From our home to yours!

… or so we thought. It is hard balancing 4 kids, a photography business, Tater’s medical career, and life in general, so we told my parents that we were going to take this year “off” from doing their Christmas card. To say my mom LOVES pictures is an understatement. She definitely takes more pictures than all of us, and we are always asking her for her pictures.

As Christmas got closer, I noticed that she totally understood our situation, but I knew she wanted one done. As we thought about our parents and how blessed we were to have them, I realized, “How could I not do one for them!?!”… They do so much for us!!

I love watching my parents with all of these kids. My dad who sits on the floor playing ball or tickling them. Just the other day he was playing hide and seek with our girls and all I heard was giggles. It was priceless. My mom who makes them fun snacks and now I hear my kids say, “Will you turn my pbj sandwich into a flower just like grandma does it?” She also does a fantastic job organizing family get togethers and meeting the needs of all the kids. We are so blessed to have fantastic parents, and our kids are blessed to have them too! So here we go… this year’s Christmas card for them with their 10 grandchildren… that really did happen.

We had these glasses lying around our house to use for a photo shoot down the road… thinking it would be better to use them when the kids got older - so they would actually stay on! Well, Thanksgiving was quickly approaching, and we still hadn’t had time to think of what to do for this year’s Christmas card. Our calendar was looking full, and we had Thanksgiving free. So the day before, we got desparate and decided to go the glasses route. Squeezing in pictures between church and making the Thanksgiving dinner actually went smoother than we thought. Tater even had time to jerry-rig the oversized glasses to fit on our kid’s little pint sized heads. We had fun giggling with the kids trying to get them to make smiling faces to a blinking camera on a stand. So here we have our 2010 Christmas Card… Merry Christmas to all!

This little missy’s head was still a little too tiny. The big glasses kept falling off in the big group shot… so we did her own little photo shoot and used her in the real glasses for the stamp.

Thank you to all of our wonderful clients this year! We enjoyed each and every one of you! Here are a few of your Christmas orders that went out this year.

We were pleased to introduce new card styles this year. Here is one of those styles ~ our ornamental circle card.

Of course, unique products always add a special touch.

We hope all of our readers are enjoying this Christmas season!

to you! From us…

Here are other Christmas cards that we created for our clients… enjoy!

We got a lot of great products shown below… Gallery wrapped canvases, standouts, wall portraits, our custom designed Luxe Album, Christmas cards, and gift prints. We love when the delivery service leaves gifts for our clients at our doorstep. It is a joy to see the finished art products and place them in our clients hands.

Booking update:

• We are booked for the remainder of this year. Thank you to all of our 2009 clients!

• Our studio will be closed December 1st, 2009 - January 3rd, 2010.

• Sessions begin January 4th, 2010  

• January and February are BOOKED!

• NOW booking for the end of March.

• CLOSED June, July, August - baby coming.

Want to decorate your home with Christmas cheer this Christmas season? Check out these yummy frames. 

Christmas frames with or without trim (available in 2″, 4″ or 6″)

“All I want for Christmas”……..Candy Apple w/ Green Apple Dots

“Up on the Roof Top”……….Green Apple w/ Candy Apple Dots

“Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree”…..Candy Apple w/ Sugar Cookie Dots

“Frosty the Snowman”……..Silver w/ Sugar Cookie snowflake

“Let it Snow”………………….Boysenberry w/ Silver snowflakes

“White Christmas”…………..Sugar Cookie w/ Silver snowflakes

Christmas striped frames with or without trim (available in  6″ only):

“Jingle Bells”……….Candy Apple/Green Apple Stripe

“Here Comes Santa Clause”……….Candy Apple/Sugar cookie/ Green Apple Stripe

“My Favorite Things”……Candy Apple/Sugar cookie Stripe

“Deck the Halls”……..Candy Apple/Sugar Cookie/Lime Sherbert Stripe

Christmas striped frames with or without trim (available in 6″ only):

“Santa Baby”…………..Strawberry Parfait/Sugar Cookie/Silver Stripe 

“Silver Bells”……………Sugar Cookie/ Silver stripe

“Joy to the World”…….Strawberry Parfait/Silver Stripe 

THIS WEEK ONLY we are offering our Holiday frames 15% off. Offer good Monday, November 2nd through Monday, November 9th.

Contact us for pricing information or any other questions.

Or in other words… Woo hoo! We have done our Christmas card photo shoot! 

These past few weeks we have been busy taking pictures of clients and family for Christmas cards. We decided to do our own family photo shoot for Christmas pictures this past weekend while we still had a summer tan and good weather. 

We first tried doing it ourselves with a tripod and timer. NOT a good idea with three little kids… I’m sure we would have been hysterical to watch. We got one somewhat good pic out of the bunch. Check out Briana’s face. haha

Thankfully, Mom and Dad Kruse came to save the day. Wanting a more grungy look, we headed outdoors. Mom ran the camera (got settings ready for her, taught her how to focus, and then explained our vision we had with each pose), and Dad helped get the kids attention. They were an awesome team!!! We were so glad to have them help us on the ones we couldn’t take on our own. We love them!

During our first attempts (trying to do it by ourselves), we were thinking, “Why are we doing this?” but truly when we had someone doing it for us, it was a special treat. We loved being on the other side of the camera! It was so much fun! I think we are going to hire them every year. Here are a few that didn’t make the card…

A few others we took that day…

Here is a slideshow of the rest of the session:

If you want to book a Christmas session with us, please contact us. The last date to hold a Christmas session (in order to have items in time for Christmas) is October 31st. We can’t believe that it already is September!

We hope that everyone is enjoying the new year! This was the card that we created for my parents this year. It was supposed to be a Christmas card… but because of Briana’s late arrival, we had to change it to a New Year’s card. This card is a 5×5 trifold card. Our family card is still yet to come.

front

front flap

inside spread

back

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”  Luke 2:11

Celebrating the miracle and all of the gifts that God has given us ~ this Christmas and always.