Jennie vs. The Christmas Card – Hive and Nest

The Christmas card is a big deal to me. I feel a drive deep within my soul to make my children wear matching clothes and be photographed together. (Please don’t judge/hate me for it.  You know how some of you are fanatic about cleanliness?  And some about running?  Or whatever? This is my mania.)  Sometimes Mister and I are in the photo, sometimes not. Every year there is some link in the Christmas card chain which threatens to break and ruin the entire endeavor. Many years it is the matching outfits. Getting six children plus two adults in outfits that match (not just coordinate) is supremely difficult (and, crazy person that I am, I make them wear matching outfits on Easter too.  Fortunately my kids are used to it and do my bidding without much complaining). Matchy clothes are much harder to find as the kids get older. When they were all little I could just hit Children’s Place and call it good. Now I often have to sew (which I can do pretty well but it is certainly a complete pain.) There is also much use of websites and ebay. Hartstrings is a good resource for matchy clothes. Although their boy/girl matches only happen two or three times a year. (They have pretty good sales.  I bought our Easter ’09 outfits this last September.  They were on clearance.  Got to be ahead of the game, people!)

 I got the matching outfits in July with the idea that we would do a big beach theme now that we live a few hours from the coast.  Try as I might I could not find a photographer. I’m sure there must be lots of them around Padre Island, but not that I could find.  So we scrapped the beach thing and just took photos at the neighborhood club house (thank you Cheryl for being our photographer!)  They turned out pretty well except that I was laughing for real, not doing my perfect fake “photo smile” so my eyes are squint city.  I also had some weird shadows going on so I sent the pic to my brother Ben who is a Photoshopper Extraordinaire.  He got a little wrapped up in the magic of Photoshop because this is what he sent back:
(he sent along a real version too, thank goodness, or I would have killed him.)

Yes, that’s us as Brad and Angelina.  If only I had Brad to come home to every night! Sigh. . . . OK, where was I? So this year I am being stymied by the card itself. I had a friend design some really cute cards and they are ready to go. I just cannot figure out how to get a great quality card made fast. I can get a great quality card made and shipped out to me in a week (too long). I’m not doing that thing on photo paper at Costco, so don’t even go there, m’kay? We actually have a really fancy professional printer at our house, but frankly even that doesn’t look fantastic. It still looks “printerish”. Mister ran off some proofs last night and let’s just say some nasty fighting ensued about whether they were good enough, why I am such a snob and what is the point of Christmas cards in the first place (Duh! To show off ! We’re all show-offs about something, so cut me some slack. At least I’m being honest.) 

I already bought and addressed all the envelopes so they’d be good to go. Now what?  I swear I’m going to go insane!

So if you’re my friend in real life, sorry to spoil the magic.  You’ll be getting your dumbass card eventually, I promise.