JOY & LOVE Filled Family Pictures

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!!

Wishing you loves of JOY & LOVE this holiday season!!

I was SO happy with how our cards turned out this year.  I have ordered our cards from Sams for YEARS.  I plan my holidays around ordering during their Black Friday sale every year.  You can get 100 cards and envelopes for just $15!!  They're 6x8 on photo paper.  Mark your calendars for next year to take advantage of it.  PS If you're ordering 150+ it's cheapest to order 2 sets of 100 instead of 150.  If you order them in 100s you only pay $15 per set instead of $40 for 200.

I also wanted to share our 2017 family pictures with you today.  My sweet cousin Lacey has taken our pictures for years.  She puts up with our whole crew, looks at our inspiration photos for poses and we're so lucky to have her in the family.  We book her every other year and give my mom a gift card for the photo session for Mother's Day.  We all love to get updated pictures even if it's a lot of work to pull together.

Here are 4 tips we've learned over the years:

1. Pick 3 colors for pictures and then work in lots of neutrals - jeans, khakis, black pants, etc.  WE did black, pink and green this year.  Find an inspiration picture or outfit to base all of the outfits off of and share it with all the moms in the group since they're usually doing the shopping.

2. Scout out your location ahead of time and pick your favorite spots.  Set bar stools, benches, blankets out in advance so they're ready to go for the shoot.  Also scope out pinterest poses ahead of time and screen shot them on your phone.  We always do pictures at my parents house.

3. Make it quick!  The quicker you can get everyone in their spots the better.  As all of the kids are getting older it's easier.  We used to shoot for being done in 30 minutes, but now with the kids being older we say we get all the pictures done in an hour.

4. Try to pick a cooler time of year.  We've done pictures in August and they were HOT.  We love to do Fall pics so we're all pretty comfy while taking pictures.

We all agreed these were our easiest, best family pictures to date!

My parents

The original 5 :)

My parent's Christmas card:

All the grandkids with Mimi & Papaw

This line up of the 9 kids is so sweet!  I think we may just make them do this now for every family picture.

My brother and his family

My sister and her crew

These three girls are all about the same age.  Olive will join them in the 5 year old club in May.

How often do you do family pictures??
They're a lot of work, but always worth the effort.

PS If you're looking for the usual Tuesday Talk link up... it has been retired.  We had some people decide to bow out along some changes with the link up system rules so we are no longer hosting a big weekly link up.  We had a great Tuesday Talk run and loved linking up with you for the past few years.  Thank you!  Happy blogging!!