diy | easy christmas card display

I hope you had an awesome holiday break! My holiday card collection was the last "decoration" standing this weekend, as I just love being surrounded by pictures of all my favorite people.  Before I took them down, I snapped a quick picture to share with you.  This diy display was so easy to do and I got so many compliments on it! I just used twine and push pins to create the display and some fun pink tape to keep the holiday cards in place.  So easy! Works great in my bay window but I can also see this working in a door frame, hanging from the mantle, etc.

I am always a little bummed when the holidays are "over", but 'm looking forward to 2015 and all the changes that they new year brings! xoxo

diy | holiday card photoshoot

For the past 4 years, my family has had the absolute pleasure of having our family photos taken by the dynamic duo, Wendy & Tyler of blue lily photography. Every year I cry when I open our proofs - they do an amazing job of capturing the true spirit of "us" as a unit.

On top of the sentimental value of these photos, I also rely on them for my holiday cards every year! We were unable to connect with blue lily this summer for our family photos (insert sobbing). When it came time to start working on my holiday cards this year, I had to get creative and figure something out on my own!

Here are a few from years past:

I have  a halfway decent camera but have never really spent the time to figure it all out (aka- read the manual), so it's basically useless to me. Pathetic, I know....but I'm just being honest here. With that said, the only other "good" camera I have is my iphone 6 camera so I decided to roll with it. I set aside a day to have a mini photo shoot with my three boys and my iphone camera. The result was pleasantly surprising! The pics are in NO way comparable to the quality of blue lily's pics, but they certainly got the job done.

Here's how it went down:

FOUND A LOCATION - I chose an old barn at a forest preserve by my house. It had a lot of character and texture. In addition to the location, I think the time of day also helped the quality of the photos because it was right before sundown, around 4:30.

PICKED OUTFITS FOR THE BOYS -  I actually love this part of the process! I have a hard time dressing myself but I always seem to be able to throw great outfits together for my kids. A good rule of thumb  is to keep things coordinating but not "matching". I like to find one or two pieces that have color and/or pattern and build everything around that.

SHOT A VARIETY OF POSES - I knew I wanted an assortment with the three boys together and alone. Because we've had family photos taken in the past, I was fairly comfortable with how to "pose" them or have them stand to get a little variety in my shots. I ended up taking over 150 pictures and used only 5 of them for my holiday card. Take lots of pictures! You can always delete what you don't want.

APPLIED A FILTER  - I wasn't originally planning to do this, but after I took the photos,  they still looked a little drab to me. I decided to play around with the filters on my phone and the one that really made these particular photos pop was the "transfer" filter. I applied it to all of my favorites and called it a day!

Here's my 2014 holiday card featuring my diy photos :