I thought it would be fun to set up a “Christmas photo booth” this year, so I put it on my December list. Yesterday I realized that December is frightfully close to over and that so far I’d only done six of the 15 things on the list.

So Pete and I pulled out some wrapping paper, taped it to the wall and starting taking pictures. And it was fun — he especially enjoyed taping up the paper — but it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped it would.

Notes for next time:

Lighting
Find a place with better light. I haven’t figured out the best places in the house to take pictures yet, but now I’ve found one that is definitely not the best. A large piece of plywood + fabric/paper + outside would work much better. But then I’d have to build something, probably, and we all know that’s not happening.

Backdrop
Possibly use fabric instead of wrapping paper as a backdrop. The wrapping paper was too shiny, considering that I had to use the flash because of the not-so-good lighting. Also, don’t let the 4-year-old boy choose the backdrop. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what I wanted to use.

Props
Pete and I threw this together in about 5 minutes while Poppy was at a play date, which explains why Poppy isn’t in the pictures. And also why the only props I had were a few stuffed animals and a Santa hat. Had I done a little research before doing the project, I might’ve found these holiday photo booth props from Oh Happy Day. They’d take a little effort to put together, but the results are very cute. If I ever have a Christmas party, I’m making them.

If I took my time putting things together and setting the stage, this would make a yearly neat annual tradition. There are a few days left before Christmas, so I might give it another shot sometime this week.

Do you have an annual photo tradition?

(That question reminds me of a story.

When Poppy was born, a friend of mine gave her a teddy bear that she’d made. On the 15th of every month, we took her picture with that bear. She grew and grew, she learned to sit up, she gnawed on the bear. It was going to be a magnificent series from her first year.

And then, days before her first birthday, I left the bear at my dad’s house. Hundreds and hundreds of miles away. And I didn’t realize it until Dad had already left home for a drive of hundreds and hundreds of miles of his own.

So we never got that final, first birthday picture of a girl and her bear.

I’m still a little sad about that.)

But anyway: You. Do you have an annual photo tradition? Or a story of a photo-tradition-gone-wrong? Do share.