Christmas Cards and Adventures in a Do it Yourself Family Photo Shoot

Like many people I struggle with Christmas cards, and many years just skip them entirely. But since I am doing December Daily this year, I am in the preparing early mode and I found a card I liked from Paper Coterie. The bonus was a code for $30 off! So it totally paid off to do a search for a coupon code before ordering. Love that! And the card is customizable, you can play with the layouts, fonts, words, even word art. I'm excited to get these, I hope they work out. I rented a lens a few weeks ago and we tried some do it yourself family photographs with a tripod and remote shutter release. So no, they aren't totally professional, but they were fun. Here are just a few.

Gotta love an old red barn + October morning light. A cute subject really helps too :)

M&M's helped, and I'm totally ok with them being in the photo

Just picked her up and played. Love these moments

Love that she has her little pink dog in the photo.

Tried having a chalkboard with 2011 on it. She really didn't want to sit still. 

So we played and jumped

And ran back and forth. Gotta love multiple shots on self timer mode!



Things I might want to try next time:

• smaller bag of M&M's. I know I said I am okay with it but maybe a smaller bag would be good.
• try to get at least one more person to help. Maybe bribe them with a large bag of M&M's?
• photo props: saw a photographer at the barn and she had a cute vintage chair and a great old quilt. maybe more things to play with that also look cool.

Any other ideas for do it yourself family photo shoots? Would love to hear what others have done.