It's not really looking like Christmas...

There isn't a stitch of snow, the temperature is barely making it below 0, and we don't have any decorations up yet! I really hope it starts snowing, because I'd like to ski this year. Since I didn't even put my skis on once last year, I have to make up for lost time and also take advantage of being home with Madison. So fingers are crossed that it snows!

We had a good weekend. The girls and I (OK mainly I) make an advent calendar. I basically spent the day Mod Podge-ing Christmas paper onto 24 little tiny boxes!! Gillian, surprisingly helped more than Abby. While she didn't exactly cover the boxes evenly, she was at least doing it. After starting at 9:00 am, I finished at 8 pm. Of course with the kids running around and Madison needing me throughout the day, I wasn't working on it 100% of that time. But I must admit, by the end I had had enough and wished I had bought one for $1.99 at the grocery store!! :) I'll post a photo of it tomorrow after I hang it on the wall.

Today, we went for a hike, then just chilled in the afternoon. Here are a couple shots:

And a couple cute shots of Madison standing in for my me while I check my lighting for my last shoot:

Tomorrow we start gymnastics and maybe a little visit to Santa!!

When Gillian is quiet...

You know you are in for a great surprise...

(Note: she was in the basement, "colouring" when she came upstairs growling like a tiger...Thank God for Crayola washable markers!!)

The girls from good to bad

I had my background set up the other day for a shoot I was doing, so I figured it was a good opportunity to take some shots of the girls.


Done up with a little texture.




Gillian got into the mix after her nap, but by then Madison had had enough!


Then, why not try for the lot. This may be the Christmas Card picture with the quote - "Peace and Harmony for All", I'm just not sure... :)

Holidays in Hand

The big thing in Scrapbooking is documenting each day in December. Why some may wonder? For me, I think December is a special month, so many traditions, new snow (hopefully), winter fun outdoors, snowmen, giving, opening presents, decorating the tree, eating (!). This year, I'm joining Jessica Sprague on her Holidays in Hand class and the goal of the class is to prepare you for documenting December so that when December comes we are ready. I will do mine digitally, and hopefully print them out at the end into an album. As I haven't been scrapbooking much lately I hope I can at least get a few pages done. Things are going to slow down on the photography front, and I'd like to focus on scrapping!

For our first assignment we are to list our values, our hopes, our traditions and what we treasure most for these holidays and here are mine:

1. Now that the girls are a little older and Christmas is starting to mean something I'd like to establish traditions for them that combine what Eric had growing up and what I had growing up: eggnog, oranges in our stockings, selecting a real tree and cutting it down, decorating the tree (without a big fight .. heheheh), decorating the house.

2. Playing in the snow. (hoping that we actually get snow by Christmas). It will be fun to see the Girls get so excited about it and play like kids should play.

3. Spending time with family, eating, laughing and exchanging gifts.

4. Taking lot of photos to capture the moments.

I'm sure I'll have more, but this was the beginning of my list.

The Value of Backing Up

I like to think that I'm pretty organized, I also like to think that I'm diligent about backing things up like my photos, my documents, my taxes etc. This theory was kind of put to the test last week when my computer spontaneously started to crash and reboot itself over and over again. I was just able to get an e-mail off to Francois, my computer guy, saying that my computer was starting to act funny (I think it heard me) when, poof I got the black screen of death. My brain immediately went into panic mode trying to figure out when I last backed up my photos. Ironically two weeks ago I decided to move ALL of my images onto two EHD and changed my downloading and any work I did to one of them rather than my computer's hard drive. So now everything I did was off of my 2TB EHD. So I was pretty confident that if my computer's hard drive was fried, I wouldn't be loosing much. Thankfully in the end it turned out to be the motherboard that bit the bullet, and it was easily replaced, all data I had on my computer's hard drive was saved, and everything was fine. The only inconvenience was not having my computer for 4 days and then having to install all my programs on again. Since the last time I replaced my computer, I've moved to using my e-mail strickly through the web, and similarly with bookmarking, I change to using Delicious. So whatever I can save on-line I will. Very useful when your system crashes!

Halloween Minis....

Highlight video from Saturday's mini-session. I had a lot of fun with the little ones! They were so cute and posed very well for me under the circumstances... Bribery with Halloween candy will go a long way!!



It was tiring, but I very fulfilling - learned a lot, met a lot of new people and had fun all at the same time. The only downside of it was missing hanging out with the girls and Eric getting ready for Halloween! I didn't even take pics of my own kids on Halloween!! But I'll recreate it next weekend for pics.

Wow, where have I been!

I've been sick, the girls have been sick and finally, finally everyone is healthy. I realize how difficult it is with 3 kids and how as soon as one is sick, a few days later the other is sick, then I get sick, then Eric gets it, then the baby gets it, then three weeks later - we're healthy. I'm not exactly sure how one is supposed to manage this when working full time?!! During all of this I had to proof a couple of shoots I did, and I still have two to go. Can't do much when you are up 24 hours a day, and the kids are home, supposedly "sick" yet running around like it's party time! I did manage to take a few photos during all of it and some favourites are:

My girls! Notice how Madison is staring at her hand. She started
chewing it a couple of weeks ago.

