Friday Photo Journal, December 30, 2016

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! I am still sorting and editing our Christmas celebration pics. I'm a bit behind but will be back tomorrow and update this post.  (I wanted to get the linky up so you can share your shots from this week.) Can you believe it's all over and 2017 is nearly here?

Updated to add: I have sorted through many less than stellar Christmas photos and have a few more to share. I was operating on little sleep and frankly, my personal shots tend to be just snapshots. I'd rather spend time enjoying the day and being present, not trying to create amazing images. Though exhausting, it was a fun holiday with lots of family time, tons of great food and happy memories made. One can't ask for more than that.

What have you been up to lately? Please link up your posts below and have a safe and very Happy New Year!! Thank you for visiting. <3 p="">

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Friday Photo Journal, December 23rd, 2016

Ready or not here it comes! I can hardly believe Christmas is upon us and this year is all but over. This week was a welcomed break from the norm around here. We baked cookies, wrapped gifts, watched Christmas movies, attended a party, had family visit from out of town - it was busy, but not in the frantic overloaded way in which we normally operate. Just full and fun.  I'm not quite ready for Christmas to be here. I still have lots to do and I would really rather have more time to relax and enjoy the season - but it's just a blink away! So, I will soak up every second that I can.

I want to thank you all for visiting and participating in the FPJ link up this year! I hope you have many treasured memories to look back on from 2016.  I would love to hear about how you plan to use your photos. I plan to tackle organizing my personal images and creating a few photo books with the shots I've taken this year. The kids always love thumbing through them from time to time, and I do too! What do you do with all of the images you take?

Thank you for visiting! Please link up your posts below.

I wish you all a wonderful happy holiday weekend! 

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Friday Photo Journal, December 16, 2016

Happy Friday all! This week was a bit more relaxing around here - thankfully. I am finally over the huge deluge of work and have buttoned up all of the sessions I have shot. Only one wedding remains to edit - yay! I do have sessions scheduled next week, but I am officially caught up and SO relieved.

We baked cookies twice this week and worked on some gifts the kids could make for family and friends. I didn't shoot much this week, but did bring my camera out to play with the Christmas lights for a few minutes while Little Miss painted her birdhouse. I'm looking forward to a weekend off - yay! The first in months! More family projects, and holiday festivities to come. :)

What are your plans for the weekend?

Thank you for visiting! 

Link up your posts below and have a great week. :)

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Friday Photo Journal, December 9, 2016

Happy Friday! Another week down and holy time warp, Christmas is coming so soon! I can't believe it. I have been chained to my desk editing and it feels like life is passing me by.

Little Miss was chomping at the bit to bake Christmas cookies, so I did take a break to bake some gingerbread cookies. Not from scratch (shame), but the girls had fun decorating them nonetheless. I snapped a few quick shots of our brief baking adventure and that's about all I have captured this week. I am nearing the end of my editing marathon and I can't wait to be free!!!

How has your week been?

Thank you for visiting! Have a fantastic weekend. :)

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Friday Photo Journal, December 2, 2016

So let me first say how very sorry I am that I completely dropped the ball last week. It was two days after the fact before I even realized I had forgotten to post! How bad is that?! These past couple of weeks have been completely mad and I'm living in a bit of a fog these days. Work has taken on a new life and I don't know up from down. I apologize. I really feel sad that I have neglected this blog. It's a bit of a reflection of my life in general, I'm afraid. I desperately want to get through the mountain of sessions, weddings and edits, so that I can enjoy some family time and a bit of holiday cheer.

And I am also a day late and a dollar (or more) short for this week, I know. I was up until the wee hours last night trying to get through a wedding gallery and had planned to post before bed. When I wandered off to bed, zombified, early this morning, I realized I had neglected once again to edit and post my personal photos. But, I simply couldn't peel myself off of the mattress until 8 AM. So here we are. I have only a few images from our Thanksgiving dinner to share. In the next week or two things should slow down briefly before the final Christmas rush.

We did manage to decorate our tree but that's about as far as we've gotten in our festiveness. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I still have a Halloween flag outside the front door. {Hangs head in shame}. I hope you are enjoying the holiday season! What's new on your end?

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Friday Photo Journal, November 18, 2016

Good gracious where is November going?! I have not purchased a single gift, prepared for Christmas cards, planned a single meal, or even managed to take down all of the Halloween decor. I can't begin to think about how I will get it all done. I need it to be September again.

On that note, I also have very little to show in the way of an effort to photograph my own life and family. I really am feeling burned out and pressed for time with work, like constantly living in a compression chamber, and I can hardly think of picking up my camera for personal reasons. When I actually think about this, it makes me very sad because my children seem to be maturing at the speed of light. I just can't seem to keep up with it all.

