Project 365- Day 18

I tried to have photo shoot with my daughter. She does not co-operate at ALL! To avoid tears I asked her what did she want in her valentine picture and she wanted a guitar and her cowgirl hat. Easy!

Paper Mache- Part one

The holiday break is way to long. My kids get bored which leads to them bouncing and jumping and chattering all day long. Usually the weather is not nice enough for them to escape outside. Yesterday was one of those days and it resulted in a day long marathon of Kim Possible. Now I love the girl crime fighter as much as the next person, but dang, that was too much. I decided to do something with them today. I set to google-ing “how to paper mache” and the directions seemed pretty simple. One part flour, 2 parts water, newspaper and balloons. Surprisingly I had all that stuff.

Both kids were excited to be doing something. G has done this before at school, but Lex was new to the process. She was all for it, right up until G told her that she would get messy.

I discovered that G is a whiz at ripping up the paper. Every piece was uniform. I could not believe it, and was a bit jealous, because I did not get one straight piece. NOT ONE!

Even Lex had better technique than me.

The process is about to get under way. With the first dip of paper into the glue mixture, there is not turning back.

At this point, I got into the goop with the kids. What? They can’t be the only ones having fun! But that means no in process shots. After all, paper mache goop and camera’s don’t mix. When the kids were done, this is what was left over.

Once they are dry, we head in for round two!

Cake Pops from Queen’s Confections

Cake pops, they are everywhere. Everyone is making them. You love them. These little balls that are a mix of cake and candy. Seemingly like the perfect food that are just irresistible. Every party that I have been too this year, there they were, cake balls. Sometimes on sticks, some times not. I love these little balls of heaven.

When a friend of mine started a business and started to post pictures of her treats, my mouth started to water. Then she said vegan, and I was drooling, then gluten free and there was puddle. As if that was not good enough she became my favorite person in the world when she said that she would send me a sample! How did I get so lucky?

There was then a transformation in me. I became like a dog. I waited by the door everyday for the mail to arrive. Getting excited to see the lady with a blue uniform come up on my porch. They came in the mail on Friday. I almost hugged the mail lady!

I opened my package and there were the most beautiful cake pops that I have ever seen. Individually wrapped and packed so carefully that they made the journey and to my door step in perfect condition.

This was the first one that I tried. I took a bite into it and my eyes rolled. Oh My God! These were just perfection on a stick.

These are a Lemon Lime cake pop! Can you just imagine? A grown up flavor. It is a wonderful combination of flavor and texture. Not to sweet. I have never had a cake pop like this. I am telling you, if there had more, my family would not have found me for days, because I would be hording them under the stairs. But I did share with my family. My son, who loves anything that is lemon, wanted me to order a dozen. If he hadn’t already talked to the big man in red, I think these would have made his list!

My daughter, the child whose second word was chocolate (first was shoes), what did she think? She gave them a thumbs up! She was so happy that there was a treat that she could share with my father’s wife who is on a very restricted diet. “Mommy we GOT to get her these for Christmas!!” But then she noticed in the box, there were chocolate ones as well.

Is your mouth watering? It should be! There is white cake inside flavored with orange oil. The coating, dark chocolate! Orange and dark chocolate, I took one bite and my knees when weak. These are not your average birthday party cake pop!

I could go on and on, but there is one left that is just calling my name! If you are looking for gorgeous gourmet candies that will make your knee’s go weak, then head over to Queen’s Confections. You will be so glad you did!

The H Family

We had some unseasonably warm weather over the Thanksgiving holiday break. This family picked the perfect day for their family’s photo shoot.

Wait a minute!

Not one picture from Christmas. How did I not post a single picture from Christmas? I mean I posted New Year’s Eve pictures, but no Christmas ones. Wow what a slacker.

I am lucky enough in my family to have a bunch of simply adorable kids.

Happy New Year!!

Playing around with some of my favorite subjects.

Molly

This adorable best friend’s name is Molly. She has been a faithful companion to my aunt for years. I snapped this picture quick of her while I was taking shots of little Andrew. What a beautiful girl!

Baby Andrew- 1 year

I love this little man! He is so adorable. I think we have a special bond. He was my first newborn shoot and I learned a lot of things from this guy. Like don’t touch a newborn with cold hands. And sometimes, no matter what, babies do not like rings on their toes.

Now he is turning a year old and I sneaked over to his grandmothers house to get some pictures of him for his mom’s Christmas presents. These were done at the start of December and it has been torture not being able to show them off.

Check out this little bundle of love.

The wonderful smell of fresh baked cookies….

And new Photoshop toys! I love downloading free things to go with Photoshop. I like  free things because quite frankly Photoshop is so darn expensive, I can not afford 30$ a piece for new action or texture set. I have found a wonderful blog that has lots of free Photoshop and Lightroom freebies. Check out her site and blog, The CoffeeShop .

As I posted previously, I am letting the kids take over Christmas. Lexy needed to have cookies made for Girl Scouts for their Christmas party. She decided that she wanted sugar cookies, and I have a super secret sugar cookie recipe that is not to overly sweet but still yummy and hard to mess up. We decided to make a double batch and went to work. She just got for her birthday a new baking set with this perfect sized rolling pin. I stepped back, out of my control freak shoes, and let her roll out and cut out the cookie shapes. Baking with mom.

Now we go full circle. I saw an update on Facebook that The CoffeeShop just came out with a new texture set called “Baking with Mom”. How perfect is that! I just had to get them and use them. So here is my picture with the texture called burnt almond.

(Just a side note, at the bottom, I am completely new to adding links to other blogs from this blog, so if I did not do it correctly, please let me know)

It is all in the details

I have learned a lot from my kids, so much more than fart jokes and how to turn on my ipod. I have learned that stepping back and watching can be amazing. Letting them do what they do, not only builds lasting memories of great times, but gives me great photo opportunities because I can capture them being themselves.

Today’s adventure started off with a joke to a friend. I jokingly said to her, “Is it bad that I am scheduling my holiday activities around things my kids can do?”  We joked about my son hanging off the roof by lights and me waiting to help him till I got the shot. Something very similar to Christmas Vacation.  And what started off as a joke, turned into a really good idea. I have plans of sugar cookies and gingerbread houses, but we can not start that until the tree is decorated.

In our family we get a real tree and our decorations are very organic. There is no theme to the tree, no specific color or ribbons. We have lots of handmade ornaments from school, a glitter pine cone and a crab from friends from across the country.  Nothing has a specific spot, other than on the tree. The only thing that is certain every year is that each child gets to pick one of their ornaments to go on the tree first.

This year Gryffan went first. He picked out a car ornament to put on. He took his time to look through the bucket and find one that he really liked. With the greatest reverence, he placed it on the tree.

And you know the saying, “One good thing leads to another”, so I let them continue to put ornaments on the tree till it was all done. In the end I have a tree with clumps of ornaments all at about elbow height but I have children who smiled the whole time, and hopeful kids who will remember our crooked, organically decorated tree for the rest of their lives. To me, they gave me the lesson of handing over the reigns of control and excepting things do not need to LOOK perfect to be perfect.

Check out my friend’s photography! Cloudninephotography.net on Facebook and her blog, sandramuldoon.  Amazing work, and she is not afraid to step back and observe to get the shot.