The Official 2018 Gerckens Family Christmas Card

This year my Christmas cards are late. Although I tried to get a nice family photo, there always seemed to be something wrong with the pictures I selected.

Since both my daughters were away at college, it was difficult to take reshoots and get through the final approval process. The approval process for posting family photos is exponentially more difficult than ordering big ticket items at work.

Our Christmas cards mean a lot to me. I'm kind of, sort of in the printing business, so I've taken it upon myself to manage our card list, create, and print our cards each year.

It's not much, but it's the one holiday task that is mine. Patsy does the holiday shopping, bakes, keeps the schedule, and points me wherever I need to go during the holiday season.

In fact, although I work 5 minutes from the local shopping mall, I rarely go in. I seem to get physically ill when I enter shopping malls. When I need something, I buy it, so the whole prospect of fighting crowds and standing in lines for things I don't need makes me uncomfortable. I know, bah humbug, but I enjoy the season, not the commercialization. Anyways, I digress.

This year, as the days wound down and I still had no family photo, I realized there would be no holiday card coming from us this year.

When I made my announcement, the family started to protest. We discussed running out and buying Christmas cards. I said, "no, it's not the same."

I would make one more herculean effort to get a family picture and get cards out to our family and friends...even though they would likely get them well after the New Year.

We decided to dress up for church and see if we could get someone to take a nice photo of us for our cards.

At the end of mass, we found a friend willing to take a photo for us.

I decided that if we stood in front of a plain background, I could easily make a wintry background and place us in it.

My first thought in the creative process was if we stood in front of the granite blocks of the church, I could easily re-color them to look like ice blocks and possibly make it appear that we were standing in front of an igloo.

We also took a silly shot of us all looking surprised as a salute to a good friend from California who seems to have the market on "surprised look" photos.

On the way home everyone liked the photos. Once we got home, the complaints of messy hair, closed eyes, and comments of, "that's horrible" filled the house.

We decided to take some photos at home and we would try to include our new dog, Dobey.

There's just a couple problems with including Dobey. He doesn't listen and he never looks at the camera. We needed a hook.

Aha! Bacon would be the cheese. We had some leftover bacon from our breakfast, so we gathered on the rear deck and using bacon to hold Dobey's attention, we were able to get a picture of him looking at the camera. Of course, this took four strips of bacon to get a shot we could use, but we had our shot.

One of my ideas was to crop everyone's face into a Christmas ornament and hang each bulb on a Christmas tree. As a way to remember our dearly departed Angus, we would place him on top of the tree as if he were a Christmas tree angel.

Before starting the project, I looked up the top Christmas movies of all time. Suddenly, I saw my Christmas tree ornament idea from the movie, A Christmas Story. It seemed like I was onto something.

The original.

First draft nixed.

Well, Patsy and the girls nixed this idea. I thought it came out nice. The family looks great. The famous scene where the kid gets his tongue stuck on the pole was replaced by the gargantuan tongue of Angus, and I was able to place Dobey inside the wreath.

Some of the negative feedback I heard was Dobey was too small, and that my head was too big. I also heard something about using a terrible picture of me, embarrassing the family, and my ridiculous skull cap. I actually like the skull cap, but in retrospect, I probably should have put on a pair of glasses in order to get this card approved.

My second draft happened by accident. As I was altering the granite blocks of the church for my igloo idea, I realized this was much more difficult than I had intended. The answer was to make the photo have a pure white background and drop it into something.

Original photo.

Once I had the image with a white background, I continued scrolling through the top Christmas movies. It wasn't long before I had another movie that I thought would work with the photo. I worked my magic and showed the draft to the family. They looked at me with that blank stare you get when someone is trying to determine whether or not you're serious or not. Draft 2 was a definite no go. The dogs weren't included and Patsy wondered why I would create something that was a full 180 degrees from what we had discussed.  I can't explain it, but I still liked this second effort, despite the household criticism.

White background.

Draft 2...a no go.

I needed to refocus. We needed Dobey. I looked at the photo we took on the back deck.

Original photo.

There are lots of things wrong with this photo, but I thought if I made a white background, I could do something creative with it.

White background.

I grabbed a wintry background and after a little work, it seemed like I had my final photo. I added Angus and presented the final draft to the family. Soon the criticisms started all over again.

Brittany sent me a close-up of her right hand. The picture seemed fine, but when it's blown up, her clenched fist makes it look like she has a stump for a hand. As a result, this photo would not do. I stuck a sign in front of Brittany's hand and solved that problem. The next comment was that perhaps Angus should also be crossing the Rainbow Bridge. I decided to try and create my own Rainbow Bridge in Illustrator. Once completed, I placed it in the photo and I think I've made everyone happy.

Almost there.

When I look at the finished product, my eye goes to the sunshine on mine and Ashley's face. Hmm, sorry I don't know how to correct that issue. Other than that small detail, I think I'm done. Printing will begin after the new year....and with that, my family would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday season.

The finished product.