Comfort and Joy: or the very real craziness behind our Christmas Card

Sometimes you want to keep it real, and sometimes you want to make it look like you have it all together. Christmas card 2016 looks pretty idyllic. But if every picture tells a story, this Christmas card is telling a tall tale!

The vision in my head wasn’t clear to begin with. Some years I know exactly what the photo will look like, and sometimes I’m a little looser with the project, and since a big part of Christmas this year for me was learning to let go of perfectionism, I was making myself be okay with my lack of vision.

I saw another photo displayed in my house that was taken in our yard, and I thought that angle would be great. My son went to the UK last summer, so everyone has a Scottish plaid scarf. That started to form an idea. I have adorable kitten heel red plaid shoes, maybe plaid is our theme. What’s a Christmas greeting that rhymes with plaid? (That sounds a little like perfectionism doesn’t it?)

In any case, when you have a barn in your backyard, you do have a head start on the location for the shoot. And I knew we had a bale of hay in the barn we could use as a seat, and a plaid wool blanket we could sit on (perfectionism! called it!)

As has happened in the past few years, with our older kids working, and involved in school activities, we had one, three hour window of time, exactly two weeks before Christmas! A nail biter! We bailed on church that morning even though it was my turn to teach Sunday School because of a blizzard that was supposed to last all day. We still tried to make a plan for the day, and I told everyone to show up in a dark sweater and a plaid scarf at 2pm. At 1:55, with my make-up perfectly applied and everyone dressed in a sweater, Jeff came in from his first pass with the snowblower, sweaty, and unbelieving that I was still planning to go through with it.

Unfortunately, although he had been out in the storm for over an hour and was pretty clear on how nasty it was, I had no idea it was anything but a picturesque Michigan snowfall. He said it was sleeting. I said we were dressed. I may have cried. I for sure yelled. Marriage is not for sissies.

In the midst of this, our youngest, who has special needs is not coping well at all. He does best with a plan, and the blizzard changed every single plan we had for that day. And he does not entertain himself well (read: at all). So he was melting down. Ears turning red, voice going up a few octaves, and decibels.

But this is go time. It’s now or never. We grabbed the plaid blanket out of the car. We rubber-banded the cellphone to a tripod. We put that rigged up contraption inside a rough tote so it wouldn’t be sleeted on. Within seconds of being outside I realized my husband was right, this was NOT Christmas photo weather! We were being soaked! The sleet hurt. It was polar vortex bitter cold. There was no last minute throwing off the coat to look cute in a sweater. We used a self-timer and got a few shots, none of the them great, but there was no way to really know because despite the snow, our own family meltdown was rapidly occurring!

Back inside I used a Groupon and purchased pictures from PhotoAffections (with whom I have no affiliation, or sponsorship). I chose one of the designs on the first page without scrolling through all the options as in past years, and set up my card in less than a minute (take that perfectionism!). I sent it through that night, and by Tuesday morning, no kidding, I had the most beautiful box of 100 cards delivered. Oh happiness!

Then all we had to contend with was that our computer reverted our mailing list back to 2012, and had lost all changes and additions since that time. Oh well!

Right now I’m telling myself no card next year. They’re expensive, it’s hard to get us all together, and my youngest just doesn’t thrive well in family photo situations. But my memory’s not great, so who knows? 

If I had one piece of advice for a Christmas Card that will be a winner, I'd say stick to one photo, don't be lured into thinking more is better. And also that that one photo might just come from the middle of a meltdown, and it might just be okay. So that's two pieces of advice. But I think that second bit applies to life too, if you think about it!

I haven't the Bloggiest

My first blog entry tells the story of how my family came to live at Mayday Farm.  I was happy with my first entry but it leaves me wondering, what next?  And that’s when I answer myself (not out loud, mind you), I haven’t the bloggiest.

There will be stories about how we have spent the last 7 years turning this wreck of an historic house into our home, bit by painful bit.   But there will be more! I am very crafty (you can take that how you want to) so look for craft projects.  I am a thoughtful parent of three children, two of whom have special needs.  I usually love to cook (although I am on a non-cooking jag right now), I love to throw great parties:  dinner parties, kid’s birthday parties, school event parties, I love photography and pursued it even before the advent of the digital era, I enjoy making fun-looking cakes but not at the cost of taste or texture, I am a spiritual person who is always trying to be a better person to mixed results, and I love parentheses and run-on sentences.

I guess today I will tell you a little more about the farmhouse.   We made our decision to go ahead and buy it partially based on the fact that there were not, to our knowledge, any homeless people or raccoons living in the house.  I ask you, is that how you make the choice to buy a house?

On our thirty page punch list of things to fix on our house, they did not list that the roof leaked.  We knew the roof was old, but thought that it could wait a little while, and that a 30 page list was pretty extensive and thorough, so surely if we needed a new roof they would have told us, right?  (And stop calling me Shirley!)  We thought our priorities were a new furnace and central air which is essential, since most of the windows in the house did not (actually, still do not) open.  Every time we heard it start to rain at night we would bolt out of bed and put buckets out in the hall, and in our daughter’s room.  That quickly put “roof” up at the top of the list!

I had read books by designers, notably Tracy Porter about the joys of living in an old house.  Somehow I missed the part in her book when after she had children she moved to a new house and gave it old house personality, because really old houses are not child friendly!  I wish I knew that then!  Or do I?  Today I read a list of 23 Adult Truths on my friend’s Facebook wall.  Number 10 is that Bad Decisions make good stories.  I think ultimately deciding to buy this house was a bad decision, but would I trade my good stories for a simple ranch house?  It depends on what day you ask.