I went a little over-the-top with our family’s holiday card this year.
It all started in October, when an idea randomly came to me that it would be fun to dress up my 10-yo daughter as a Christmas tree. I know, It sounds weird, but bear with me. I was imagining a beautiful green gown with lots of layers…
Shopping
I made my way over to Trish Scully Child to see what she had in stock, and there’s actually a shocking number of emerald green gowns on her site (tip: search for emerald, not green). Of course, they’re all beautiful, but I narrowed down to one where the asymmetrical hem would look even more like a tree because you could see the “tree stump,” and I thought my daughter would think the asymmetrical hem was cooler, and thereby would be more willing to participate in helping me achieve my holiday card vision. I also found her a crown at Trish Scully and rhinestone heels from DSW.
This was just the beginning. I thought, if my daughter is a Christmas tree, what could my 13 yo son be? Santa came to me straight away, but I knew I’d have trouble getting his buy-in if he had to wear a red coat and hat with a white pouf on the end. So I decided to go with a “modern-day Santa” vibe and started to think of ways to make him look “cool.” I pulled together an outfit made of an H&M white slub sweater he already owned, ripped red jeans from Amazon, a red beanie from Amazon, and black boots from DSW that I let him pick out because I didn’t want to buy him shoes he’d only wear once.
Then I called my husband and asked, “would it be strange if I dressed up Clara like a Christmas tree and Chase like a cool Santa for our Christmas card this year? And, it’s probably going to cost us like $150 for the outfits.” He was like, “Go for it!”
So I did.
Props
For Santa, instead of using a satchel, I brought out an old trunk I had in prop storage and wrapped a few little boxes to set on it.
To complete the Christmas tree, I wanted to bring in the element of light. I thought about getting Clara some sort of wand, but my searches were fruitless. Then, I decided to do a lantern instead and found a perfect one on Amazon.
The Day Arrived
My orders arrived amazingly quickly, but I was in the heart of busy season. It was difficult to find a day to do this! Finally, the perfect day presented itself. Indeed, it was likely the last day in the 60s this fall, and I wanted my daughter to be comfortable in her sleeveless gown.
I spent a few hours prepping that day, ironing the kids’ clothes (because of course they were wrinkled by picture day!), trying to find my daughter’s crown (because of course she had managed to lose it already – it ended up being on her bedroom floor under the curtain), and blow drying and curling her hair. We discussed how to do her hair to help support the crown, but also keep as many curls down as possible. A little mascara, lip gloss and blush, and voila!
My son was easier, I told him to get in the shower 30 minutes before we had to leave and made sure he brushed his teeth.
Finally we were all ready, but I wanted it to be darker outside, so we all stood in the kitchen looking at our phones and each other for 10 minutes until I said, “Okay, get in the car.”
It’s Go Time
The photo session location was a whopping 2 blocks from my house, but we drove because I didn’t want to tell or show anyone what I was planning since I was still kinda sure it was just a weird idea. Only one friend knew, because I had to call her to ask her daughter (my daughter’s friend who was over the day before) if she remembered seeing where Clara put the crown.
This is already a long post, so I’ll just say my kids were awesome. They take direction really well and are super photogenic. My daughter kept trying to do duck lips, but I talked her out of it. The lantern only weighed about a pound, but holding it up for several minutes was a bit tough, so we kept taking breaks. Otherwise, it was perfect. I love my sweet children. <3
Editing
I was still in busy season, so I had to wait three weeks until my Thanksgiving vacation to edit the photos. I wouldn’t let my husband see the photos until I’d both edited the photos and designed the holiday card. I wanted his first impression to be of the card, like our friends and family would see, to see if 1. it made sense and 2. wasn’t too strange. He loved them.
Here are the before and after images for some of the photos. The most obvious change is the addition of the light burst from the lantern. It’s actually a sun-burst overlay that I overlaid twice using a 180 degree rotation for the second one to make the light beams more circular. I substantially darkened the backgrounds and did a bit of skin and facial retouching. I also added subtle highlights where I thought the light should be hitting them if they were lit by the lantern, though if you look closely, you’ll notice that the direction of light is still from above.
For one of the images, I did a head swap of my daughter to get one of her with a better expression.
And for the one below, I had to do a whole-body swap of my son to get better body language and expression.
Well, that’s it! There are still some more edits I would have done if I had more time, but I’m overall happy with them. The holiday cards were sent out on Monday, and it’s been fun hearing from my friends, family, and clients from this past year who received them!
I’m already thinking ahead to next year! Hmmm…. anyone know how to make a Nutcracker look modern and cool? 😀
BTW, I’m now booking all 2020 dates. Check my availability to see what dates remain!
