Family Photos Fall 2015

Hi all! Hope everyone is having a fantastic start to their holiday season! I'm so excited about the holidays this year, and I'll share why soon - we have a big announcement to make!

In the meantime though, I'll tide you over with a few family photos that a friend recently took for us. I have to keep it real and say that the girls were completely uncooperative for most of the photos. They're such hams when I'm snapping photos of them with my phone, but as soon as I ask someone to take photos with a real camera so that I can actually be IN a few with my family, they tend to get shy and put on their grumpy faces :) So I was completely thrilled to find that she managed to get a few really great shots of our crazy little clan. Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! xo, Lauren

Our Christmas New Year Cards

Based on my Facebook news feed, I'm not the only one who missed the Christmas card boat this year (I hope!) We scored a great deal on professional photography last year ($45 for a 45 minute session plus all of the digital files) but our photographers couldn't make it due to snow. Luckily, we were already dressed and managed to snap some iPhone pictures to use for last year's cards. This year we tried again and this time got rained out. :/

Luckily we were able to reschedule, but not in time to get Christmas cards out. Rather than scrapping the cards entirely, we decided to go with New Year cards this year! I love how they turned out:

I just love Violet's pouty face! She SO wasn't into the idea of posed photos, but did better on the more candid shots. A big thank you to our awesome photographers, The Susquehanna Photographic, for the great deal and for working with our grouchy little person and crazy family! And to Minted for the beautiful cards - we always love working with them!

Here are a few more favorite photos:

Choosing our Christmas Cards

We're getting our photos taken for our Christmas cards this weekend and I'm so excited! We tried for it last year after I got a great deal on professional photography ($45 for a 45 minute session!), but we got snowed out and ended up taking our own selfie photos with our iPhones. Luckily they still turned out great, but I'm very excited to have photos taken of our family where we can both be in the shot without our arm extended lol. I've been browsing Minted's selection of Christmas cards, and I think I've narrowed it down to the top contenders...

1. I love these super simple foil-pressed cards - they really make the photos the focus, and that simple gold-dipped edge is just perfection:

2. Love this year-in-review style card as well. It'd be such a cute way to share some updates with family and friends without writing the full-on Christmas letter:

3. Maybe it's the baby and the toy car, but I think these cards are completely adorable:

4. These gold foil cards are pretty amazing as well - I love the calligraphy and the clean, simple look:

5. Another option I'm considering this year is the ornament card. I love the idea of our friends and family being able to hang it on their tree and use it from year to year as a decoration if they so choose, rather than tossing it in the trash after one season:

Which do you think we should choose? And keep your fingers crossed for us that we don't get snowed out again!