Baking some cookies!

It was bound to happen eventually.....That cold cold winter weather decided to finally visit us Canadians and let me tell you, its been COLD!

So cold, that we have all been stuck in the house for almost 2 weeks now.  We are all going a bit stir crazy and so I decided to do some baking with the kids.

I don't normally bake a lot.  Cooking, yes, baking, no.  I don't find it overly fun to bake.  I find its way too messy, you need to be sooo accurate, not what I enjoy doing.  But, I know that baking with your kids is something that they will always remember so I try to do it every once in awhile for the kids :).

I have always baked with my son, but never with my daughter.  So I thought that it was time to get her in the kitchen helping this time.  She had such a blast decorating the cookies.  But I think she found it more fun to eat the toppings versus decorating.  I think she decorated 2 cookies before she started to eat them lol.

Our cookies before baking.  I had a hard time finding my cookie cutters and ended up with Halloween cookie cutters and a star lol.

She really had a hard time waiting for the cookies to bake.  She couldn't wait to jump into decorating them.  I think she just wanted to eat the toppings lol.

And it's finally decorating time!  She did a great job!

I did manage to get a quick shot of her cookies right before she started shoving them in her mouth lol!

And the taste testing begins lol!

The last picture I had to steal from my instagram feed lol.  This was Xander's Bat that he made.  He decorated a couple of cookies, but was actually busy organising his Pokemon cards, hence why he is kinda absent from these pics.  But he did stop what he was doing for a few minutes to help decorate a few cookies.  

Making a Mess

These are a few pictures from the other day I thought I would share with you guys!  Just a typical day in our house, with the misses doing what she does best.....Making a mess!

I love the bottom picture!  She has recently learned how to blow her nose and everywhere I turn, I find kleenex's lol.  Fun times!

The fun with Studios

Studio or Outdoors.....what do you prefer and why?

I thought I would bring up this wonderful question today due to a little lesson I ended up learning yesterday.  I decided to grab the misses and do a little photo shoot in my studio.  I don't normally grab her and bring her into my studio, and this is just one little reason why!

I wanted to do a little something different and found these cute little snowflake confetti/sequence things.  I decided since they were shiny and silver, that they might make a cute little bokeh effect.  So, I set the stage for her, got the snowflakes up, got my lights adjusted and then brought her down!

This is where I learnt my lesson lol.  Apparently sticking the snowflakes on the wall was a HUGE mistake lol.  She noticed them right off the bat and wanted to play with them.  In the end I got a lot of pictures like this lol.

The snowflakes turned out to be my worst enemy in this case lol.  I even tried giving her a couple that I didn't stick up on the wall, but apparently that wasn't good enough!

I was right though, the snowflakes did work as a cute easy little bokeh effect.  Very cheap, and all I did was stick them to my walls lol.  

I was shocked that out of the many many grumpy/crying faces that I did manage to get a couple decent shots.  Nothing I was overly happy with.  Never again will I stick things on my walls lol!

Here she is getting mad again, and all I wanted was just one shot of her and her fluffy hood :(.  Guess I will have to wait for another day lol.

Almost had one here, but as you can see she is off to the right too much.  Bah, keep trying lol!

Eventually I got a couple chuckles and some smiles, but of course she had to hide her smile!  She really made me work yesterday lol.  

 Here's another example of her awesome stubbornness.  I asked for a smile and told her she could go play with the snowflakes, but I had to have my smile first.  This is what I got lol.  

I tried to change it up but instead she just hid behind some flowers and the black feathers are a mask.  I guess being the child to a photographer isn't always fun and easy lol.

 And then my last picture, she still has the flowers in her hand to hide behind and I tried to get her in the monster hat (it's a really cute hat).  Again, this was the best she gave me and I don't even think it even looks like her lol.

So even though I have my own small studio, I prefer to be an outdoor, natural photographer.  I find it gives me more freedom.  If I am working with small children I do NOT have to worry about keeping them still.  My daughter is a great example of this right now.  She just turned 2 and does NOT care to sit still so mommy can take pictures.  She wants to go and explore.

