our christmas card

So I thought I would write up a little post on the Christmas card we chose to send out this year!  

We chose Tiny Prints, which is a great company we love, and very affordable.  I have looked at Minted, and I used Pinhole Press last year, but they are honestly a little out of my price range. I used to only send out about 30 cards, but it seems I need more each year.  Now I could easily send 100.  That probably has something to do with being married, because my husband has a huge family.    

We also love the quality of their paper and the wide variety of designs they have.  You can go really classic, or a bit more funky like we did this year.  

We didn't pay any fancy photographer to take our photos, my friend Joanna is just good with a camera and sweetly offered to come to the park with us to take some snapshots.  

Here are my tips for getting a good picture, without hiring any professionals: 

1.  It's a holiday card, so I like it to look seasonal.  Wear something classic you know you look good in - no need for a new outfit.  Sweaters and peacoats are great.  Don't force your man into anything he isn't comfortable in, or the pictures will look fake.  Jeans are fine!  

2.  Take a lot of photos.  We have a pretty nice camera, and in about 30 minutes I think Joanna snapped over 150 photos.  Just so you don't think our dogs are TOO well behaved, here is a shot of us wrangling them into submission.   I think we only had 10 photos total in which we were all looking at the camera.  

3.  Try to take photos during the last hour before sunset.  Have you heard the term "golden hour" before?  There's a reason that's the best time of day to take photos!  The light is almost perfect then (around 4 pm in the US this time of year) so I didn't have to edit these photos at all!  It also meant no fancy camera settings were necessary - we shot these on the auto setting.  

4.  Have fun!  If you've got a fake smile going or you just weren't in the mood to take pictures that day, it might be better to put it off.  You don't want it to look forced!  And for the record, I love our outtake photos as well.  Sometimes the imperfect shots would also make a great card.  

Got any other tips for the perfect holiday photo?  Any other favorite places to get cards?  

*ps - There's a reason I didn't link to the card we went with.  Tiny Prints doesn't like outside websites linking to them - in fact I got an email from their pr team asking me to take some from last year down!  I didn't mind, they were incredibly nice about it.  Something about trying to control all of their advertising from inside their office.  Just google their name and their website will pop up.