Ole St. Nick

Last week was a week of major firsts, but I can't really start to go over those until I write her 5 month post.....which I am behind on, AGAIN! Oh well. Sometimes life happens and things get put on the back burner. I knew I wanted to get Emma in to see Santa before the mall got really crowded and we had to wait in a long line....which sounded like torture to mommy. So last week we decided to take her to visit our mall Santa.

First of all, we walked straight in to see him and as you can tell by the photo, he was an awesome Santa! No stuffed suit and fake beard here! They asked if we were buying a photo...of course! It's her first Santa visit. Now I fully expected her to not cooperate for the camera. She was looking every which way and when the photographer was shaking their noisemakers she looked up at them as if to say "that's really unnecessary." Finally Santa said, "mom why don't you try." I got down low and waved my arms and smiled big and made a fool out of myself but we got this shot! Totally worth it! Cannot wait to see next years photo!

We put up our Christmas decorations and of course Emma's first Christmas tree. I found a frame ornament in our stash and put one of the wallet size photo's that we got in our package from Santa in it and on the tree is went along with the sled ornament I made last year. My mom gave me some ornaments from when I was a baby to put on our tree so this years tree is very special to me.

My mom suggested that we get professional photo's done for Christmas of Emma, but honestly I don't like that JC Penny studio feel at all....so the other night after her bath when she was relaxed and happy, we plopped her on a blanket and plugged in some white lights and went to town with the camera. Under the tree she went and everything tried to go in her mouth. From the strand of lights, ornaments, to the tree branches themselves. I love that she's exploring new things and I love experiencing life and the holiday's through her eyes! While these aren't professional photos I still love them and they capture her personality at this time in her life!

We have some new traditions to start and old ones to pass on, but I cannot wait to experience everything with our little one!

Day Twenty Two/Twenty Three - Cookies/Sparkle

Day 22 was cookies. Knowing that the hubby was going to make his family Scotcheroos to take to work I decided to wait until they were made to take the photo. Not technically cookies, but still a holiday treat that we don't go a year without making!

Day 23 (today) is sparkle. Now we had glitter and lights already over the course of this photo challenge, but I thought I would take inspiration from the Bokeh trend and take a whirl at my own shot. Taking the "sparkle" of our Christmas tree and making it unique, in a way. Figuring out how to do it on our DSLR was interesting, but I finally got a couple of cool shots! Whoop!

Day One - Lights

Today is day one of my 25 days of Christmas photo challenge. Lights is the category. We have a set of Christmas lights that burned out a couple of years ago due to a burnt bulb. The only replacement bulb we could find was a green light. So every year when we put up the strand the solo green light sticks out. This year it's prominent on our patio so I see it every time I walk up our stairs. It gives me a little smile each time!

Note: After taking this photo, the entire strand decided that it wanted to die. So alas this is the last photo of the green bulb because the hubs had to replace the entire strand! Whoops!

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