Picture Perfect

It's Christmas time and for most new parents that means inundating friends and family with cavity inducing photos of the little one. Call us bad parents but when Kelvey presented the required task to me, we both gave a simultaneous "guugh". The thought of taking Eli to a Sears or babies-R-Us for a photo shoot seemed like such a daunting task of getting him dressed up, keeping him clean of drool and spit up, and of course, keeping him happy enough to smile for the camera.

Luckily Kelvey was determined to make it happen as quick and painless as possible. We put our heads together and thought of the perfect plan to get it over and done with within the span of a weekend afternoon.

Step 1.) Go to Goodwill and find some cheap Christmas outfits instead of paying top dollar for outfits he would only wear for a few days. We hit up the Goodwill down the street from us and struck gold in finding a snowman sweater vest and some christmas pj's! Unfortunately, I had to go to 3 different stores before finding a santa hat for Eli to wear (probably because of all the other poor suckers/parents doing the same thing as us).

Step 2.) Set the scene. In case you didn't know, Texas is not exactly a winter wonderland so we had to do some quick thinking about how to Christmas-up Eli's picture. Hmm . . . snow is white . . . our comforter is white . . . why not have Eli sitting on a fluffy cloud of white comforter with a white comforter backdrop? Done.

Step 3.) Get Eli prepped. Eli was in a good mood (hell, he's almost always in a good mood, that's what makes him awesome!) so we quickly dressed him in some jeans, a white long sleeve onesie, his new sweater vest and his hat. His sweater vest was a size too big so we used binder clips on the back to pinch it tighter. His hat was a size too big as well, but luckily Eli has a big head so it fit perfectly.

Step 4.) Picture time! Kelvey had the lion's share of the task because she had to keep Eli's attention forward, keep him smiling and take the picture all at the same time. I just stood behind Eli holding the comforter up. We traded places so I could try to take few pics, but I failed miserably and gave up quickly. After taking 24 rapid fire pics, we looked them over and could instantly pick out at least 5 or 6 that were golden. Believe it or not, the one featured here is NOT the cutest one. It's too bad that you will have to wait to see the chosen few because Kelvey will not let me post them until the framed versions have been sent out to our families. She doesn't want to ruin the surprise. After some begging and maybe a little bit of whining about how I wouldn't have anything for the blog, she let me post this one. Enjoy this one for now and brace yourself for eye-melting cuteness once the others are posted on flickr.