It has become a bit of a tradition here to have a little mini Christmas photo shoot in December. This year is William’s first Christmas, so as well as some festive photographs of ecah of them, I got to capture some sibling shots which have made my heart sing!

Our Christmas photographs this year were taken over two days. I’ll be totally honest, trying to get a photo of both of them looking at the camera at the same time was quite a task and there were more than a few outtakes but I actually love every single photo I took.

I thought I’d share some of my favourites here as I do every year and below I’ve written a quick list of top tips for photographing babies, toddlers & siblings.

Once again, I am using some of these images to create our own personalised Christmas cards to send to our closest friends and family this year.

Top Tips for doing your own Christmas Photo Shoot with your children.

1 Choose a time in the day when everyone is happy. Trust me, it’s hard enough getting tinies to cooperate without having to deal with tired or hungry melt downs.

2. Make the backdrop simple. I stick to the same sort of style each year – white bed sheets and fairy lights and while it might seem a bit ‘boring’ I love looking back and seeing how they’ve grown which is emphasised by the similar settings.  Too much fuss will take away the focus from your little people’s little faces!

3. The more ridiculous you make yourself look, the more they will smile! I often play peek-a-boo behind the camera to get their attention, or fake a sneeze. I have no idea why, but they think sneezes are hilarious. Other people sit toys on top of the camera but William just tries to grab them.

4. Use a continuous shooting setting on your camera so that even when they won’t sit still you might just capture one non blurry photo.

5. When capturing younger siblings, try and get the older sibling involved in entertaining them. Florence loves trying to make William laugh and frankly, he thinks she’s the funniest person to ever walk the planet giving me more time to focus on the actual camera.

6. Don’t get so caught up on your ‘vision’ and instead let them be gloriously spontaneous and you might just capture a moment you’ll treasure forever. The shots I got of William jumping on Florence (to both of their entertainment) are among my favourites as they truly capture the bonkers relationship they have. And believe it or not, Florence put her arm around William without any prompting from me at all – that’s pure big sister adoration for her baby brother and those images are so special to me.

7. Use natural props. And I don’t mean leaves etc, but things that fit the ‘theme’ but that will engage your children at the same time. I used extra fairy lights, a Christmas hat, some little Christmas figures, a car and a whole bunch of books for this years photographs.

I’ve shared a little bit more about how I take photos here in this blog post, including the kit I use as well as the camera settings and how I edit images.

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I’m back with another festive bake this week and this time I am revisiting an idea I first made a number of years ago. Florence has been asking to make biscuits a lot lately and frankly I’m not all that good at making them but after a few attempts and a couple of different recipes I’ve finally mastered a really tasty batch of Reindeer biscuits that make a perfect little Christmassy treat. They’d be great for parties or baking up for little gifts for teachers, colleagues or even your little one’s class mates or play group friends.

I made a couple of adjustments to this recipe I found on the biscuiteers website – ( I have previously worked with them but I stumbled upon this recipe by a happy coincidence and haven’t been asked to include them here). I didn’t use any vanilla flavouring in the actual bake as the frosting we use to decorate them is vanilla based and I thought it might be a bit OTT to have it in both. Also, I used slightly less golden syrup and added a splash of water to the mix for a better, easier to mould dough consistency.

The decoration was the result of a bit of trial and error but I really love the way they turned out. Especially since I’ve never used a piping bag successfully before!

Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer Biscuits

November 24, 2019

Servings: 24

Difficulty: Easy

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By: ami elizabeth

Ingredients

• For the Biscuits
• 350g plain flour
• 100g self-raising flour
• 125g granulated sugar
• 125g salted butter softened, diced
• 100g golden syrup
• 1 large egg
• For the decoration
• Betty Crocker Vanilla Frosting
• 5 tbsp Cocoa Powder
• 24 Red Smarties

Directions

• Step 1 For the Biscuits
• Step 2 Sift the flours together into a bowl and mix in the sugar.
• Step 3 Add the butter to the bowl and rub together with your finger tips until the mixture resembles bread crumbs ensuring all of the butter is mixed in evenly.
• Step 4 Make a well in the centre of the mixture and pour in the lightly beaten egg, the syrup and 2-3 tbsp of cold water.
• Step 5 Mix together, gathering any loose flour from the edges of your bowl until you can form a ball with the dough.
• Step 6 Roll out the dough until you&#8217
• Step 7 ve got an even sheet about 2cm in thickness and using a ginger bread man cookie cutter cut out 24 cookies and bake on an oven tray lined with grease proof paper in the centre of a preheated oven (170 degrees). Bake for 15-20 minutes or until they&#8217
• Step 8 re golden brown.
• Step 9 For the decoration
• Step 10 Allow the biscuits to cool.
• Step 11 Spoon 1/3 of the frosting into a bowl and add 2 heaped table spoons of the cocoa powder along with a splash of milk. Mix together until you have a creaming consistency and the powder is well mixed in.
• Step 12 Repeat with the other 2/3 of the frosting, adding 5 heaped table spoons of the cocoa powder.
• Step 13 Turn the biscuits upside down and Pipe the lighter mixture onto the bottom half of what will make your reindeer&#8217
• Step 14 s face.
• Step 15 Then fill up the circle with the darker mixture. Using the edge of a spatula or the flat side of a dinner knife smooth the icing over.
• Step 16 Using the rest of the darker mixture, pipe the reindeer ears and antlers on to what would be the gingerbread man&#8217
• Step 17 s legs and arms.
• Step 18 Finally add a two little white sprinkles to each biscuit for the eyes and a red smartie to make the all important shiny nose!

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