Minted provided me with free product for review. All opinions are mine.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was gushing about Minted’s insanely beautiful cards and invitations? Well, I got my holiday photo cards and they are super cute!

I won’t lie to you. It took me an extraordinary amount of time to narrow down my top picks before I settled on this cheeky design. It just seemed to fit the photo (and the girls) so well. One thing that made the ordering process infinitely easier was Minted’s cool find it fast option, which lets you upload your photo so that you can see it on every card design. Doing it that way made it much easier for me to weed out designs that wouldn’t work with my photo because of layout or text placement. If only it could also help me conquer my indecisiveness. 😉

I noticed an unusually large number of friends in my Facebook newsfeed talking about how they put up their Christmas decorations this weekend. I’m usually all for putting them up the day after Thanksgiving—and I thought that was early!

After my initial WTF?! reaction, I got a little jealous. I’m all for spreading out the holiday cheer as long as no one is trying to spread out the holiday stress along with it. The truth is, the earlier I start thinking about these things, the less holiday-induced hives I find myself covered in come Christmas Eve. Instead of running around in circles with all of the other crazies at the last minute, the whole season is so much more enjoyable when I’m prepared.

I won’t lie. It doesn’t happen often. But this year I’ve been alarmingly on the ball. I started shopping before I even turned the calendar to November (that never happens, people!). And for the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about Christmas cards. Procrastination last year led to crossing cards off my list all together. I’m determined not to let that happen this year.

That said, I’m madly in love with the holiday cards over at Tiny Prints this year. Like truly, madly, deeply. There’s glitter and stripes and polka dots and trim options that make me get all giddy with excitement. I swear they have some sort of ninja working for them who climbed into my head, collected all of my favorite things and then made them into the prettiest holiday cards I ever did see.

Don’t believe me? Take a peek…

I was a total delinquent on the holiday cards front this year. I came out of Thanksgiving all gung ho and with a pretty stinking adorable holiday photo idea. Then I got lazy. Then, as the boxes started pouring in, I got cheap. I decided I’d email a “card” to our friends and family, but I didn’t even make it that far. A Christmas morning Instagram shot that I also posted on Facebook was as good as it got.

But it did not come easily. Oh no.

In my experience, there are a few necessary ingredients to a holiday photo–and not all of them are easy to work with. Here’s what you’ll need next year for the perfect Christmas morning photo:

• A pretty, twinkling tree and an abundance of (unopened) presents
• Coordinating pajamas
• An ornery toddler who wants nothing to do with you
• An overflowing stocking with things much more interesting than you and your stinkin camera (even if that something is a cup)
• bright eyed and bushy-tailed Christmas morning patience

Here’s a peek at what your process will look like as you struggle to get all of the ingredients to work together (in case you need proof, this year’s struggle looks an awful lot like last year’s holiday photo struggle):

“My drink and new cup are way cooler than anything you could be trying to do.”

“I’m ignoring you. I’m ignoring you. I’m ignoring you.”

“My little sister is so cute and silly.”

“PRESENTS! Presents, presents, preseeeeents!”“This baby is cuckoooo!”

“Are we done yet?!”

“Fine. I’ll give you my cheese face if it means I can tear some paper.”

I’m a procrastinator. There’s no doubt about that. Instead of getting things out of the way so that I don’t have to worry about them, I inevitably wait until the final seconds and frantically pound out whatever the task is (always using the feeble excuse that I work better under pressure).

So it should come as no surprise that I did this with our holiday cards this year (although I’m patting myself on the back for actually doing them since my procrastination foiled my plans the last couple of years).

So. There I was last weekend with a discount code from Shutterfly that was about to expire. I decided that I absolutely had to use it since I’m amazingly frugal (which sounds much nicer than the truth: I’m cheap).

I was excited to use Shutterfly not only because of the discount but because I did Ellie’s birth announcement and a couple of photo albums with them and have always been happily surprised by the awesome quality you get for the price. But I digress.

I rounded up my girls, cleaned the snot and chocolate off of their faces, threw some festive accessories on their heads and placed them (ever so delicately) in front of the tree.

It should be that easy, right? Sit the girls down, tell them to smile and voila! A magical picture that captures the holiday spirit while simultaneously portraying them as perfect, sweet, little well-behaved angels.

Let’s just say we needed a round two later in the day.

After our second attempt, I was laughing hysterically. We had one usable photo and a slew of outtakes that show off their personalities way better than the nice shot could ever dream to.

What fun is there in perfection anyway? The real fun is while you’re trying to get there. Afterall, what stories do you have to tell if everything is perfect and everyone is well behaved all of the time?

I tried to make a card with a bunch of the outtakes but couldn’t find a (cheap) design that worked with the shots I wanted to use. I have to say, it came out pretty cute anyway (not that I’m biased or anything)–but you’ll have to wait to see what the final product looks like!

Do you have any funny holiday photo stories to share? I know I’m not the only one trying to wrangle up my monsters for the perfect shot!