Christmas Music

Christmas music is my thing. I'm obsessed. In college I did a pretty fantastic job of driving my roommates nuts with music 24/7 during the month of December.  Unfortunately for them, I think maybe I passed the obsession on.  Over the years, I've amassed quite the collection.  In case you're also obsessed, this is the best Christmas CD I've ever heard. An unlikely source, perhaps (or maybe not considering their televised Christmas show).   I've checked stores every year and have never again seen them put out a holiday CD. Boooo. Fingers crossed for this year.

You can download/listen to the full collection here and here.

Family Photos - Thanksgiving 2011

We took the opportunity of all of us being in the same state to take some family photos.  These take a little bit of planning since we take the photos ourselves (although we had a little help from Beau's brother).  I started out looking for some inspiration, for ideas on posing and outfits.  Finding photos of adult families is a little bit tougher than I'd imagined.  It seems most family photos include children and are largely centered around the kids.  We have puppies, but they don't always cooperate so well!  With plans to take photos on the beach in the fall, I ran into even less photo inspiration.  We eventually decided on whites, creams and khaki and took some inspiration from the photos below by Kelly Stocksen Photography.

I love coordinating outfits, but coordinating 6 people of different ages and with no idea of what they owned was a bit of a challenge.  Overall, I think we did pretty great!

We took the first bunch on Thanksgiving day.  Due to the turkey time window, we had to take these in the afternoon in bright sun.  Not real ideal for great shots or cooperation.

We tried to move into the shade for some shots with the pups.

And maybe being a little silly.

We had better luck the next day with perfectly overcast skies.

I'll spare you the other 600!

Charleston Recap

I loooooooove this city.  Everywhere you look, something is gorgeous.  Here's a photo tour of all our fun, starting with lunch at Virginia's.

There's no point in attempting to eat healthy on vacation.

Now for our walking tour...

Shopping on King Street

I did some damage in here.  More on that later!

Every home had a little garden with beautiful landscaping and cute window boxes.

Check out the gas light!

Dude with a parrot.

Beau found a craft brew store that sold Coast Brewing out of Charleston.

We found Santa.

And some fun alleys where we did a lot of this.

I can't wait to go back!