Christmas Card Time!

I've been doing lots of sessions lately with the goal to get a great Christmas card photo. Hopefully next year I'll have something set up to do mini sessions so I can accommodate everyone that contacts me. In the meantime, enjoy these cute holiday shots!







My Christmas card photo? Well, my subject has been in a better mood. But this isn't quite what I had in mind.

Getting Started

Dec 4th. Looking pretty good so far, especially considering this is the most busy I've been as a photographer. (calendar information from THIS post.)

- gifts for staff at school. Check.
- handmade stockings up. Check.
- Untangled the lights. Check.
- Decorated the tree. Check.
- Well, most of the tree is decorated. The top portion is bare right now. I'm too short to reach that high and due to vertigo hanging around my head, I won't be going anywhere near a ladder this year. Maybe my husband will get around to it sometime before the tree comes down. (hint hint!)
- Some pretty holiday touches around the house. Check.

- Staying up waaaaay too late having a tremendous amount of fun making gifts for kids. Check. (yes I know a wise man is missing. he wasn't too wise and hung out with the cats one night. he's been m.i.a. ever since. i'll have to paint a new one if he doesn't show up soon!)
Staying up waaaay too late another day making treats for bible study. Check.
(chocolate covered cherry mice directions found HERE.)
Getting inspired by too many project from amazing artists on etsy. I've purchased adorable candle holders from this artist HERE. She makes cute dolls that my daughter was sure she could make, especially since we happened to have all the materials on hand. I helped with the face painting and hot gluing. She had a BLAST designing this little gem herself.
- Completed photos for my own holiday card...... hopefully I'll be checking that one off this weekend. We've attempted a handful of photo days already with no success. Someone (and I won't name names) are not appreciating my camera very much the last few weeks. I'm thinking some little elf may have to visit and work some Christmas magic around here.

Let the Christmas Season Begin!

The day after Thanksgiving... the official first day of the Christmas season for me. After a day of giving thanks for the abundant blessings in my life, I am more than ready to start the season of giving.

I absolutely, positively, completely cannot keep the holiday and it's to-do tasks without a cute little list book. So here it is.

There are plenty of tutorials on-line for how to make your own. My two favorites are HERE and HERE. Just in case you don't have mountains of paper sitting around from your over shopping in the craft department like I do. . . you can buy your own pad HERE. I like to keep my design super simple since it gets tossed around in my purse.

Did I mention you can buy your own HERE.? (giggle).
Have a great start to the Christmas season everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving

Here is just a quick craft I made thanks to some inspiration and precise instructions I found HERE. I promise this was an easy one...you don't have to sew, you could glue instead. In fact, the only thing I used the sewing machine on was to get the vinyl on to create pockets.

I'm looking forward to seeing all the things my daughter puts in each pocket. She wants to write what she is thankful for each day. Then on Thanksgiving day she'll 'allow' us to read all her thoughts from this past month. Next year I think I'll get on the ball a bit more and have the paper match each tail feather so the display is a bit more pretty as the pockets get full...
Have a wonderful, blessed, and safe Thanksgiving everyone!

Theme of the Week - Pancakes

Our family has a tradition of making pancakes in special shapes for holidays. It only seemed fitting to give a theme of the week to pancakes as well. . . .
(please forgive the photos, I shot with them my point in shoot that was on its last leg. I kept thinking I'd find time to reshoot everything, I'm hoping no one is that bothered to make it worth the trouble)









I discovered that a theme of the week from over the summer never got posted. Gasp! This was a fun one...pancakes!

Book: If You Give a Pig a Pancake
Craft: Pancake bean bags and cutting paper pancakes.
Learning Fun: Math with paper pancakes. I uploaded the template I made HERE. Print the pages with numbers onto tan paper. Print the others on white paper.
Games: Beanbag toss (with participants unwilling to be photographed) plus tic-tac -oe with paper pancakes.
Cooking: Experimenting with different items cooked in pancakes. We tried a bunch of different fruits as well as chocolate chips as well as the winner - sprinkles.

What a fun week!! Enjoy.

Charming

While it's true that I have been lucky enough to photograph some of the most considerate, lovely families around... these two boys sure know how to work the camera! What a delightful session I had - even their dog was giving me "the look". What a riot!
Enjoy the photos.

Happy November

Hope everyone had a lovely Halloween. Lots of work to catch up on around here... so today I'll post some fun photos. I will be back soon!

I didn't get to "boo-ing" this year like I wanted to. But I did manage in a little marshmallow fun inspired by Sweet Designs.