The Festivities Continue

Christmas is only 5 sleeps away and I feel like I still have tons to do, but all fun things; gift buying, gift wrapping, baking! I have two days of work left, as in my day job, and then I'm off for 11 days. I will not see my office cubicle again until 2012! Over the holidays, aside from 3 family dinners and many lunch and dinner dates with friends, I have 2 weddings to bake for, so I look forward to sharing some photos with you late next week.

This past weekend I did a bit of Christmas baking, I made Hershey Macaroon Bars and Hershey skor cheesecake bites. The cheesecake bites are to die for!! If you would like to give them a try you can find the recipe here.

Sunday we went to the Festival of Lights at VanDusen Botanical Gardens. It was beautiful!!! Definitely put me in the Christmas mood seeing all the lights, and sipping on apple cider. If you decide to check it out, I highly recommend pre-purchasing your tickets on-line, the line up for those who did not pre-purchase was out of hand. I've included a few of my favourite photos of the evening.

Last night I decided to do some gift wrapping, which proved to be a challenging task with a Kitten in the room. I think he'll be more happy playing with wrapping paper than he will his new scratching post.

Before I go I wanted to share a photo from Help Portrait. You may have read my previous blog post about the amazing event, and now that the photographers have all uploaded their photos I was able to find a photo of the man who really touched my heart. I really hope his family enjoys his portrait, and hopefully he comes back next year, along with many more people from the Maple Ridge Community. 

Help Portrait Experience

This is a non cake post today, I did have a few orders this past week, some mini cupcakes and cake pops, but I forgot to snap photos, and well you’ve all seen my cupcakes before.

Instead of cakes this week I wanted to share my experience at Help Portrait this weekend. When I heard about the event I immediately wanted to be a part of it. I know that I take thousands of photos, whether it’s of myself, me and Brad, Hank, family, friends, you name it I’ll photograph it. When I was younger, going out on the weekends, people would call me Paparazzi because I was always taking photos.  I never think twice about taking out my DSLR or my iPhone, I was even lucky enough to have a photo shoot done by eau naturelle photography a few weeks back so that I could have some professional head shots done for my website and promo material. But not everyone has the luxury to have professional photos done. On Saturday the event started at 1pm and by 12:40 we had people showing up to have their photo taken. I was a greeter, so I had the pleasure of meeting everyone and signing them in, seeing all the kids show up in their best outfits, big smiles, I couldn’t help but feel emotional. I was only able to stay until 3pm, as I had prior commitments for the rest of the day, but 20 groups came through during the 2 hours that I was signing people in, and between the Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows locations on Saturday we took the photos of over 100 groups of people. Groups ranged in size from one to three or four; even a family of 10!!!

So many amazing people showed up, but one person stuck with me the most, a man came in right around 1pm, he wanted to have his photo taken so that he could send it to his children and grandchildren in Pemberton. He hasn’t seen his children in 20 years and his grandchildren only know him from photos he’s sent. He took off his jacket to show me the moose hide vest he had picked out to wear just for this occasion, it had beautiful beadwork all over the front and back; he was so proud of it. He told me he contemplated wearing a cowboy hat, but decided against it. After he had his photo taken he was waiting for them to be printed and I ask him how it went. He told me the photographer had him do at least 20 different poses and he felt like a movie star; it melted my heart! The smile on his face as he left with 2 professional portraits to send to his family almost had me in tears.  

Sometimes this time of the year can be all about finding the right gift for someone, and so much money being spent, but Saturday reminded me that it’s not about how many gifts you get, or how much money you spend, it’s about spending the holidays with the family and friends that you love.  Big thanks to Brenda Garcia and Matt Brennan for organizing the Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows Help Portrait events; I can’t wait until next year to be a part of this amazing event again J

I’ve included a photo of myself from Saturday, all of the volunteers wore reindeer ears or santa hats, I opted for the ears ;)

Festive Mode

Sunday was our Customer Appreciation Open House and I can’t even tell you how happy I was with the turn out. I have such an amazing group of family, friends and clients; you know who you are! I really can’t thank you all enough for your support. Hopefully we can make this an annual event.

Here is a photo of the cupcakes from Sunday. Unfortunately I don’t have any other photos because I was too busy mingling around, in hindsight I probably should have hired a photographer; oh well there is always next year!

I was so excited about the turn out from our open house I had to start off with that, but on Saturday Brad and I visited the AlouetteTree Farm to pick out and cut down our very first REAL tree. We lived in an apartment building for our last 2 Christmas’s, so we had a fake tree, but since our move in July I have been looking forward to the chance to have a real tree this year. So Saturday afternoon off we went! We showed up, found the apple cider (I was looking forward to this and the hot dogs almost as much as the tree hehe) and a saw and headed out into the field. We wandered around and I marked a few as “maybe’s” by putting a stick horizontally on some of the top branches of the chosen trees. At first I wanted a really big and full type of tree, and brad wanted a little Charlie Brown tree, but we came to a compromise, we found a super nice tree, about shoulder height with sturdy branches. As we walked down the path to pay for it, people we’re commenting on our “little” tree, but I think it’s cute! We grabbed a hot dog and then headed home, but not before spilling a huge GLOB of mustard on my sweater. To those who know me, this is not a surprise, I’m known for spilling on myself, so much so that Brad started calling me “napkin” a few years back and now I’ve graduated to “tea towel” :S

Here are a few photos from our adventure.

 My first choice

Brad's first choice

 Our TREE

 I couldn't be trusted with the saw LOL

We put the tree up Sunday night, but decided to wait and see how Hank handled the tree before adding the ornaments. So far so good, we woke up yesterday morning and the tree was still standing. Let’s hope I didn't just jinx myself!

Just checkin it out!

Someone has a sweet tooth

Next saturday is our first Christmas party of the season, and during the day i'll be volunteering at the Maple Ridge Help Portrait Event. Have you heard of it? It's an event geared towards professionally photographing those in need in our community. The Pitt Meadows event is from 9am-4pm at the Pitt Meadows Heritage Hall and the Maple Ridge event is from 1pm-8pm at St. Andrew's United Church. 

http://helpportraitridgemeadows.com/about