Anyway, I scraped together a few random images for this post. I saw the moon coming up as I was heading home after client session and I stopped for a moment to try to capture the scene. I played with some long exposures and tried getting light trails from the passing cars. I didn't have a tripod so they are a bit shaky, and the highlights on the moon are terrible, but it was fun to just play for a minute. Despite their poor technical merits, I still rather like the effect. Other randomness includes a simple fall leaf snap from walking in the neighborhood (with a bit of a melancholy feel to the edit - seemed appropriate for my mood), our pup Bella who will turn 8 in a couple of weeks, and my silly gal - my constant companion when I'm not off shooting sessions.

Thank you for visiting! Link up your posts below and have a wonderful weekend!

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Friday Photo Journal, November 11, 2016

Yikes, it's Friday again and I'm SO not ready for this weekend! Just finished 5 galleries, I have 3 more sessions to edit, and 5 to shoot this weekend. And I've been running like a headless chicken all week.

I have but one lonely photo to share and it's kind of a miracle that I even made that happen, ha ha. Sorry to post and run, but it's almost tomorrow already and there is laundry to fold, session planning to do and hopefully a bit of sleep before I get up to do it all again.

Hopefully your week was more sane than mine. What have you been up to?

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Sending a huge thank you to all the vet and their families too - Happy Veteran's Day!

Friday Photo Journal, November 4, 2016

Happy weekend friends! This week was packed full of client work, a whirlwind of Halloweening and then more work. Other than a few phone photos I haven't had a chance to import & edit, this week's only personal pics were taken while waiting for a client who was late to our session. So it's a random mash up of things I photographed to kill some time. I hope your week was more exciting than my own. Tell me, what have you been up to?

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Friday Photo Journal, October 28th, 2016

Happy Friday friends! I can hardly believe Halloween is upon us. This month has been a blur. I am enjoying the cooler temps and changing leaves though. And I am looking forward to Trick-or-Treating with the kiddos after a busy weekend.

Last week my wonderful amazing mama threw a Halloween Party for the kids. We played games for prizes, danced, told jokes and riddles, and ate tons of yummy food. It was a blast. My pics this week are from the party. (Thanks Mom!)

Do you celebrate Halloween? 

Link up your posts and play along. Have a great weekend!

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Friday Photo Journal - October 21, 2016

Aside from the 85 degree heat wave this week, it's finally starting to feel a bit like fall around here. The leaves are changing, we did have a spell of cooler weather (until recently) and pumpkin, pumpkin everything is everywhere you turn.

We took a mid-week family trek out to a local farm for some good old-fashioned fun. The kids took a hayride out to the pumpkin patch to choose a fruit from the vine. We met a pig named Carl, got lost in the corn maze, sampled some peanut brittle and had a cotton-pickin' good time! The following is a mix of iPhone pics and DSLR shots from our family fun day on Darden Farm:

What have you been up to?

Link up your posts and play along! 

Thanks for visiting!!

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Friday Photo Journal - October 14, 2016

It's Fridaaaay! Okay, for me that's really more like Monday, but I'm sure most of you are happy the weekend is here. I miss the days when I had weekends free. A couple more months of madness and then I'll enjoy a free weekend and savor every moment.

So my kids didn't want to play any of my reindeer games this week. Instead, I went out alone and played with a little freelensing among the autumn leaves. We really don't have that many colorful leaves here yet, but a little golden light and Photoshop and I can pretend we do. I was eaten alive by mosquitos (nasty suckers) in the process, but after a bath in Caladryl I'm feeling much better.

How was your week?

Thanks for visiting! Please link up your posts below and share to let your friends know. Enjoy your weekend!!

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Friday Photo Journal, October 7, 2016

Happy Friday friends! I hope you are well and safe. There is some crazy weather happening here on the east coast. Hoping everyone steers clear of the danger. It looks like we will only get rain and wind but nothing on the scale of hurricane force. Praying for my friends and family down south this weekend!

This week was pretty much a blur of post wedding exhaustion, marathon editing and homeschooling. Little Miss asked me to go outside and snap a few photos, so I obliged of course, but is wasn't long before the mosquitos chased us away. Other than that I've been mostly chained to my desk in between loads of laundry. Not a very exciting existence lately I'm afraid. Hopefully, once I get over this huge mountain of editing, I will have time for a little more creative shooting. Maybe next week...

What have you been up to?

Oh yes, and I forgot to post this last week. My girl filled in on her friends team for one soccer game. She has never played and went to a couple of practices with her friend. The coach let her scrimmage with them and then asked if she could fill in during a game when they were short players. She played an age group above her own and did fantastic! She got right in there and went for it, no hesitation. We were so proud of her! They didn't win the game but that was a big win in my book. :)

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