Five Shades of Gray- A Christmas card photo tale

Last year, I didn't send Christmas cards. It was the first time since Jacob was born that I'd not sent out cards. With my brother's death in October and Donnie's aunt's death in November, I didn't feel like sending out cards. It's not like I walked around last Christmas season in sack cloth and ashes, but I did feel the season of mourning and didn't engage in some yearly traditions. Sending cards was one of them.

This year, I wanted to send out Christmas cards. The cards were a bit different than years' past ones. I came across some cards that I'd purchased years before but never used. They are the kind of card that has a blank space for one printed picture that is affixed to the card. Very last century, before the likes of Shutterfly, Snapfish, Minted, etc made possible the virtually endless options for photo cards to be designed online and printed. I've made many online photo cards over the years; I'm no Luddite when it comes to cards. But, I liked the idea of changing things up this year and I also wanted to include an update letter. Both a non digital photo card and an update letter seem very old school and I thought the two would go well together.

One reason I wanted to do an update letter is because we lost touch with a number of people whom we had been in regular contact with. That included some of Alyssa's former soccer teammates. We'd known many of her teammates for years and had become friends with them. Alyssa switched teams this year and we no longer see these teammates/ friends on a regular basis. Also, several of Abby's dance friends graduated high school this year so they aren't dancing at Abby's studio anymore. We'd known these families for years and now we don't see them on a regular basis. 2018 was also a milestone year for us as Jacob will begin college next year. 2018 will be the last year that we had all three kids at home with us. I realize that Facebook has become the medium by which most people keep in touch with good acquaintances, friends and family. But, I'm not on Facebook and don't plan to be on it so I'm bereft of a common social media platform in which to tell our updates. An update letter seemed a good way to accomplish communicating small snippets of our year to our friends and family.

I had my sister take a few pictures of our family for the card when she and her family were here Thanksgiving weekend. I told everyone to wear something gray for the photo- I wasn't 100%  sure we all had something gray but I was pretty sure that everyone did- and thankfully we all did. So, with us in our five shades of gray, we stood in front of one of the trees that we had up and decorated and Katy took some pictures. I wanted a Christmas-y background which is why we crowded around the slim tree in our entry way. If I hadn't wanted Christmas-y, I would have had more options; however, I'm not sure where we would have posed.

I had some pictures developed of the photo that I planned to use. I had it printed a couple of different ways. Because so much of us (our faces) constituted the frame, I darkened the photo to make it less us- like to mute us out of it a bit. But that kind of backfired as it just resulted in a strange looking photo. Alyssa said we looked goth. I thought it looked kind of Depression era. It wasn't the aesthetic that I was hoping to achieve. Katy took one of us vertically that turned out well, but the photo area of the card that I wanted to use was made for a horizontal oriented photo- not a vertical one.

I decided to use the vertical photo and cut each photo to have it fit the photo card. Thankfully, the card didn't have slots in which to place the photo. Rather, adhesive stickers were included. I couldn't have cut the photo and used the slots so I was thankful for the stickers.

Below are some pictures of the card and some showing the process by which our card came to be.

The outside of the card...

The inside

A tale of two photo finishes- the below two pictures are the same except that in the bottom one, I had text added to it. Other than that, they're the same photo. The difference in the color is that I had the photos developed by different stores. The top one came from Wal-Mart while the bottom one came from CVS. I ended up using the print from CVS because the price was much cheaper than Wal-Mart's price.

Here is the picture that I'd originally planned on using. The more I considered using it, the less I liked it. We were just too much in the frame. A little bit of Rineer faces goes a long way!! The picture at the bottom was my attempt to edit the photo to make "us" stand out less. I give myself an "A" for effort but, just no, it didn't work.

Here's what the card would looked like had I used the horizontal oriented goth/ Depression era picture

Since I used the vertical picture, I had to make some adjustments. The bottom picture is the 4 x6 picture that I had printed and the top one is the size that I used for the cards. Each 4 x 6 had to be cut.

I got out my Creative Memories trimmer out of scrapbook storage and Alyssa (happily) volunteered to use it to cut each picture.

Not only did each photo need to be cut, but I had to add a ribbon to each card and of course, affix, the picture to the card.

No two cards turned out alike due to variances in how I tied the knots :)

My stars- here is the first family photo card that I sent out- back in 2001. The youngster in this photo was about to turn one. The older two were barely on the wrong side of twenty 😄

Here is the photo inserted into the card that I sent.

Here is the matching stationary on which I printed our update letter.

This is the container that the stationary and cards came in. I still have it and use it to store old Christmas photos and update letters.

Back to 2018- my Trader Joe's bag o' Christmas cards to take to the post office. My kitchen scale said each card/ envelope weighed exactly one ounce. But, I didn't want to take the chance that the post office's scale would have them weighing more than an ounce and then me needing to add more postage after I'd already put them in the mail (I was late in getting them finished and ready to be mailed; any delay due to lack of postage would have meant the cards would be delivered even later and possibly not delivered until after Christmas). I'm glad that I took them to the post office. It didn't matter what they weighed. That cute little ribbon ensured that they needed more postage because it caused the entire envelope to be oversized and be non- machinable. That meant I had to add a 92 cent stamp and stamp each envelope "non- machinable."