She also started following things that move, like her jungle
animals on the swing.

Her eyes are a stunning blue. (just ignore the crusty nose, I didn't feel like
photoshopping it out!!)

Where's Waldo?

Gillian and Madison spend some quality time together.

All the leaves fell... so lots of fun to be had!

Over the past week, I've made some yummy desserts: Pumpkin Chocolate Squares, and Chocolate Coconut Bars. I also made a couple really good and really easy dinners one of them being: Apricot Pork Tenderloin with Cranberry Black Pepper Sauce.

That's it, tomorrow I have a shoot (a baby!!), Thursday I may try and get vaccinated for H1N1 with the girls...(however waiting in line with them for 4 hours may just be too torturous!) and Friday I have to prepare for my Halloween Mini Sessions at HUSH!

Envy...

Isn't the best trait to have, but I do envy people who do stuff like this:

Monthly Roundup

Katie the Scrapbook Lady does a monthly roundup, answering specific questions to highlight the month. It's such a great way to capture memories, everyday memories that you may forget about, and would have liked to! Considering how bad my memory is, I'd start this then forget I did and only do it once...

...now what was I doing...

What the $@&% is that??

My kids spotted this crawling rather quickly on the rock in the backyard today...they thought it was pretty neat. I had other opinions about the "inch" worm, as Abby referred to it. (I thought it was more like the 5 inch worm)





At least it was a pretty cool colour though!

Scrapbooking Challenge #14

I'm in the middle of finishing challenge #13 but I thought I would post our next challenge today, in case I don't get to finish it today.

ETA: Finished the page, well almost, I just re-read the challenge and realized I didn't meet the criteria, it was supposed to be 5 images of equal size, oops!! Anyway, I'm just happy I got one done, here is mine for this week:



This week lift the following Creative Inspiration Copy Cat Wednesday, AND post your layout on their site (via Designer Digitals or however way you want!).

Have fun scrapping!

Fall

Some people think we are crazy to live in Quebec, and at times (usually April each year, during the first snowfall trying to drive to work) I have to agree with them, but on the most part I would have to disagree with them. This is one reason: The view from our deck:

It takes my breath away every year!

Location Scouting

Fall is the most beautiful time of year around here, and I love it! As I have two photography sessions coming up soon, I thought I should start to scout locations I have in mind for doing them. So last night after daycare around 5 pm, I took the girls to location #1, Meech Creek Valley midway between our place and Wakefield. We actually had our wedding photos taken here. While the light was still a little too high in the sky, I was very excited about the possibilities of this location. Here are a few samples:

(just please insert better dressed kids here - they are cute and all, but who dresses these two, I mean really....?)












I tried to play around with back-lighting, lens flare and shallow depth of field while there. I think the sun needed to be a little lower as well, but overall I loved it! What do you think?

Beautiful Sunday

It's Sunday, the girls woke up only at 6:30 am... which may sound brutal, but when the usually wake up at 5:00 am, 6:30 is a treat!

The river was completely covered by fog, which meant a cool night and the heat coming out of the water, but it also means - summer is over!! I love the fall, but I really am not prepared for the start of winter. I hope the weather stays nice for a while longer, easing the psychological blow of that first snowfall. Winter is great for skiing and playing in the snow, but it also means, struggling to get the snowsuits on the girls, cold weather - too cold to get outside, and dark mornings and nights.

So far we've had a great weekend, swimming yesterday am, birthday party yesterday afternoon, and a nice walk this morning. Everyone is in good spirits and the weather is nice, so it's been a fun weekend. Thank god, because the past few weekend have been really hard! I took my camera with me, and got some great shots of the girls!

But before we did that I had everyone pose in order to try a baby pose I saw and was hoping to try out this week at a shoot. Here is the result:



I'll post more of our weekend tomorrow... it's already taken me all day to write this post...

More florals and textures

I am having fun photographing flowers against walls! Then applying fun textures to them. My real intention is to make cards to sell at the local flower shop... more on that later! Here are the latest creations.







I'll have a round-up of all of these in the near future and as that you all vote on your favourite ones!

got to run, dog barking at me to let him in and baby waking up from a long nap!!!

Little Mommies

I had the girls post for some photos after daycare today. They were all too willing to sit with Maidson and cuddle her!

A weekend with no pictures

Two whole days and I didn't even pick up my camera! We seem to have tough weekends around here and I'm not sure how to change that. We did start swimming with the girls on Saturday, which they love, and it's a great diversion, so that was fun. But the rest of the time was pretty tough. I think they are bored, need attention because mommy is quite often with the baby and they are two and four years old. So all the chaos, screaming, crying and fighting make for a pretty stressful weekend and doesn't put one in the mood for being creative! Oh well, such is life, I'm sure it will get much better as time goes on. I also need to plan more activities for the weekend to keep their little minds busy! Any tips from all you experienced Mom's out there?? Pass them along!