So, that's why I like to follow her taking pictures of what she does best.  And if she wants to run around, she has all the freedom to do so.  Therefore, most of my pictures of her come out with happy faces because im allowing her to do what she does best.  Being her adventurous 2 year old self!

I am also one of those photographers that enjoy playing around in photoshop.  I love being creative with my photos and pushing them to the extreme.  I find that when I get to edit a series of photos that were taken outside versus studio is so much more fun.

I can really play with colors outside, tweaking them, changing them.  But studio pictures tend to look a bit wonky if you get too creative with them.

Eventually I will get her in the studio on a better day and hopefully with some great pics.  I have so many idea's I would love to do right now, but I guess I will just half to wait a bit longer!

Playing with Sparklers

This weekend has been a very very busy weekend!  Since we are in a brand New Year, I thought it was finally time for me to do some new years cleaning.  This wasn't your normal cleaning though.  It was a cleaning that desperately needed to get done.  I decided it was finally time to part with all my sons baby clothes.  10 years of clothes to be exact!

I originally kept them because I had wanted more children and this way I could save a HECK of a lot of money.  Plus, his clothes, even his baby clothes were still in almost if not perfect condition.  But after 10 years, that's a lot of clothes!

So, I pulled out box after box, garbage bag after garbage bag and started washing.  While I was digging through it all, I found a little unopened package of sparklers.  I have no idea when I bought them and why they never got used.  But once I saw them, it gave me an idea.

I grabbed my oldest and told him we were going to take some fun pics.  Of course he started to complain right off the bat until I mentioned 'We get to play with fire!'.  Well, within seconds he was all for it lol.  

I originally wanted him to make some cool pics with the sparklers.  Lately I keep seeing images like that pop up and wanted to give it a try myself.  But my 10 year old was apparently 'too afraid' of the sparks coming off the sparkler.  Combine that with some really windy weather and I didn't manage to get the images I wanted.

But I did get some fun crazy pics anyways that I thought I would share.  Hope you enjoy!

I had to share this one to show you how afraid he was about the sparks flying off lol.  I kept telling him to move it and this is what he would do lol!

By the end, I figured I would just stick them in the ground and take a few pics (how original right!).  

A Quick Hello!

So another year is over and I cannot wait to jump into this year!.  I know i'm a bit behind, but things have been more than just a bit crazy over here!

Remember my project 365?  Well, just as quick as I started that project, I found myself having nothing but computer problems.  Our house originally had 2 laptops, 2 desktops, and in the past couple of months, we are now down to only one desktop!  Our internet/computer problems I hope are gone for good!

However, I have been extremely busy over here working on some fun stuff.  For those of you who have been following me for a bit may have noticed that my blog has changed :).  I love the new look of my blog and I hope you all do too!

I figured, new year, new look and some other new things that I am not going to get into quite yet (still working hard on them).  I will tell you that there are going to be some really great changes this year with some really great contests and freebies!  

But I will get into more of that a little bit later.  For now I thought I would play a bit of catch up and let you guys see how our holidays went.  This will be a bit of a picture overload:

We started off the month of December with my youngest turning 2.  A couple shots from her opening some gifts.  She couldn't wait to open them lol.

See the little tear on her cheek?  The joys of a 2 year old lol!

The next picture I was trying to get her sitting nicely on her couch playing with her leap pad.  Originally wanted a nice bokeh effect from our christmas tree.  However, every time I tried to take her couch away from the tree so that the lights would look pretty, she would just get mad and push it back lol.  I guess I was told. (Hence the somewhat grumpy face, she was mad at me for constantly moving her away from the tree lol)

We got to play in the snow for the very first time!  Which didn't come until a day or two before Christmas I think.  It's been a very odd winter so far.

We spent time with family and got some really cool new toys!

We ran and ran and ran around soooo much that we tuckered ourselves out!

We had fun opening tons of gifts!  

I had so much fun with my new Doggy!

Xander got a cool Bug holder and has been busy trying to find bugs!

And my hubby gave me something I couldn't wait to get my hands on.  A Bamboo Tablet!  OMG LOVING IT!