I have always loved looking at the Christmas cards from my Dad's childhood. My Dad's Mom, my Grandma Ruth, always organized a beautiful photo Christmas card for each year. And, thanks to her devoted photo album-ing, my family has a copy of each of those Christmas cards, which span the 1940s and 50s when my Dad and his siblings were kids.
Growing up and similarly to what my Grandma Ruth organized, every year my Mom, Dad, sister, and I would take a "Christmas card photo" that would be just that - the official photo to go out in our Christmas card. It was always fun to take these photos and pick "the one". When I was very young, we always did matching snow hats - my Mom and Dad would wear matching snow hats and my sister and I would wearing matching snow hats, and all the hats would match in color scheme. As my sister and I got older, I imagine it became difficult to get us to put on what we eventually probably thought were "silly" or "stupid" hats. The photo tradition, however, carried on, abeit without hats. That tradition carries through to this very day. In fact, while we were in Denver for Thanksgiving we lined up for a photo op ... the informal photo session for our 2011 Christmas card photo (I will share it when the time is right).
I am in the ongoing process of scanning and organizing old family photos. We are talking photos from the 1860s up to present day. It is a joint project my Mom and I are working on to not only have digital files of these family treasures, but we also plan to make photo family trees out of the photos as well. We started the process about a year ago - around Thanksgiving-time last year, and the process continues. Most recently, I have been setting aside some photos to make some sort of photo wall somewhere in my house. I have all these beautiful family photos and I want to see them, not just have them stored away digitally and as moth food. Those projects, the family tree and the photo wall, are still far from completion, but I will share those one day when they are finished, I am sure.
Back to Christmas cards and photos, it is always so much fun creating Christmas/holiday cards this time of year. I am right in the thick of it now, working on my own, my Mom's, and many for clients. So, I have Christmas cards on the brain, is how to put it most accurately, and along with that, I wanted to share a few of those Solheim family Christmas cards I mentioned from when my Dad was young. My Dad is the oldest of his four siblings, so you can surmise who he is in these photos by that.
John, Mocha, and I had photos taken this year for our Christmas card. In the four years we have been married, I usually just pick a photo that was taken at some point throughout the year and call it good. This year, as I shared last week, we actually had designated Christmas photos taken.
Do you send out Christmas cards?
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