(Im)Perfect Christmas PJ Photography 101

If you’re visiting today in hopes of finding a photography lesson on capturing the perfect Christmas pictures of your sweet children . . .

. . . you’ve obviously come to the right place.

For this sponsored post today, brought to you by Joe Boxer, I’d love to share with you our festive, yearly family tradition of giving and receiving new pajamas for Christmas . . . and totally botching the photo op.

Make sure to start out with children who are only semi-willing to participate, at best. Children who are flat-out opposed to your photography endeavors would, of course, be ideal for catastrophic photography failure.

A nice mix of attitudes, in my experience, is having one child who is focused so intently on going to visit Santa after taking pictures that he must be reassured every 3-5 seconds that yes, we are going to see Santa soon and no, we have not forgotten about going to see Santa, combined with a second child who has spent the past week or so regressing so deeply back into her completely dependent newborn clinginess that she suffers a total mental meltdown if physical contact with her mother is broken.

Also, you may think wrapped gifts will make nice props in your photos. It’s a nice thought and I applaud you for thinking creatively here, but the two possible outcomes are 1) the children become so distracted by the presents that they can hardly continue taking photos for being so desperate to find out what is inside or 2) the boxes will immediately be placed directly in front of one child’s face. Which is fine as long as the box is the thing you are most eager to capture and immortalize. I’m sure the box’s grandparents want a picture of it in front of the Christmas tree this year, too.

Maybe they just need better coaching, you say? Surely if given clearer directions, I could get a few keepers?

Good thoughts. ‘Hug your sister!’ quickly escalates into full-body tackling, followed by an adorable wrestling match and lots of angry squealing from the littlest piglet. It makes for nice photography—snap fast so you don’t miss a moment!

Forced cuddly poses yield similar, if slightly blurrier, results.

This is a good point to bring in mom and dad. Dad will be predictably grouchy about being asked to participate in family photos, and will offer only the most awkward and unconvincing of smiles. Just another small step toward family photo perfection.  At least he hasn’t resorted to trying to gouge out his own eyeball to get out of family photos, like your precious tiny munchkin.

You may, surprisingly, end up with a few decent shots if you give up on trying to force things and just let the day devolve into madness. Candids are the most true to life and memorable anyway, right?

Do you do the Christmas pajamas tradition in your house, too? I think it’s so fun. When I was a kid, getting socks for Christmas became so predictable and so weirdly funny that it turned into a major holiday tradition—both of my kids’ first gift ever from their grandparents was socks, and the socks from Grandma and Grandpa are always the first presents we open each year. So it’s been fun to carry on the sock tradition with our kids and build on it with a new pair of cute pajamas every Christmas, too.

If you love giving your kids or spouse new jammies every Christmas, you ought to check out Joe Boxer pajamas from Kmart. Huge selection (to the point that I ended up carrying around 2 or 3 pairs for each family member while I shopped, and had a hard time narrowing thing down), and they offer so many fun patterns and prints. They’d make such a fun, memorable Christmas gift and really, Christmas just isn’t complete without a new pair of pajamas.

In case you need a smile today:

 

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Joe Boxer available at Kmart.