The weather finally allowed us a morning to get little Miss C outdoors. And that baby NEVER stopped moving. She walked, ran, and happily explored the entire time. I tried to stay 5 steps in front of her but at one point I just gave up and stopped. When she caught up to me, she reached out those little arms, put her head on my shoulder and hugged me. It made me just melt.

Here she is giving her Daddy one of those sweet hugs.

See how big she is now!

Mommy and Daddy’s pride and joy.

Happy Birthday sweet girl. Thank you for letting me be a part of the first year of your life. It has been an honor to watch you grow.

We went on vacation to Disney World!! It was our daughter’s first visit and it was, as Disney claims it to be, MAGICAL!

The week after we returned, we got an offer on our house. It had been on the market for a long, long 19 months.

I then had a little over a month to pack, find a new home and move.

We are now living with my Dad for 3 weeks until our new home is ready. I finally have time to relax a little.

Instead of trying to catch you up on my sessions and blogs, I will finish up the last 2 sessions and restart my blogging. I also hope to blog the Disney trip in a few weeks.

This week, Super Moon was not exactly a new thing for us. We look and admire the moon almost daily. I could see that it was much brighter but to my daughter, it was the same old beautiful moon. I figured with everyone else snapping and sharing their shots of the moon, I would too.

Since the moon was brighter so I actually got a little bit of moon flare with some rim lighting on the flowers. Normally flares are captured from the sun so this was neat to see.

Almost any night or day is a great time to photography the moon. I thought I would share a few tips.

You need to use a telephoto lens. You really need a lens that will go at least 200mm but the longer it is, the better. If you only have a point and shoot camera, zoom it out as far as you can. Also, include the landscape. Find something visually interesting to add to the scene since you will not be able to get really close to it. Trees, mountains, a body of water, or even a person’s hands “holding” the moon.

Use a tripod. Get that camera perfectly still for a nice crisp picture. If it is windy, use something to weigh down the tripod.

Do not use a shallow dept of field. Set your aperture around F9, F11 to get lots of detail. Take a shot and then play around with your settings.

Photograph the moon in its different phases. A full moon is not your only option. A crescent moon is just as beautiful.

If there are bare tree branches in front of the moon or clouds are moving across it, GREAT! That makes it look a little spooky.

I hope everyone enjoyed the Super Moon but in our house, the moon is super every night.

Here is Miss C.

She is such a beautiful little princess.

She loves her toes. And look at those eyelashes!

I always love seeing Miss C. She is one of my baby plan kids and I can’t wait to see her again.

First up is the W Family with Baby N.

I did a summer shoot with this family on a lovely 90 degree morning.  Yes when we were done at 10:45 am it had reached 90!  Phew!  You can see them here.

Baby N was born December 17th  and I did a shoot with him and his family but he was not really into it.  I did get some nice family shots.

I have been trying to focus more on the emotion and interaction within the families so I love this shot. Look how every face is naturally showing 100% happiness. Having a husband and child who have perfected the fake and posed smile, I am so jealous of this family picture!

This is Miss R, my future assistant! She took pictures at both shoots. This is a messy behind the scenes shot. Yes that is mayonnaise  and soup holding up the piece of molding.   And I see even more groceries behind the bucket.  Very technical stuff going on here!  Actually, we were in my dining room and right at my pantry.

And I have to show you how adorable baby N is!

And to brag on Mommy for a bit….. she did a “man room” nursery complete with a “bear skin rug” that was made from brown soft fuzzy fabric with big soft paws and a cute bear face. It was adorable!!!

It started after I got married and I wanted to decorate our tree with just red and silver ornaments.  But I had a box full of ornaments that we have been given, ones from my childhood and ones that I had collected.  So I decided that I could have a second tree for those ornaments.  That is how it started and it just grew from there.

So here is a tour of most of my trees.  Enjoy!

I have 5 full size trees and many 4 feet and under trees.  I did not put up my Carolina Panther tree this year.  Our season has been so bad that I just could not bear to look at it.

This is in my daughter’s room.  She decorated it herself, I only did the garland.  It is a feather tree with Hello Kitty, snowflakes, little flowers and 2 owl ornaments.

This is our only live tree and it is our main tree, my red and silver tree.  I have some spinners on this tree.  Spinners hold an ornament and slowly rotate it around.

In my foyer is my Star Trek tree.  I have been collecting these ornaments for years.  I am only missing the first 2 ornaments Hallmark released.  And I never got into the Deep Space Nine series so I did not collect any of those.   In the upper right, you can also see a little tree up in my landing window.  That one is lights only.  They are the old fashioned large bulbs.

Also in my foyer is my black tree decorated with silver and white ornaments.

This next tree started out as a joke.  My brother and I enter our state fair’s cooking competitions and we are very competitive.  Last year, I won some ribbons and he did not so I made My Ribbon tree to gloat a bit.  It is a collection of my winnings from the last few years. Some of the categories I have placed in is cakes, cookies, knitting, scrap booking.  This year I picked a larger tree to decorate and also added ornaments made by my daughter.  I took 3 ornaments from my childhood and she recreated those.  We finished those after I took these shots and I never got around to downloading them.  But here are my ribbons and one of her handmade ornaments.

