as a baby. Grannie and Mom are long gone, but the cottage has been restored and two artists are now living there. They were very gracious and invited us in to see what had been done. I took a photo of the outside of the cottage to remember it when I returned home. It came out so well that I’m going to use that vacation photo shot for my holiday photo card order.

Promises, promises, promises.  This is what I get from my family when I ask for recent digital family photos.  My son, daughter in law and two grandchildren moved to North Carolina several years ago, and, although we exchange visits yearly, usually during the summer months when the grandchildren have vacation from school, and chat regularly, I miss not seeing them frequently.  Patrick and Grace play in the school band, he the trumpet and she the clarinet, and they often participate at special events.  Although Mom and/or Dad take photos during these events, they are not really good at sending a simple email with the images for “Grandma”. Of course, when I remind them, what do you think I get?   Promises, promises, promises.

Fortunately, my family follows up on their “promises”, that is to say, they follow up on their promises once a year.  I do indeed look forward to the very beautiful photo Christmas cards they send with pictures of the kids.  I finally get to see what they have been doing throughout the year in the presence of the photos.  It was worth waiting for them to see how attractive they look in their dress uniforms while performing in a special band event; it was worth waiting for the photos to see them clearing the colorful leaves in the yard during the fall season as well as sitting in a tree they just climbed; it was worth waiting for the photos to see them holding their pups, Nellie the poodle and Lily the maltese. I can’t wait for next year!

I am completely computered out!  At work, I am on a computer from the time I get there until I sign off at closing time, more than seven hours each day.  At home after work, I enjoy perusing the internet, reading emails, going on Facebook, viewing You Tube videos, reading about current events on various news websites, ordering photo Christmas cards—you name it, I’ve probably been there at one time or another, for hours on end.

So the other day I was installing a new program on my computer at home and, following the program’s directions, I hit “ok” to restart the computer.  Lo and behold, the computer rebooted, got just past the Windows XP logo screen, and rebooted again.  And again.  And again.  And again.  Continuously.  Oh-oh!  What to do, what to do?

After visiting a computer-help forum using a different computer in the house (we have several!) where I asked for help concerning my rebooting issue, I patiently waited for a response from one of the ‘geeks”.  While waiting, I decided to go back to a “restore point”—basically, a process by which a computer can be instructed to go back to a specific date some time in the past when it was working okay and there were no problems.  After quite a few hours and four failed attempts at going back to four previous dates, the answer came back from my friend on the forum website: I probably have a virus and I should run a scan.  Well, duh!  That would be easy to do if I could get the computer to the desktop to do the scan!

The next step was to describe my problem the next day to a couple of the “techies” at work, who suggested doing a “scan now”, a “boot time scan” and checking for a corrupt boot file, all while the computer is in “safe mode”.   Unfortunately, none of these possible fixes were able to be performed.  Now that I was starting to get really ticked off, I began to have thoughts as to whether I should get a new PC, a refurbished one or, perhaps, just give the current one a good kick in the tower.  I was spending so much time with the PC that I wondered if my wife was worried that we (me and the Compaq Presario) were beginning to have a relationship.

Anyway, another alternative fix was to—as a last resort–access the computer’s “System Recovery” process, which reverts the PC all the way back to the way it was when it was first purchased—in my case, seven years earlier.   Not wanting to do something that drastic, I tried one last time to see if the constant rebooting would still occur.  Upon leaving safe mode (going back into dangerous mode) and hitting the restart button, the computer did not reboot! However, a bright and beautiful blue screen appeared with the words, “FATAL SYSTEM ERROR”.  Yikes! Well, that did it.

I decided to go back to the beginning of the PC’s existence, which usually gets rid of an offending virus and provides the user with, basically, a clean hard drive and an almost like-new computer.   Once that was accomplished (another half an hour), it was time to again acquire the necessary virus and firewall programs, to reinstall and configure programs that needed reinstalling, and downloading a better “Service Pack” for added protection and security.  After almost seven hours (basically, another full work day), I was finished with the reconfiguring and had a computer that was able to access the desktop, programs, pictures and the internet, without having to suffer through the PC  being in a continuous reboot loop.

And, less than seven hours after leaving my home machine, here I am at work—again on a computer—wondering when I need to order those photo Christmas cards!

It has become a tradition in our family to go to shore every year. If you are not from New Jersey, the shore = the beach. My daughter and I take her two children, my grandchildren, for a week of fun, sun and board walking. If you haven’t noticed we do not invite the men folk, it’s a vacation not a “doing the same work in a different place” event which my daughter and I quickly learned the first time we invited our husbands. When we get home we show them our vacation photos and they show about as much interest as they do when we tell them about a cute hat we found or a new chicken recipe! They have not been in the vacation photos for years now and I don’t think they really care; they both have a week of bachelorhood and they are so glad to see us when we get home they can’t help but ask if we brought home any food.

My daughter Beth would love to use these great family vacation photos as her photo Christmas cards each year but she is missing part of the family. Also, she and kids are all tanned and John is pale because he spent his time away from the family watching the Mets play! We were determined to correct this once and for all. My husband and I offered to take the grandchildren for a weekend so Beth and John could have a weekend away at the shore and take as many vacation photos as they wanted. So everyone gets a nice vacation, and we all get beautiful Christmas cards!

