So we stopped just short of actually killing Santa on this year’s card. Happy Holidays!

(To be visited by the Cards of Christmas Past, click here and here).

front

back

I think you move me.

ISO Bedtime.

Yesterday, I noticed the late afternoon light falling across our opened front door in a particularly appealing way, so I quickly went to get my camera and tripod. I set up the shot, adjusted the camera, and snapped a series of pictures of the empty doorway. But when I look at this one, I swear there is what appears to be a little boy standing behind the beveled glass.

I think I’ll ask Sam. He was right beside me as I was setting up the camera. In fact, he insisted on looking through the viewfinder at least twice, and at one point, he even went around to the front of the camera and pressed his cheek and eye against the lens. He was also playing with the tripod some.

Maybe he saw something.

This is one of the numerous old gas and electric fixtures original to our house. Sometimes, it contains a compact fluorescent bulb, and other times, the finger of a jitterbugging ghost.

front

back

The front of the card this year was all taken in one shot - there was no Photoshopping necessary other than for the border and the text. In years past, I’ve had to take the best elements from several pics and combine them all into one shot. This time, after the turkeys were wrapped up and trundled off into the front yard, all that Jill had to do was stand behind me and yell over my shoulder, “Hey boys, you know what we’re having for dinner tonight? Spaghetti and POOPballs!”. I found out later that she’d been saving that one.

Liam and Nate looked at one another for a beat, then burst out laughing, and Sam joined in simply because the other boys were laughing, and they were holding his mittens. So, poop joke = mirth, togetherness, and what can easily be mistaken for brotherly love.

*sound of camera clicking*

The back was done in Photoshop with the help of my Intuos4 PC Tablet. Initially, the cards came back from the printer and the yellow snow looked lime green. So we had to order another set pronto. Unfortunately, after a week of waiting for the mistake to be corrected, those cards also arrived with lime-green whiz. In the end, we decided to send them out anyway. It was either that, or we were going to have to hang onto 500 holiday postcards until St. Paddy’s Day.

As usual, my part in all this was mostly that of a Photoshop Puppet and Printer Liaison.

It was all Jill’s idea.