Here is my multi colored white tree.  This has all of the ornaments that we have collected over the years.  Ornaments from my childhood, my husband’s childhood.  Some examples are, NC State, UNCW, Carolina Hurricanes, A Christmas Story, Survivor, Indiana Jones, a few are left from my Grandmother’s tree.

Here is a close up of some of the ornaments.

This is my little family tree.  Each ornament has the name of a family member.

Growing up, my Mom was the only one to decorate our tree.  She wanted a gold tree, gold lights and gold ornaments.  At the time……UGH and BORING!  Then one Christmas she had her foot operated on and could not decorate it.  We were finally in charge and we went out and bought multi colored lights and ornaments!  She never regained control of the tree.  Years later my Dad and I decided to throw away most of those gold ornaments.  Agggggh!!!!  How I regret that now.  We had these gold filagree ornaments that I was so sick of seeing but I would pay good money to have them back.  We did save some of them and that is what is on this tree including the tree top.  There is a picture on the tree of our tree decorated back in the 80′s.

These 2 decorations are also from my childhood.

Even my fish have a Christmas tree.

This little glass tree blinks with red, white and green.  It was my Grandmother’s.

My candy tree.

My smallest tree sits on the sink in my powder bath.  It is only about 6 inches tall.  Each bell was wired on by me.

My Santa Claus.  This in on the front porch.

This is my little kitchen tree.

This is not a tree but my Mom collected these for years from Avon.  It is beautiful in all white.  She did not like the stable that came with it so she found this all natural twig  moss covered one.

I have a few more trees……..was anyone counting how many I did post?

My daughter has another tree that  I forgot to take a picture of.  It is a pink tinsel tree with every ornament that she has been given.  Baby’s first Christmas, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, a few Grinch ornaments.

I a lot of  non decorated trees.  A fiber optic one, a gold wire tree, a Charlie Brown tree.  Around the landing in my foyer, I have lined it with 10 or so table top trees.  As I mentioned before, I did not put up my Carolina Panther tree and I did not do my icicle tree this year either.  I have so many ideas for new trees but if I add any more and spend any more money on trees…..my husband will have a fit.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my home.  May you all  have a wonderful and blessed holiday season!!!

Blue skies, fall colors, lots of leaf piles, gorgeous families and 2 furry family members.  I could not have asked for anything more.

The S Family.

These guys were rockstars!!!! Ready for anything.  I loved their personalities.  And little M……we are truly kindred spirits, his mohawk and my purple/violet hair.

Giving Mom and Dad some special attention here.

I love the color of this tree and the way the sun was shining through it was just beautiful.

At the end of the session, I could not resist having them play in this pile of leaves.

The D Family.

I had so much fun with these girls!! I have known their parents for a while.  I see the girls every Halloween and I have seen them grow up in Christmas cards but this was the first time I have spent time with them. They are simply enjoyable kids to be around.

Mom with her girls and her furry baby.

The sisters.

It is time to think about your holiday cards and portraits.

Yep, the holiday season is right around the corner, can you believe it?

I am offering quick 30 minute mini sessions Sunday, Nov. 14th at Oak View Park.

For only $25.00 you can reserve your space and get a free 8×10.

The $25 can then be used towards your order.

Holiday cards, Christmas photo gifts, photo jewelry or just update portraits for your home.

Do you want more than 30 minutes? No problem!

Remember there are no session fees!

Gorgeous friends, beautiful weather, a little wine in dixie cups, what more could you ask for?

They made me laugh the whole time!

Cheers!

The Cavalier Motel started in 1949. It is the classic 50′s type motel with the “U” shape building layout with the pool in the middle of the parking lot. There are no key cards here but real keys with the classic big, plastic, diamond keychain. I forgot to take a picture of that for y’all.

The oceanfront rooms are ON the beach as you can see in the last picture in the collage below. They also have a great playground.  We had breakfast on the porch each morning and you can’t beat the view from those chairs.  You take 4 steps off the porch and your toes are in the sand.  I told you that the rooms were ON the beach!

We were able to watch dolphins everyday and I did catch one picture of flipping out of the water and onto his back. I was on the porch so I was not too close to the water but I wanted to share it anyway.

My daughter LOVED the water as you can see from these pics.

This motel is family owned, friendly and clean but it is very old school! From the wood grain walls to the paper bath mat, so much of it is still just as it was in the 60′s but we love it. (Yes I said “paper” bath mat with a map pf NC places to see on it. I have not seen those since I was little! We now take our own bath mat just to make it feel a little more like home.)

http://cavaliermotel.net/

Check it out if you are planning a trip to the Outer Banks. Make sure you look at the tour/history section of the website. The last and only color picture is from the 60′s and it looks like what you will see today.