25 Days of Christmas - Day 4

Just a quick one for today - vintage hand painted ornaments. I plucked them right off of our tree.

25 Days of Christmas - Day 3

This is Coconut's first Christmas with us (But not her first Christmas - she'll be 4 years old at the end of December). I was a little concerned about how she would interact with our tree. Being a pudgy little princess kitty, she's not much of a climber or a jumper, but she does love to play and get into mischief. And that tendency could be a threat to my vintage glass ornaments! We've had the tree up for a week now, and so far so good. She does like to sit underneath it and regularly enjoys making a mess of the tree skirt, but I can live with that.

25 Days of Christmas - Day 2

I'm glad I got in some shooting first thing this morning because the day quickly turned rainy and overcast. Just saying, I have quite a lot of ornament photos planned for this year. They are a bit of a challenge because you have to watch for reflections.



Bonus photo - last night when we went shopping for this year's real tree, I spotted these pretty kissing balls hanging in a row. We've continued our streak of cheap trees - $19.99 for a 6 ft Frasier fur. Being cheap is a bit of a trade off though because when we got it home, Mark noticed the tree has a big split down the middle of the trunk. Hopefully it lasts at least until Christmas!

25 Days of Christmas - Day 1

Here comes Santa Claus!

It's that time again! I honestly wasn't sure I was going to go through with it this year, but here we go anyway. In fact, I was almost going to do just the 12 Days of Christmas. However, since I decided to cut myself a some slack so I didn't have to take the photo on the day that I post it, 25 days seemed doable. We had some unseasonably warm weather today which brought with it great light, so I took advantage and stockpiled as many photos as I could. I hope do more tomorrow. Just like Santa, I've made my own list of photo ideas, and I'm going to check them off one by one. I also need to update the blog banner for the holidays, which I should also get to tomorrow.

By the way, this little vintage guy is known as "Skiing Santa, " but I popped off his skis temporarily so he could better tinkle the ivories.

From the archives.

A couple of weeks ago, Mark found some old videos on his computer. I uploaded them to YouTube for safe keeping, and I thought why not share them here?

First some context - these were taken around this time of year in 2007. A few days ago, I realized that Lauren will be seven and a half this weekend. Seven and a half. That's almost eight years old. I was okay with six. I was even fine with seven. But eight? She's almost a tween. *shiver*

Now with the exception of the one that was taken on Christmas morning, these are completely random. There is no plot. No hope of them going viral. Their only purpose is to show how ridiculously cute our child is.



We've since realized that eating a peanut butter sandwich while lying down is probably not such a good idea.



To this day, Lauren still loves to build things. We're hoping that she becomes an architect so that we'll get to go to a fancy nursing home.



Giving Daddy the beat down.



Schooling Daddy on how to properly organize the Hershey's Kisses. She takes after me here.



Christmas morning. Take a drink each time she disagrees with us.



And lastly, a very special appearance. I'd also like to point out how healthy and shiny my hair was. Oh, what I'd give to be five years younger!

A couple of special annoucements.

These are both kinda old news, but I wanted to share them for the sake of posterity.

First, I finally finished my very own photography website! I've been kicking around the idea for about a year now, but only started making progress with the design during the last few months. Although I'm not actively seeking photography jobs, I've made some real progress in selling my work, so I wanted to create a professional presence where I can promote myself. The site does have a blog, but it will be focused on photography related content. I will continue to update The Ross Family Equation with family and other fun stuff as I have during the last six (almost seven!) years.

Second, when they were planning to launch their blog, Pottery Barn contacted us and asked if we would be their first home tour. We were their featured story on Thanksgiving! Be sure to check it out - I even worked in an Uncle Craig reference (Hint - it has to do with napping.)!

So what's next? Well, there's a couple things I want to post here before November comes to a close because next up - it's December! And we all know what that means right? The 25 Days of Christmas! Witness as a working mom is driven to madness through her attempts to capture the holiday spirit in one photo a day!

We are thankful (The 600th post!).

 ...for places set at the Thanksgiving table.

 

...to be cat owners again.

 

...for gravy and all that it covers.

One hundred bags of leaves in the yard, one hundred bags of leaves...

 

Time for a happy post. I took these right before Hurricane Sandy came through, but at the time I was in the middle of the Halloween project and didn't have a chance to edit them all until now. The only good thing about the hurricane was that the high winds brought most of the leaves down at once, so this year there won't be raking to do in the middle of December.

 

Mark had made a giant leaf pile in the middle of the yard, so I couldn't resist enlisting Lauren to pose for some leaf throwing shots.

 







As you can see, she was happy to oblige, but after the fifth or sixth take, the novelty wore off.

 

Then I set her free so that she could indulge in everyone's favorite fall past time, leaf pile jumping!



Daddy had to get into the act.



Never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet kiss (or was that sucker?).

I bet you didn't know...

...that the best dog ever left the earth today.

But we know. Boy, do we know.

A sweet little lady to the very end.

Avast ye landlubbers.

 

Our special extended edition of Halloween is finally over, but we can't move on without the costume segment of our show.



Lauren agreed to dress as a pirate this year when she heard that there would be a stuffed parrot in it for her. Unfortunately, the parrot that I ordered ended up being quite large, so she didn't want to use it as part of her costume. 



So I got her pirate sword instead which, as you can see, she liked just as well.



For trick-or-treating, she was accompanied by her usual entourage. With all that weaponry, the neighborhood didn't stand a chance.