Mom Creates Family Holiday Card with Their Dog. Then She ‘Blacked Out’ Seeing the One Mistake in the Final Print

Jillian Lynch was expecting a normal delivery when her family’s holiday cards arrived this year. Instead, she got an unforgettable surprise.

The Boston-based photographer shared a now-viral Instagram video last week showing what went wrong. At the start of the clip, Lynch sits on her couch in front of the Christmas tree and explains, “This is what happens when you rush through making holiday cards,” before revealing the problem.

The video then cuts to a text from her husband: “I thought you had edited out his red rocket.” Lynch zooms in on the printed card, which features her three kids and the family dog, Boss — and it quickly becomes clear that Boss had an accidental, very visible “situation” captured in the final version. In a last-ditch effort to save the batch, Lynch covers the area with a tiny snowflake sticker.

Lynch later said she briefly felt like she “blacked out” when she realized what had happened — especially because she genuinely believed she’d already fixed the image.

“I went home to upload and edited all of the images,” she said. “A day later, I went back to edit out Boss’s situation. The kicker is — I never actually saved the most recent edited version of Boss’s body parts being touched up. And I thought I did have it saved. Because saving the most recent version would only make sense!”

She didn’t catch the mistake until she was out running errands and got a message from her husband — along with a photo of the card — pointing out that the edit hadn’t been applied.

“My husband texted me while I was out food shopping, sent a photo of the card — noticing that Boss’s body parts weren’t edited out,” she said. “He was confused since he knew I did in fact touch that up. Once I realized that I uploaded the unedited version — I think I blacked out for a hot second. I could not believe I missed this!”

As for the sticker fix, Lynch said it wasn’t something she debated for long.

“It was an automatic thought,” she shared. “Cards are expensive and I knew that I couldn’t reorder them all over again. Stickers were the obvious choice.”

With the stickers in place, the cards have now gone out — and according to Lynch, the cover-up was so effective that most recipients would’ve never noticed if she hadn’t posted the video.

“Friends and family are obviously laughing, but said the sticker covered everything up so well that they never would’ve known if I never posted what happened,” she said.

Lynch chalked the whole mishap up to a packed schedule — and putting everyone else’s holiday photos ahead of her own.

“I photographed 90 families in November alone for holiday sessions,” she said. “I am also a hairstylist and cheerleading coach, and a mother of three. My brain was too full to actually concentrate on my card and clearly rushed through it — just to get it done!”

“My priority is to take care of the 90 customers and their holiday photos. That’s how it always goes, though!”