Christmas Card Photoshoot

Last year Hugh and I did our first Christmas card together. It was our first “married Christmas” so we thought it was finally appropriate to send out cards together…Shhh…don’t tell anyone that we lived together before we got married…we’re heathens.

Anyways, we ordered our cards this past weekend from a design company that’s new to me but has been around for a while. I am 100% impressed with their work and I can’t WAIT to get our cards in. We decided to use a few of our photos from our European vacation but we wanted a photo of the dogs as well. We have tons of photos of our dogs, but Sunday afternoon I decided to pull out the camera to see if we could get the dogs to pose in front of the fireplace. You’ll notice by our outfits that this was a last minute idea and that Hugh and I never had any intention of being in the photos. I wouldn’t choose to wear my pajama pants and fat unicorn shirt for a Christmas card photo op. The chaos of the next few photos should explain how successful we were.

 Camera? You want me to look at the camera?

 Here, Tobey is wondering why Cassie is posing when this is obviously a painful experience.

 Tobey is tired of our game.

 We thought it might be easier if we helped by getting in the photo. LOL.

 Tobey isn't submissive at all and I wasn't going to be spread-eagle in a Christmas photo.

 Both dogs want their bellies rubbed.

 This is my favorite. Hugh had to carry Cassie over after he hit the timer so she's being flopped around a bit and Tobey is biting her ear. HAHAHAHA!

 If this one had been in focus I might have used it. It's too cute!

The photo shoot was a disaster but we laughed so hard that I might have cried a little. It was hilarious. Our dogs are very sweet and well-behaved, but that does NOT make them models. I think their true personalities came through in the photos and I’ll probably use a few of these in frames around the house. We ended up choosing a photo from an outside shoot that makes the dogs look much more majestic.

We can be crafty!

Thank goodness I married a man that is very mechanically-inclined. I tell Hugh all the time that his true talent is engineering. He can take anything apart and actually put it back together! He’s very good at figuring things out and this can truly come in handy. Several months ago my parents decided to downsize their residence and Hugh and I were the new lucky owners of their dining table. We decided that we could take on the task of recovering the chairs and making it our own.

First off- minor repairs. This table had been through quite a bit in its lifetime. It’s an antique and it had to survive all four of us children not treating it with the respect that antiques deserve. Hugh had to reinforce several of the corners of the chairs where the seams were coming apart. All that took was some time, wood glue and a nice set of clamps. Some of the chairs had to have the plywood under the cushions replaced as well, but soon we were ready for the fun part: picking out fabric!

A good friend recommended that we look go to High Fashion downtown to find the fabrics we wanted. What an awesome store! They have very eclectic furniture and miles upon miles of fabric. We probably spent two hours going from aisle to aisle trying to decide what we wanted. Hugh suggested that we use three different types of fabric and have mixed and matched chairs. YAY!!! Great idea. Here’s what we chose:

A few measurements and several hundred staples later we had a finished product! We love them, and I know that we both appreciate the fact that we did it ourselves.