Christmas Cards with Minted, & Christmas Pictures!

Christmas card time has come, and with it, time to get some updated pictures of the kiddos! This year I really meant to set up a shoot with my go-to girl Ellen of Red Sweater Photography, who has captured us so well in the past. But you know how it is...your schedule gets away from you, the weather doesn't cooperate, kids get sick, no one has a good outfit. It's hard to plan ahead. So I ended up spur-of-the-moment grabbing them and taking them to an old schoolhouse I've always wanted to shoot, and giving it a go myself.

A few weeks ago, I took a mini photography class through the park district, and I can now finally work the on-button for the DSLR I got last Christmas. Not only that, I can work FOUR of the buttons, meaning I can shoot in manual! Woohoo!

Now, just because I can work the buttons still doesn't mean I'll ever have kids that hold still, smile while looking at the camera, or stop cracking each other up during photoshoots. But I wouldn't have these goofballs any other way.

The hard part is narrowing down all these sweet, hilarious pictures to that ONE perfect Christmas card shot.

And then the even harder part is Minted! I am ordering with them again this year for my cards, and this company makes it reeeeeeaaaallly hard to choose. I knew when I started shopping that I definitely wanted gold foil, but I really didn't expect how hard it would be to narrow down a selection.

Here are some I considered...

 Wonderfully Merry designed by Wildfield Paper Co.

The Most Wonderful designed by GeekInk Design

 Merry Christmas Sparkle Snow designed by Alethea & Ruth

 Modern Merry designed by Grace Cobb

Merry Scriptmas designed by Rebecca Turner

You may remember from last year, but one of the best things about shopping with Minted is their genius "find it fast" option. Before you even start scrolling, you can upload your own photo, and all the cards will be displayed with that image. Having your own, and knowing right away if you're going to have that gold foil scrawled across someone's face, is unbelieveably helpful. Plus, you're less likely to be swayed by the card because of the model's wedding dress or the gorgeous baby's chub.

I'll tell you a little spoiler that none of these, or even any of the kids' photos here, made the final cut. Not that these aren't perfect...because several of them would be. But sometimes you get to 3 AM and have to just pull the trigger.

It'll be here soon and I'll post when I have it! I can't wait for you to see!

In the meantime, because I have an overabundance of pictures that will otherwise be lost in the abyss of an external hard drive, I'm sharing all the kid pics I can. Chalk this post up to one for the grandparents!

I love how the girl just stands and smiles sweetly and pretends she doesn't notice her brothers going bonkers...while inwardly seething at what total morons they are. Bahahaha.

In a perfect world I'd have Dyson in the same picture as the kids (and in the same picture with the kids' parents...as long as we're making wish lists) but he's *ahem* totally insane in public places. This was shot during the 1/100th of a second he actually sat still and looked straight at me. Someday!

Well thanks for indulging pictures of my kids (and dog) - I'm excited to show you how the cards turn out!

This post was sponsored by Minted, for which I am very grateful. As always, all opinions and reviews are 100% my own, and I only share companies with you that I would share with my best friends at our weekly playdate.