Well hello. I know, I’m a slacker in the blog department lately… but you know… the holidays are busy. While I have a few recipes and things coming to the blog soon, I wanted to share our family Christmas card. I had a lot of help from two very special elves this year so I’ll give you a peek at how it came together before I share the finished product.

First, Meredith of Lifelong Memories Photography (go look at her gallery or you’re missing out!) took some amazing shots of O with Santa during a “mini session”. Let me tell you, this chick has it together. Photos with toddlers can be quite the challenge but Meredith kept it upbeat, changed scenery to keep O interested and was super patient with O (and us… because I’m sure Hubby and I were all up in her business trying to “help”). The location was spectacular! It was just 15 minutes from our house in Cincinnati at an old craftsman style home in Northern Kentucky that a friend of Meredith owns. She had it decorated so beautifully. I felt like we were in a magazine!  She really captured some darling moments and I knew we’d be making a killer Christmas card with them. Check out some of our favorites!

Our pictures came back a little over a week later and we selected 10 to keep. Meredith edited a few things like a light switch on a wall near the stairs, and cropped some images for better composition and then she sent high quality images via Dropbox. So easy. No mailing or shipping and I could send them directly to my next elf.

Katie of kmd designs (etsy) and Life of Kate / Almost Vegan (blog) is the next trusty elf. And like Meredith, she knows her stuff. You may remember that she did our amazing invitations and game prints for the Little Man Mustache themed baby shower my sister and I threw for our other friend Kait. All I did was share our Dropbox file with Katie and give her a few of my ideas for the card and verbiage. I was hoping to do a postcard this year. I liked that we’d probably be the only (or one of a couple) holiday postcards that our friends would receive. I also loved that postcards are inexpensive to print (thanks to Vistaprint and a coupon code) and postage is only 34 cents (but postcards must be 4×6 inches or smaller to qualify). So Katie shot back a few starter designs a day later and we tweaked a couple things. Before I knew it I had a high quality file ready to send to print. That’s one of the great things about Katie and her etsy… everything is in pdf so she sends it as soon as shes finished and there is no wait for shipping. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy.

Here is our finished product. Excuse the Sharpie… it’s covering our address. I’ve already received countless emails, facebook messages and texts telling me how cute it is and asking who did the photography and design. THANK YOU Katie and Meredith!