The holidays have a way of sneaking up on me every year.  Winter is admittedly not my favorite season but I do love Christmas,  decorating and all that goes along with it.  I celebrated the day by enjoying some of my new ornaments from Anthropologie and finding the old cherished ones too.  We have a gorgeous tree this year.  It’s an 8 foot Frasier fir.  Small considering the 19 foot ceiling in my great room, but the largest Frasier that we have found in years.  The whole house smells festive!

I’ve done holiday pictures for my friend Joanne since she had her first baby.  This year, Olivia has a new baby brother and we decided to make it a whole family affair including cousins too.  It was a gorgeous but windy day at the beach and the last day that would be comfortable enough to do a warm weather shoot with the kids barefoot.  I loved seeing all the kids interact.  Olivia loves her new brother and the two older boys are best buddies.  If you still need holiday portraits, I have a couple of openings and will be shooting them until the end of the month.  We will be offering a free 8×10 custom print for each session booked.

I can’t believe how fast Winter seems to be coming.  Most of my leaves are down and I’m just hoping to finish my Fall clean up before our first snow.  I love Halloween.  I totally wish that I was shooting a kooky wedding today.  If I were getting married again, I think that I might consider doing it on Halloween.  In fact, if you are a bride planning a Halloween wedding for next year, give me a call.  I will definitely give you a special rate.  More on that later.  Today I went out into the woods with my new 50mm 1.2 lens.  Wow, I’m so glad that I bought this.  My woods looked like The Blair Witch Project revisited.   Happy Halloween everyone with some images from today, and a few others that strike me from past shoots.  I have to add in a bit of gore,  it being Halloween and all. Trick or Treat!

O.K. on to today’s images with my new favorite lens.

I love my woods!

I have a busy weekend planned with two back to back weddings and a Memorial day party to attend (if I’m still standing) on Monday.  We will have jousting and sumo wrestling matches, complete with fat suits.    Should be fun and I know that I will have some great photo opportunities there.  People love to get crazy and I personally need to be silly sometimes to cope with life’s difficulties.  I will also be attending the Memorial day parade in my town.   I always get choked up when I see all of the people in uniform.  Makes you reflect on the ones that died for us who are not marching.  Enjoy your weekend everybody but raise a glass in honor of all the men and women who have served our country on our behalf.

There are plenty of holidays that you could call Hallmark card creations meant to send us into gift giving frenzy’s. Although my son was given a printed list of eighteen cards to give to his classmates, he will also be getting 18 cards-how fun! Kids love any excuse to throw a party or to eat chocolate (don’t we all?), so we will be creating something special over the next few days for him to give to his friends. If you’re looking for Valentines Day gift ideas, you can’t go wrong with flowers-that is to say if diamonds are not in the budget. Check out Fleur de Lys in New Haven. Jennifer, the owner, has done a beautiful job on the flowers at several venues that I have shot. I know that they are busy, busy so don’t wait until the last minute. If you are a bride, just planning your wedding, I highly recommend Fleur de Lys.