Christmas Cards

Holiday cards are by far my absolute favorite tradition of the season. Obviously, any tradition that revolves around taking pictures is number one in my book. Unfortunately, my husband does not share this same love for taking holiday photos, but he tolerates my photo shoots and puts on a good face just for me because he knows how important this is to me.

This year was no exception. I tried to talk Jared into letting me have professional photos done, but the financial adviser in him quickly vetoed that idea. Granted, we've already done two professional photo shoots this year (maternity and newborn) so I can't blame him for not being on board to pay our photographer for a third time. Don't worry, I've already made it clear that we will be doing professional 1 year photos of Peyton in June so that's a done deal.

Anyways, I decided to not make a huge deal about these Christmas card photos and just had my brother snap a quick family photo in my mom's backyard when we were at her house for Thanksgiving. Jared was obviously thrilled. If he thought that taking a holiday photo was a pain in the ass before, now we have a baby...which means extra stress for me (getting Peyton dressed, in a good mood and willing to cooperate) and an extra long photo shoot because you have to take twice as many photos (since babies never want to look at the camera or smile when you really need them too). Apparently, I was just double lucky on this particular day because Peyton simply did not want to look at the camera or smile the entire time. Every other day of her life I can get her to make the cutest faces, but not today of course. Oh well, she's adorable no matter what so I just had to let it go.

We got a couple of cute shots for our Christmas card and called it a day. I take so many photos of Peyton on my own every day that I'm not worried about lacking in that department :)

Peyton says, "Mommy this is what you get for taking so many darn pictures of me all the time. I will not smile for your Christmas card photo. Ha". Touche Peyton, touche.

I wanted to come up with a creative way to display the holiday cards we received in our new house. I didn't want to have to take something down or hang up something extra on the wall, altering our normal home decor. Therefore, I decided that I would use one of the doors in the house as my canvas. In the entry way of our house, at the bottom of the stairs, is a door that goes out to the extra single-car garage. It is centrally located and you see it right when you walk in the front door. Plus, it's an 8 foot door so that leaves plenty of space for me to work with. I bought some red twine and mini clothes-pins from Hobby Lobby. I made the "Happy Holidays" banner myself out of scrapbook paper and I spray painted the clothes-pins gold. Then I wrapped the door in twine and hung all the cards with the clothes-pins. Voila!

Here is our fun holiday card display! It came out just the way I pictured it in my mind and people enjoy looking at it when they come over to visit. I love walking by it everyday and looking at our pretty friends :)

Happy Holidays from The Roche Family!