Holiday Family Pictures | Fashion | Lone Star Looking Glass

Last year when Patrick and I were shooting these photos, I was more excited than ever imagining what our 2017 family photos would bring! As this is our first holiday season as a family of three, I wanted to pull out all the stops. Not only did I order the most adorable Christmas cards with Minted (see more below!) but I also teamed up with the fabulous Katie Hill to shoot these pictures that I will treasure for years & years to come!

Today I’m sharing a few of my favorites from our shoot + giving you guys some fail-safe tips on how to dress for your holiday family pictures! (Even for this fashionista, pulling three looks that all coordinated with one another was much harder than you’d think.) I’m also sharing how we picked our Christmas cards + an easy way to turn your holiday photos into a permanent print so you can enjoy them all year long.

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Holiday Family Pictures:

Styling Tips for Family Photos

Wear something that makes you feel Comfortable, Confident & Chic. (The more relaxed you are about how you feel, the more relaxed you will be in your photos)
Moms – pick your outfit first! Find something you absolutely love and then plan the rest of the family’s looks accordingly.
It’s totally okay not to wear red & green. I wanted our photos to fit the season but also hang on our walls year round. I choose a metallic blue skirt with gold accessories for both myself and Annie. The chunky sweater, shimmery metallic & gold touches are a nod to the season without being too obvious.
Coordinating colors is key. The gold details in my jewelry playoff Annie’s accessories while the blue in my skirt makes a pretty contrast to Annie’s pale pink dress. Also, instead of playing with patterns, try incorporating solids in different textures.
Give your guy a taste of fashion freedom. Let’s be honest, family photo shoots can be hard on a camera-shy husband. Add dressing your husband in something he’s just not that into & it’s a recipe for a not-so-pleasant time. I let Patrick pick out whatever he wanted but just gave him a few color rules beforehand. By letting him have fun with what he was wearing he even had the idea to add the blazer himself! (I was quite impressed!) I think if I tried to pick his look myself it wouldn’t have turned out nearly as well as it did.

We shot our holiday family pictures this year with Katie Hill Photography and it was seriously such a wonderful experience! We met her at dusk at Memorial Park in Houston just after Annie’s bedtime actually. What is typically a tired and cranky baby at 6 pm was a smiling, happy & beaming little girl! Katie was SO good with Annie! (The stuffed animal rabbit certainly helped too lol!) If any of you are local and looking for a photographer for your holiday sessions, definitely reach out to Katie before she fills up!

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Our Christmas Cards with Minted

We’ve used Minted for our holiday cards for the past several years now & I have never not been 100% impressed! Needless to say, I absolutely love how they turned out this year too! PS: Surprise for everyone who is on our mailing list, this is what you’re getting. 😉

But anyway, with Minted you can upload your favorite photo and then search all of the different cards with YOUR photo as the example. I love this because sometimes you see that fabulous styled family sitting on this gorgeous hillside and you are like “I want THAT card!” and then you realize it was the photo that you liked, not necessarily the layout or the font. This way you can sort your favorite cards by the fonts, layouts & colors that go best with your family’s photo.

I chose a simple cursive “merry christmas” in gold foil that stands out while also blending into our photo at the same time. Right now Minted is running a 20% off all foil-pressed products promotion with the code SHINE17.

One more thing that I love about Minted is that there is so much more you can do with your holiday family pictures in addition to printing them on greeting cards. After spending so much time and money on your photos in the first place, it is a no-brainer to get them framed in your home for everyone to see. But that seems to always be something that I personally forget to do! Who else!? With a touch of (a few) buttons, you can have your photos matted & framed to arrive at your doorstep along with your Christmas cards.

How many of you guys take yearly family photos and send out Christmas cards? It’s a tradition I absolutely love! There’s nothing like covering our fridge in smiling faces from those we love this time of year!

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