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!

I love receiving photo holiday cards and love to send them, but getting that perfect picture of my children and our dog is not the easiest thing to do. First of all, getting a teenage boy to pose for a photo with his little brother without poking him or making faces or being disruptive in some sort of way is a bit challenging. Then, if you do happen to get lucky and are able to capture a moment where no one is being pinched and the dog is not licking someone’s face, is it a photo that the entire family can agree on?

Usually I like to use one beautiful photo in our family photo cards. The truth is, it’s not possible to capture the essence of a family in a single photo, and we can never all agree on one photo. So, this year, I have selected a collage photo card where I can use many photos of the family.

I used a photo of my teenager playing basketball, looking like the star athlete, one of my six year old in his Darth Vader costume, one of the dog in the snow, a vacation photo with the entire family and one that includes the boys and the dog, where the dog is licking his paw, my teenager is making a face and my six year old is smiling happily unaware of what’s going on around him.

I love the way it turned out. It gives a small glimpse into our family life and the beautiful personalities of each of us. I love looking back at our family photo cards from past years. I’ll be happy to add this one to the collection. I think it may turn out to be my favorite!

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.

I have always loved receiving holiday cards. It reinforces the feeling that somebody, somewhere, is remembering me and my family, even if it is just for the few minutes it takes to fill out and address cards. Likewise, I really enjoy sending out holiday cards to all my friends and loved ones. Until recently, though, I wasn’t a big fan of Christmas photo cards – or at least, of those early versions. They were not foldable, so propping them up was a nuisance. The subjects in formal studio poses often looked a little stiff. The cards came in shapes and sizes hard to insert in photo albums. However, ChristmasCardsDirect has a truly amazing variety of designs and print options, combined with digital technology, which totally won me over when I realized the fun things one could do with them!

Holiday photo cards no longer have to be about Santa hats or snowmen. You could share with your friends and extended family your latest vacation experience by downloading one or multiple pictures of the vacation on your card. The multiple-display options and the incredible variety of designs available to showcase these is one of the best things to happen to photo cards! You can include individual snapshots of the members of your family on your holiday photo card, or of events like picnics and festivals your family took part in throughout the year.

This year the subject of my holiday card is going to be a little different, my house. We recently lost our house to a fire, and had to rebuild it from scratch. It took a while to overcome the trauma and the memories, and surprisingly, our new house turned out to be the best healer! We now enjoy seeing the seasons change around our new home, admire the variety of flowers in our newly-landscaped garden, while my husband and I have developed whole new hobbies around the house as handyman and interior decorator! So, as a token of our new passion, and our friends and extended family know it well, I am thinking of downloading a photo of our house, or perhaps multiple shots of it from different angles and different seasons, for our holiday photo card this year!

We have lots of relatives and there is sort of an agreement between us that once a year we’ll send family photos or holiday cards with our families’ pictures on them.  It’s our way of keeping up with everyone’s changes and growth.  Some of us live quite a distance away from each other so we don’t get to visit often.  We all love seeing how all the kids have grown, along with the newest addition to our extended family.  Who’s put on weight – and who’s lost it?   Do the cousins still look alike and whose hairline has receded the most?   Will our adventurous aunt and uncle’s card show some exotic spot they traveled to this year?  Family photos are great at making you feel connected.

My sister usually has a formal picture taken of her family including their pets, then adds a border and fills the entire front of their Christmas card.  I always keep it with her previous cards so you can see all the changes over the years.  My brother isn’t married yet but has two dogs.  We all convinced him that we need photo Christmas cards from him too – so he last year he used a format that had three pictures – one for each dog and one for a shot of him on his annual skiing trip.   It was a hit and we can’t wait to see what he comes up with this year.

My cousin has two daughters, both in college.  She had each of them send her a current picture from school with the only prerequisite – a big smile.  She then cropped the photos until they fit perfectly in the round “ornament” openings of a delightful design. It was one of my favorites last year.

With all of the new designs and formats available to us, we’re all getting a little more creative every year.  I love getting  cards of any type but photo Christmas cards from the family are definitely the ones I treasure the most.

My friends and I joined a hiking group 3 years ago. We have hiked up to 20 miles in a day in every place that we have gone, such as the Delaware River, parts of NYC, and the Appalachian Trail in NJ. There are still new sites to be explored! We all love it since we meet new people every time and the frequent hikers become new friends. There is never a dull moment. We have taken many amazing nature photos with us doing funny poses in the foreground.

The combination of scenery that we catch on our cameras are not always what someone would see in a normal everyday setting living in the suburbs, like historical statues and buildings, old nature trails, rivers, bridges, old railroad beds, abandoned shacks, various animals, Tarzan vines (that we swung on), and funny signs. It’s truly amazing!

Since we all have an assortment of uniquely funny and astounding photos of nature and each other, I actually want to buy some of my new friends and family some photo Christmas cards by using my hiking photos. I think these cards would be perfect for the occasion, considering that there is tight bond that forms between people once they get to know each other, especially when they are all doing something they love.