Jesse & Katherine {Engaged!}

Remember the proposal at the 2009 PCP? If you thought Katherine was glowing in those pictures, just wait until you see her happy face in these engagement pictures taken in December. What fun these two are! They requested the laptop and metal guitar pictures. Perfect representations of their personalities. Can't wait for their wedding in July!

Our Christmas Gift {It's A Girl}

For Christmas we opened the most exciting gift...the gender of our unborn baby. Everyone was so convinced "it was a boy." What a surprise it was to discover this feminine little ornament lovingly wrapped in tissue paper. Hello baby sister.

Merry Christmas!

Thank you Katherine for taking our family pictures. Merry Christmas everyone!

Tooth Fairy Pillow

Found a free pattern for these ADDORABLE tooth fairy pillows on mmmcrafts.blogspot.com. My nieces, Julia and Corynn will be turning five this coming year and I thought these would make perfect Christmas gifts. As a child, we didn't believe in Santa, but the tooth fairy was REAL. Real, I tell you. Sharing one of my favorite childhood memories for Christmas....perfect.

Advent Calendar {Or Advent Forest}

I LOVE the season of Advent. So weeks before Thanksgiving I began scouring the internet for advent calendar ideas. My favorite was a calendar that another graphic designer, Julie Ree, had created using paper truffle boxes. Our calendar is a variation of her design. When I saw her pyramid shaped boxes I immediately envisioned a forest of Christmas trees.

If you visit Brownie Points, they have a downloadable pdf file of the truffle template. It's funny how a simple box template can inspire so many fun ideas!

To create our advent calendar, I recreated their template and scaled it to four different size templates. Then I traced the templates onto colorful scrapbooking paper I found at wal-mart. Many evenings in November were spent cutting, scoring, folding and hot gluing. Each "tree" is filled with a tiny treat. Stickers, new socks, finger puppets etc. Finding numbered stickers is impossible, so I created my own numbered star stickers.

Today we opened the first of 24 advent trees. Christmas is on its way!

Bradford Family Photos

It's that time of year! Family time. Time for photos, fun and love. I thought photos from this family photo shoot I did two weeks ago, would be an appropriate "after Thanksgiving" post. The thing I'm most grateful for is family. Looking at these fun photos makes me happy that there are others who share the same happiness and love that I enjoy with my immediate and extended family.

Thanks, Bradford family, for being so much fun and thanks Jenn for suggesting such a quirky location. Can you guess where these were taken?

Marin's First Trip to the Zoo {Nov 2, 2009}

Marin's first Zoo experience was on a sunny day in November with Ganny and uncle David. They took her to the Lufkin zoo where she saw otters, carrots (or parrots whichever you prefer), ducks, turtles, giraffe, lions, tigers, hippos and peacocks. She had a blast. And although I was a bit jealous that they were getting to share this "first" with her, it was appropriate that the two people most responsible for Marin's love of animals would be her tour guides at one of the best zoos in Texas.