It’s always such a treat to have family photos taken, especially since photos of all three of us together are so rare. Since Lil’ CB has been home (2 years next week!), we’ve taken family portraits yearly, and it’s a tradition we hope to continue so we’ll always have at least one set of good family photos from the year.

Since they are a treat, I try to put a little extra effort into styling our outfits for the photos. Though it may seem a little silly and fluffy, I want to be sure that when we look back on these photos, we won’t be terribly disgusted by and distracted by our clothes.

I only have two rules when it comes to styling our family photo shoots: 1. Our clothes have to coordinate, but not be matchy-matchy. (So, not like this!) and 2. Our clothes shouldn’t be overly trendy so we don’t look super dated years from now (So, not like this!).

When choosing our clothes, I try to to start with one outfit and then build around it and I also take into account the background of the setting we’ll be in. I like to have a color palette that is a little bit broader, say between 5-6 colors, and not have everyone’s outfits include every single color. This creates the effect of coordinating outfits, rather than matchy outfits where everyone wears the same 2-3 colors.

Here’s how I styled our portraits last summer:

I started with a favorite shirt of Lil’ CB’s:


photo by Borrowed Blue Photography

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I pulled the navy, yellow and cream from Lil’ CB’s shirt and put Mr. Cowboy’s and my outfits together — a navy summer dress for me and a yellow and white striped button-down and jeans for the Mr. So all together, we looked like this:


photo by Borrowed Blue Photography

Lil’ CB also wore grey shoes and Mr. Cowboy started with grey shoes, but ended up changing them because they were uncomfortable. Here’s what our color palette ended up looking like:

For our most recent photos, taken over Thanksgiving weekend, I wanted to choose a palette that was more suited to the late Fall background colors. I started with my outfit, inspired by a pin. I loved the neutral camel color with the pop of bright pink and the fun, but not overly trendy bling.

I paired the top with army green skinny cargos and built the color palette around that outfit, working from clothes we all had. I put Lil’ CB in a grey sweater with skinny cargos that were similar in color to my sweater and added a pink polo shirt underneath his sweater to echo the pop of pink in my outfit. For Mr. Cowboy, I chose a sweater that was similar in color to my pants with an argyle pattern in navy and grey — the grey to coordinate with Lil’ CB’s sweater . Here’s what our palette looked like:

And here’s how it looked on our clothes:

photo by our friend, HK

I was so happy with the way the colors coordinated and asked Mr. Cowboy what he thought of our coordinating outfits. To which he responded, “They coordinated??” Haha, but I guess that’s the point! I wanted the outfits to look good together but not be obviously matchy, and if Mr. Cowboy didn’t notice, I suppose I was successful!

And just for fun, here’s a shot of what our little rodeo is usually like when we’re not all smiley and posed nicely:

Our Christmas card pic this year!

How do you (or would you) style your family portraits?