Early History
Brooke started the tradition of sending an annual Valentine’s Day card in 1989. The first of these cards included a photo of Brooke on holiday in Banff Springs. Later cards featured pictures of Brooke on holiday in such exciting places as Sydney, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Curacao.
A New Family
When Brooke and Kevin were married in 1998, the series of annual Christmas cards sent by Caitlin, Erin and Kevin was merged into Brooke’s Valentine’s Day series. The first of these cards, sent in 1999, included a photo of the new Trainor Family (Brooke, Caitlin, Erin and Kevin). This was a professional studio shot by Brooke’s close friend, Kathy Onori, featuring the family gathered around a little red tricycle. Cards of this style in subsequent years featured the family gathered around a red cow sculpture (with heart underwear, of course) in front of the Wrigley Building, the family posed in studio with heart sheets, and the family gathered around a toy fire truck.
The Photo Collage Era
In 2003, we introduced a new design for the Valentine’s Day card that featured a collage of photos from the past year of family history. These cards were easier to compose because it had become difficult to get two teenage girls and two busy parents to a photography studio. Valentine’s cards for some of the following years were simple designs that did not include family photos. These received much criticism from our fans and were eventually phased out. In 2007, we brought the photo collage design back with a new wrinkle – a photo matching contest. Many readers had complained that we they needed some kind of legend to identify subjects within the photo collage. Instead of simply providing captions, we decided that a matching contest was more challenging. More important, it did not wreck the visual design.
Starting in 2008, we perfected the photo collage design by creating multi-panel cards with as many as 72 images. These cards, produced by Kodak, were our favorites and we received many favorable comments from our readers. We were expecting to continue sending this type card indefinitely. Unfortunately, Kodak fell on hard economic times and sold the division that produced these cards to a company who did continue this card line.
The Latest Edition
The Valentine Web site version made its premier in 2013. Representing our new green approach, this version was created with WordPress using a theme from Photocrati. Response to the new approach was very positive and Boo was pleased to have received so many thoughtful comments on his blog post.
We hope you enjoy the latest edition of our Valentine that we have created for 2018. Please feel free to send us your comments via email (our addresses are on on the Contact page.). Or, you can post your comments on Boo’s 2018 From the Editor blog post. Boo likes that method best.
In any case, please be sure to send us any email address changes so that we may keep in touch with you. Again, our current email addresses are on the Contact page.
This Web site remains available all year long. We hope to add improvements and content. So, please come back to visit us again.