Photos with Santa, a Couple of Ideas

I think photos of kids and Santa are cute, however, they cost a fortune and seem to disappear in old albums each year. I think I've got the solution, at least for our family.

Many years ago, when I did a lot of baby-sitting I had the priviledge of spending lots of time in a lot of different child friendly homes. In one of the homes, every Christmas, they would hang up a long wide red ribbon which had all the years santa pictures attached to it, eventually they had to add a second ribbon. It was really neat to see the growth of the kids and how every couple of years a new baby was added to the family photo (they had 3 kids). I have always thought that one day when I have kids that's what I would like to do with our family's santa photos. It also makes a personalized Christmas decoration that kids enjoy but doesn't look trashy.

On to price, yikes! We were at the mall today and 1 5x7 is $10.99 and then the larger packages go up to $40. However, it turns out that you can bring your own camera and take your own photos. Remember that it's all about being "thrifty," not cheap. Well, we had the camera on hand (as always) so that was the obvious choice for us. I'm not sure if every mall offers this option, but it's worth asking. The worst they can say is no. Then it was just a matter of taking the photos home and doing a little photo shop framing, etc. Now I can make prints for 19 cents at Walmart of even less at Costco.

I also love the idea of always having the photos on my computer so that I can eventually make them all have matching borders, etc (once again, that teacher side of me). Anyways, these two photos are a couple of my favourites. The writing doesn't look very clear on them, but in reailty it is.

Sarah wasn't afraid of Santa at all, yahoo! She hasn't "made strange" in a long time now, which makes me feel good about going back to BC and seeing all of our family and friends.