Thursday, December 11, 2008

The Christmas Card Crunch! It all worked out in The End...

While we were visiting home last week, my sister-in-law and I talked on a couple of different occasions about trying to meet to take a Christmas photo of our children together.

Unfortunately, her week was one of the busiest while we were there, and we hardly had any time together. =( It seemed the closer the end of the week got, the busier her schedule became. We were bummed!

The last day there, our family got together for lunch. Even our lunch meeting was so rushed! Basically, David and I were finalizing our packing, and loading the car as our Sun. dinner was being prepared to put on the table. David's brother was grilling, I was busy last minute packing, David was packing up the car...for those of you who travel out of town to visit family, you know the drill!

The day before our luncheon I had tried to see if she wanted to fit it in. I had left messages for her Sat., to let me know if she could do the photos on Sun. while we were together. Well, she had worked all day Sat. and into the late evening, and could not get to her phone to call me back...and I know how it is to be so tired and I'm sure all she had on her mind was getting she and her kids into bed for church the next morning!

I really did not think anything of it. We were all so tired when Sun morning rolled around, and I knew they were exhausted because their children actually help out with their business demonstrations.

Sun morning, my kids were slllleeeepy from staying up late and visiting with family and friends. So I decided not to push them into dressing or preparing for photos...especially since I did not know for sure if my sister-in-law was up for it. The short of it...she came somewhat prepared (she brought red tops for them to change into), Yet even her kids looked a bit tuckered out as well.

The luncheon ended up being a bit frazzled for our kids or I to get into doing an unprepared shoot. (you know how photographing your own kids can be...Josh doesn't seem to mind, but Jordan gets irritated by it if she is rushed and pushed into it... not to mention both of our kids are ADHD/ADD and Sensory Integration...they get in a major tizzy if you make them feel hurried or rushed...it really throws them off!) Plus, I wanted them to just enjoy their time with their cousins for our last few hrs together.

No groups photos of the kiddos that trip around, maybe next. Which I'm kind of glad...not that I even thought of this at the time...but later I thought to myself that I'd rather have some sharper lenses (like a wide angle) for my camera before I do the shot of them together... AND I'd really like to take it outdoors... perhaps in the local park (which is BEAUTIFUL with flowers in the spring!) I'm sure nana will want a good photo of her grandkids. ;)

Here's the story of the Christmas Card Crunch:
My sister-in-law usually takes her own Christmas photo every yr, and encloses it in a fold over card, or card w/ front photo insert. I did not realize until after the fact (yesterday when we talked), that she had not taken a shot of her kids yet to be used for her Christmas cards. She may have mentioned this before at one time or another in chatting, but what we are dealing with here FOLKS concerning ME is... a Right Brained, ADD, Fibro-Fogged gal. Makes good for creativity...not so good for other things. So hey, some things go in the ear and right on out the other if they are not written down or keyed into my Blackberry! I could have snapped a few photos for their card...but if things aren't put to me straight out, sometimes they do not compute...you know how hind sight is 20/20?...i live in the 20/20 world! HA!!

Sooooo....Time was slipping away for her now...

She called me yesterday, feeling in a crunch from her oh so busy schedule, and asked me if I would come up with something for her to use this year. I gladly obliged!!! YAY, an opportunity to practice my editing skills. (and let me tell ya, I had a TIME with the cloning tool...GAH! But I think I got it worked out with the help of a new friend in a flickr photography group forum, Tammy)

For her Christmas photos, we had to use photos that she and I had taken previously over the past few months. So I hopped on my iPHOTO to see what I could see.

I had a lot of fun with it and came up with these two designs...

The first one here:
I actually made the template in Scrapblog of all places! (For those who haven't used this website, it is really neat, and very user friendly too!) I found the background, and added/positioned the ornament *stickers* to scale the way I wanted them to look...and came up with this:

kathy christmas card_Page_0-3

The second card:
A few weeks ago I decided to have a go at making some fun Christmas Bokeh photos. So I spent one evening taking lots of bokeh photos. Had a blast doing it too!!! I have an album set in my photostream if you'd like to check them out. I wasn't sure at the time how or when I would use them exactly. Mainly put them out there to share with others for the holidays. One of my bokeh shots came in REAL handy for their Christmas Card:

christmas kathy1

For those interested...here is the original SOOC I had to work with. This photo was taken by my sister-in-law at the beach last summer. The high noon bouncing light on the girls faces and backside of William's head worked nicely with the Christmas bokeh background:
SOOC for Christmas card


Even though we could not get our schedules together for photos with my sister-in-law this last trip home... at least concerning her Christmas card dilemma..."it all worked out in the end!" :o)

The End!

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