Gregg & Jaci's Christmas Card 2016

Behind the scenes of

“A Christmas Cowboy & Cowgirl Fantasy”

An homage to classic childhood memories

December 24^th, 2016 (Written by Gregg, with Jaci looking over his shoulder)

Once again, it was late November and we still hadn’t come up with an idea for our annual Christmas Card. Well, we had a great idea, but it was beyond our means (for now).

Then we spotted the crude thrift shop hobby horse in our storage unit (one of Jaci’s endless “future dog props” – well, you never know!). It was pretty ratty, but it gave us the idea. After looking on eBay through hundreds of used kid’s rocking horses, we couldn’t find anything really appropriate, so we just painted and “re-maned” (from a new mop) this one. As we had leftover red paint from our recent Chinese bedroom remodel, that’s the color it became. We made sure Auggie’s legs could straddle the seat, then went to work.

Pretty quickly, it occurred to us that we should do this as a 1950s black and white photograph. Looking for reference materials and inspiration, we found these classic photos in my scrapbook:

That’s my older brother Mark (3-1/2 months shy of his 3^rd birthday) with a very similar toddler’s rocking horse!

The folks apparently plopped me on it to test my coordination (still not so good). If this was Christmas morning (at our old house in La Grange, IL), I would have been 8 months and 3 weeks old. Sister Kris is a couple years away.

We loved our bunk beds (this shot taken 11 months later); I assume I got the bottom until I was old enough to claim the top (though I never quite stopped falling out of it). Mark and I never forgot our matching cowboy blankets – which, like any good security blanket, I probably kept through High School. When our parents finally moved into a retirement community, 60+ years of saved treasures were passed out, including our blankets. Never quite ready to throw anything away myself, it made the perfect drapes for the card!

The day we decided on the theme, we were out at the Antique Mall and picked up a few more of the period ornaments that we routinely add to our own family mementos. We also knew we’d want the authentic straggley tinsel and found an unused vintage package as well.

On the way to the car, we spotted a corner Christmas Tree lot where the husband & wife couple were unpacking their trees. Asking about a small spindly pine to dress the set for dog card, they found the perfect tree top (it was even flat on one side to fit against the wall) and donated it to us.

And as often happens when we are in the midst of the creative process, once we started looking, the perfect things magically appeared – Auggie’s beaded belt, the 2 cowboy Christmas ornament hats and the doll boots.

Soon, Jaci was remembering her own “Western roots” and we dug out her toy box (covered in vinyl “faux tooled leather”, part of a set with a matching kid-sized table & chairs her dad made) and “grocery store doll” (no actual brand names for this household!) that still had its entire cowgirl outfit, along with three other complete costumes. The thing creeped me out with those staring eyes, but it seemed to kick up her Christmas mood a notch.

We couldn’t get these extras items into the shot, but used the toybox pattern for our background.

Speaking of background, the red/green/blue “Indian blanket” (back of card background) was purchased in the Mohave desert on the move to California in 1955, and it traveled the entire U.S. in the Rohr Family cars and motor homes for 50 years.

Jaci spent the next week of evenings and weekends creating new outfits for our “children.” This involved seemingly thousands of bits of leather, fabric, jewelry and mini props gathered from the four corners of the earth, but really her storage unit, workroom, garage, thrift shops, and assorted hardware and department stores (toddler section).

Vintage Sears catalog pages found online showed us we were on the right track!

She ran out of time and was having trouble with the chaps pattern and finally had to call in professional help – her custom costume wunderkind, Wendy “She Can Do Anything” Polutanovich.

All the while the dogs patiently put up with fitting after fitting. They actually do like getting their picture taken and know this full-on costume drama happens every year. Bite-size chicken pieces are their reward, and sometimes, bribe.

Auggie is now 13 1/2 years old, which means he's now older than us in human years. He was at the emergency vet several times this year (for pancreatic issues), and we weren’t sure he’d be up for the shoot. In fact, let’s face it – we always have in the back of our minds that “this could be the year” (that he might not make it through our Christmas). Amazingly, he (literally) bounced back after each episode and was acting like his usual sassy puppy self this entire photo shoot.

As always, we like to do these scenes as real as possible, with miniature sets and practical props, before I have to play in Photoshop.

Maezi is always difficult - she gleefully steps right into the costume but she always looks put-upon when finally dressed up (how dare she?!).

She’ll stand up straight and dance around for goodly lengths of time, but rarely while looking at the camera. Jaci is usually holding her in various positions for much of it, after which my Photoshop puzzle begins in earnest (if you can never tell what/where I combined, that’s the point!).

Once the girls got Auggie’s outfit fitting properly – with his tiny boots and spurs staying on! – he plopped down on his horse, where he lay down with his paws on the “handlebars” in what looked like racing position. Cute, but awkward.

As I tried to keep his attention while snapping away, he suddenly decided to sit up, just beaming for the camera.

Love, praise and treats = comedy gold!