This Family Has Been Creating Crazy “Real Life” Christmas Cards For 6 Years In A Row

If weirding out your relatives with awkward holiday cards is not your cup of tea, the Stanley family has come up with their own unique way of taking Christmas card photos. Instead of the “traditional” happy family photoshoots, they create “real life” greeting cards, showing the struggles parents sometimes go through in a hilarious way.

Image credits: kakalacky_guy

In an interview with Bored Panda, John Stanley said the idea came when the family tried to take a “traditional” Christmas card photo and had hilariously bad results. “We were new parents with a one-year-old and everything went wrong – baby cried the whole time, it was windy, the lighting kept changing, you name it. If 2 of us looked okay, the third one blinked. We laughed so hard at how bad the photos were that we decided just to send them out as is and our family loved it.”

Image credits: kakalacky_guy

John Says he goes for the ‘Pottery Barn ad’ aesthetic when creating the cards and tries to keep photoshopping to a minimum. “Today most people have a strong eye for recognizing when something is fake, so the goal is to make it just real enough that they question how we pulled it off,” said the husband.

Image credits: kakalacky_guy

Turns out getting the kids to pose is no easy task and the family even resorted to using tricks like “putting bells on a pole and then holding it where their eyeline needs to be.” The parents photograph each kid individually and then stitch the pictures together and John says one of the hardest tasks is keeping the kids from knocking over the tripod: “if the tripod gets bumped it ruins the effect and we have to start over.”

Image credits: kakalacky_guy

“Our friends and family would be so disappointed if we went back to a normal card at this point. It’s also a great creative outlet and once the kids are a little older it will open up some crazy possibilities that aren’t feasible with a four-year-old and a baby,” says the husband. He thinks that deep down everyone hates taking photographs for Christmas cards, especially if you have young children, and that “people appreciate a card that emphasizes the challenges of parenting vs. hiding them.”

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“Plus a lot of people seem to appreciate that the cards are a fun thing we do together as a family. After all, the family that plays together stays together!” concluded John.

Image credits: kakalacky_guy

Many people appreciated their holiday cards