Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Holidaze
'Tis the season, again. Time to start working on the Christmas cards. We've been making our own for years. Coffee draws the picture, Noodles gathers quotes and writes original thoughts for the insides and I turn the whole thing into something we can photocopy, fold and mail out. Of course, we haven't done that for the past three years. In '05 and '06 we were in China and last year we sent out a family newsletter instead. But this year we're back to the basics. Sort of. Things have changed. In the past, we came up with an idea and asked little Coffee to draw us a picture. This year, I inquired about using a drawing she had already made. She politely declined, pointing out that said work was a charcoal drawing that had yet to be fixed. She didn't want it to get smudged on the scanner. She did offer, however, to sketch out a few variations on the theme and then render a final version of whatever sketch we liked. When did my kid grow up? When did the creative tyke become a commercial artist? Is this the little girl I carried? Is this... ahem. (Sorry. Sometimes my inner Tevye slips out.)
Getting the Christmas photos taken is another process that has changed. We started shooting out own Christmas pix before China, but it used to be I'd load up a 12 exposure roll of film, shoot all 12 frames, then rush down to Paradise Studios to get the film developed. Hoping, of course, that one of the shots were good enough to use. This year, I again shot a dozen pics. But I headed down the stairs rather than down the hill. I looked at the pictures on the laptop, found the photos a bit lacking, and then went and shot another handful. We went down to Bartell's for the processing (Paradise, alas, has gotten out of the photo processing business.) and were able to walk home with a big pile of prints, ready to mail out. Very nice. (Well, except that the digital prints are slightly inferior to the old C-41 prints.)
I wonder what surprises await me when I try to print out the actual cards. Of course, we still have a bit of work ahead of us before we find that out.
Getting the Christmas photos taken is another process that has changed. We started shooting out own Christmas pix before China, but it used to be I'd load up a 12 exposure roll of film, shoot all 12 frames, then rush down to Paradise Studios to get the film developed. Hoping, of course, that one of the shots were good enough to use. This year, I again shot a dozen pics. But I headed down the stairs rather than down the hill. I looked at the pictures on the laptop, found the photos a bit lacking, and then went and shot another handful. We went down to Bartell's for the processing (Paradise, alas, has gotten out of the photo processing business.) and were able to walk home with a big pile of prints, ready to mail out. Very nice. (Well, except that the digital prints are slightly inferior to the old C-41 prints.)
I wonder what surprises await me when I try to print out the actual cards. Of course, we still have a bit of work ahead of us before we find that out.
Labels: Christmas, family, life, nostalgia
