The Annual Christmas Card | The Non-Professional Version

Someone pinch me! There are only 2 days until Christmas!! This morning I woke up really excited. As of yesterday, I’ve been anxious and frazzled about getting all my favorite Christmas traditions done, but this morning? Feeling super festive!

I realized I haven’t shared our Christmas card photos yet! This was our best Christmas card to date, and I’m pretty pleased with it.

We didn’t do a fancy family photo shoot (we have yet to do professional pictures… our last set of those was for our wedding day, 8 years ago!). For our annual Christmas card, we usually opt to do a collection of photos from our adventures during the year. This year, I wanted to try our hand at taking our own family photo.

The day we chose to do it was a day where we were all sick!! In hindsight, not the best idea, but we decided if we didn’t do it then, it would never happen.

We opted to snap some family photos in our backyard and take advantage of our woods. We hauled out the camera and tripod, and my handy husband played around with angles and lighting. But that’s about as exciting as we got! We stood in front of the camera and had a wireless remote to take the photos and said “CHEESE!”.

After about 30 minutes of snapping, we finally had this!

Taking your own family Christmas card photos!

Hey! We were all looking at the camera, eyes open, and sort of smiling! A WINNER!

Now, it was a struggle to get that… our morning really felt like this…

Taking your own family Christmas card photos!

But the goal is always to get just one decent picture! That’s all that matters!

That afternoon, feeling a little better after some naps, we headed to Duke Gardens for some exploring and a family picnic. Tons of fun! We brought our nifty camera just for fun. While we were there, we snapped a ton of fun pictures! And quickly realized that we were giving ourselves some additional pictures for the Christmas card! It looked like we had done a semi-professional, organized photo shoot, when in reality we were just having fun.

Taking your own family Christmas card photos!

Taking your own family Christmas card photos!

So huzzah! You don’t have to do a professional photo shoot! Just a little coordination on your part, and you can cobble together a pretty cute Christmas card!

*I’d show you the final card… but you know… some things have to stay in the family 😉

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14 comments

  1. Kiki - According to Kiki says:

    We stick to the classic click and shoot method as well when taking our Christmas Card photos. My mom makes a pretty stellar photographer. (; In fact, our Christmas card photos were done in my Aunt’s back yard against her fence. Merry Christmas!

    • Katie @ Cup of Tea says:

      Hahah! Not really! Just more like personal things I don’t really share on the blog (mainly things my husband doesn’t like to share). Nothing that exciting! ?

    • Katie @ Cup of Tea says:

      Oh even better! It was perhaps a tad stressful doing the tripod/wireless remote thing. A friend would have been simpler.

  2. Beth says:

    Love the photo, you did a great job. I have a feeling this may be us next year. I only like to have photos done every other year or so. I really need to invest in a wireless remote!

    • Katie @ Cup of Tea says:

      It’s really sad that we’ve gone this long without pro photos!! But we manage to cobble it together each year ?

  3. Ashley S. says:

    Great photo! That is how photos go at our house, too. It takes a while and I can usually find one good photo out of the bunch! Those pictures of Elizabeth are so cute! Merry Christmas!

  4. Catherine Short says:

    That is a great photo! And the last one of Elizabeth is adorable. Jordan and I finally got our pictures done professionally this summer. We were in the same boat…8 years since our wedding! We always send out New Years cards because I just don’t get my act together in time. Haha.

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