In other news... I was watching the Oasis HD channel the other day and happened across a show called Great Escapes or something like that. I was so enthralled with the location that they were covering, that I didn't pay attention to the name of the show. The location featured was Bora Bora. My parents went to Bora Bora for their honeymoon way back when, just after planes were invented (hahahah!! I think it was 1970) and I still have the slide images of their trip (unfortunately I haven't scanned any yet). The show focused on Hotel Bora Bora and wow was it ever amazing! So I figure I work hard over the next 4-5 years and Eric and I can go for our 10 year wedding anniversary, and my 40th birthday. It looks like paradise, and I'm sure it is.

Off to take some photos because I'm in withdrawal.....

Brag Book Sample

Click here:


ETA: Ok so the first link I put in didn't work as I hadn't shared it publicly yet, so here is try #2, let me know if you can't see it:

Madison Elizabeth

Playdate and Photos

I hosted a play date yesterday with some Chelsea moms and a couple stragglers from Barrhaven (hehehe just kidding girls). It was a fun filled morning of babies and goodies and fun was had by all! Including Madison who basically slept through the entire thing! I prepared some yummy Chocolate Coconut Bars, which didn't exactly turn out like they were supposed to, but were delicious none the less. Here is the recipe for those who asked for it - it is super easy!:

Chocolate-Coconut Bars
Makes 20

* 3 cups finely ground cookies (12 ounces), such as graham crackers or chocolate wafers, or a combination
* 1/4 cup sugar
* 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
* 1 cup pecan pieces
* 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips or chunks
* 1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
* 1 1/2 cups sweetened shredded coconut

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly splash a 15-by-10-inch rimmed baking sheet evenly with water, then line with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, stir together cookie crumbs, sugar, and butter until combined. Evenly press onto bottom and up sides of prepared baking sheet. Bake, rotating halfway through, until firm, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack; cool, about 20 minutes.
3. Sprinkle cooled crust evenly with pecans and chocolate. Pour condensed milk over the top, spreading to cover completely (do not let it drip over the edges). Sprinkle with coconut.
4. Bake until coconut is toasted, 10 to 15 minutes. Transfer to rack; cool completely. Trim edges, if desired, and cut into equal-size bars.

Tip: Before you pour the condensed milk over the top, place can in hot/boiling water for a few minutes to warm it up and it will pour better. I didn't do this so it didn't exactly "pour", so it came out clumpy.

The most relaxed mom of twins I've ever seen!

Cute little Selina

Loved Ava's onsie!

Andrew and his little dimple.

Cohen gives me the cutest smile!

Quinn tries to get Andrew to wake up. Trouble maker :)

The gang of babies! (I love how Meaghan is the only one looking
straight at the camera smiling - what a star!)

Once everyone left, I set up for my afternoon photo shoot with Jemelee, Lee and baby Hogan. Hogan was 15 days old and super cooperative! Here are a couple random sneek peaks, visit my blog later on for more shots from the session:

Time is flying by...but enjoying it!

I can't believe how fast the time seems to fly by! One day just seems to speed into the next and the next... Madison is growing before my eyes, the girls are getting bigger and bigger by the minute and I seem to have so much on my plate (all fun stuff mind you), and I never get any of it done because I get distracted by more stuff!! But regardless, I'm happy, feeling good and enjoying ever minute of being home with Madison, enjoying the girls humour and sparky personalities, enjoying my photo shoots and the challenges of starting a new business with little time to do it in :), and definitely enjoying this amazing fall weather!

Two weeks Today

Madison turned two weeks old today. It's always amazing how fast time flies, already two weeks since I was in labour! She continues to be a fantastic baby. We hang out at home, go for walks with Bender and is so calm all the time. I can take her out shopping and she won't really wake up for 2 hours, it's crazy! So much different from Gillian. Gillian and Abigail continue to LOVE their new sister and fight over who is going to hold her. I've found Abigail only once with Madison in her arms and her saying "look mommy I can carry her"! Even though they love her, I think they are feeling the change in the household with 3 now, and the sudden absence of mommy time with the new baby. I need to feed her and change her and all the while it's taking away from their time with me. It makes me sad, but it's the new reality, and once Madison grows up a little things will even out again!

I'm also happy to report the alarm trick has worked the past two mornings, they both didn't get up until the music started playing. I really think it's more because they are so exhausted (both physically and emotionally) that they need to sleep! Let's hope that it continues like this!

Here are a few photos to share:

Madison - cross eyed newborn cuteness! Aren't they just so funny
at this stage?

Gillian getting up to no good at 7:00 am

Abby needs hair intervention - time to visit a salon,
mommy's haircuts don't work anymore!

Some more visual fun...

Just a quick post tonight.. heading off to bed. It was a beautiful day and I had fun with flowers and textures!