Christmas 2015

Finally! I'm baaaaack.

And probably no better time to come back than to recap Christmas! (And as I draft my best of 2014 post, I swear I'll post it Wednesday, and it WILL be filled with tons of pics I neglected to post the past few months :) ) I haven't even pulled photos  off my camera yet, so....here's some iPhone documentary.

As usual, I spent Christmas with the kiddos, Sis & my Mom. Sam was sick, Paige was getting over being sick, so it was a little more low key than usual, but it was a really really great day. Even with the sicklings, we were able to still go out for our annual Christmas Day movie, and Sam was able to stay away for a little while!

The kids had a pretty awesome haul present-wise. We are past the "Santa" phase now, but of course still put stockings together. As usual, Mom and John were out early - but Samantha was too, trying to get some sleep. Even without Santa - I struggled to get Short Stuff to bed! :) He was so excited, he couldn't stand it!

The kids loaded all the presents under, around, and behind the tree. Every few minutes, Short Stuff would remind me IT WAS ALMOST CHRISTMAS!

Christmas Eve antics with the babes. 

The babes ended up waking Mom & I up around 6:45, so it was the usual "you can open your stockings until we eat breakfast and everyone else is awake, then you can open presents" - but Kadin got lucky & Samantha ended up waking around 7 anyway!

The kids got a great haul this year...I swore I was cutting back this year, but....I legit did not. And neither did Mom or Sam really, so they made out pretty well! 

Some of Kadin's loot!

With his Guardians of the Galaxy dvd -- which ended up being some of our Christmas Day viewing! (And yes, we WERE watching Frozen Christmas Morning. No shame, Paige and I were loudly singing along before present opening started)

This was an "almost all eyes were on Short Stuff!" moment. 

Mom made out pretty great too -- it was a super Olaf Christmas for her :) 

I was pretty excited about two of the gifts I got my sis: the Fiona Goode Funko Pop (AHS FTW!) & a Kate Spade mug. I'm a good sis!)

Every year we have to put gifts to the side that are breakables because otherwise...Kadin would have them all over the place Christmas morning when trying to pass them out! This year the breakables pile was also pretty much the "this is a special thing, you need to open last!" gift, which had one for me, Mom, Sam and Paige. I missed getting a pic of Mom on the phone, but hers was this singing Olaf that Paige was SO INSANE PROUD OF. 

And then Paige....

She got this gorgeous music box that Mom had ordered for her MONTHS ago. It had some pretty great wording on it about Granddaughters and Grandmother bonds & it made Paige cry, so it was a pretty successful gift.

And Samantha....

got an iPad mini! Successful Christmas all around! Paige was going to get her this, but she and John ended up going in on it together :) 

And I made out pretty fabulously, I must say. I suppose my family and friends know me a little too well, because the number of incredible Disney, Clark Griswold, stuff from my show gifts I got was pretty amazing. 

My "must open last" gift was from my sister, who made my day with these:

I know everyone knows my massive love for not only Disney, but Disney villains, and I REALLY wanted these ornaments -- since I planned on a Nightmare Before Christmas mixed with other villains on the tree next year. And I was off to a great start with it this year with a couple of my Evil Queen ornaments. But these....these I was A) surprised my sister spent so much and B) did not expect! 

My mom majorly upped the game this year (she even got me the Queen wine glass I wanted?! And went to the Cash Museum to get me the Johnny Cash calendar I wanted? Best Mom ever?) 

BECAUSE NOTHING IN THE WORLD IS BETTER THAN CLARK PAJAMAS! Thanks Mom! Clearly, mom knew that Christmas Day pajamas are pretty important to my sister & I - (hence why she wore her Christmas Story shirt & I my moose ear shirt. We actually only wore these because we forgot to buy matching footie pajamas - yes we really wanted to do that!), SOOO she got my sister Elf.  Oh  yeah - Christmas Day PJ game just got upped a notch. 

So the twin cousin sent me the most AMAZING Disney Princess shirt & a Macy's Gift Card. In my day after Christmas shopping, I spotted this tea infuser pot at Macy's and lost my mind. I was SO EXCITED! I make tea every night, so I was SO stoked to use this the night I bought it  - and paired it with this new mug Paige got me! 

No, guys....you know how much I love Edward Scissorhands (still one of the top 5 movies ever made, don't EVEN try to tell me otherwise), so I completely geeked out over this makeup bag. And not only did my sister buy me this, she put a Jack and Sally mirror in it!/ What!? Best Christmas Ever?

For our Christmas Movie this year, we chose Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. Mainly because we love that line of movies, it's a good family choice, and we've seen them all in the theater so far. But the fact that it's one of Robin Williams very last movies made it a little more bittersweet. It wasn't as great as the first two, but it was a good movie, gave us a lot of laughs, had us repeating lines the whole way home -- and certainly had us in tears at some of Robin's last lines. They did a beautiful tribute line to Robin & Mickey Rooney at the end with "The Magic Never Ends" afterwards, and that also made us cry. 

Merry Christmas everyone!


PS: Paige and I both got so much Disney stuff - me a mix of Villains, Snow White & Ariel, Paige with Ariel and Ursula and I can't even begin to say how much more excited this made us for Disney in March! 

Catching up...

Okay, Okay....I dropped off the blogosphere for awhile, I know.

I'm doing a little work on here to clean up the blog & revamp a little bit, and before too long I will be back to blogging on a super regular basis!

Just a little pic spam of the time I HAVEN'T blogged...

My mom wins for giving me the best birthday cake ever. 

Also to celebrate my birthday, we hit Atlanta for Dragon Con so I could see my sweet Sean Maguire! Sigh, I never ever get tired of seeing this man.

as evidenced by our six million pictures together.

my beautiful girl graduates in May. This means....Aunt Nicole had to do senior portraits. 

The coffee truck is often the bane of my existence. 

Larry & I are as usual, keeping Nashville Movie Industry in business.

Independence Day!

Soooo much to update. Where do I actually begin? It's been a whirlwind July, that's for sure. But while the first half of the month flew by, the second half is going to drag. I have finally given myself some time off!

Aside from working & being caught up in wedding shooting, what's been going on? Backing up the the holiday weekend...

4th of July was of course, fabulous with the family. Salem was visiting us this year, so we got some great Sasa time in! We really did nothing but have a great cookout by the pool, with our family & John's family.

Love my kiddos! Paige had to work - our first year of not having her around for a holiday! She was none too pleased to miss our annual fireworks, but things change when you join the working world!

and obviously, sis & I had to snapchat the twincousin. 

Because what else would we do out by the pool?

The boys did the usual firework show...giving us heart attacks. Well, I say us but it was mom, Salem (ah, thank goodness my niece is a smart one!) & I that kept panicking as Kadin kept helping with the fireworks. And we worried for good reason, since Kadin set one off on uneven surface, it tipped & shot out at us! Enter panic mode hahaha. Salem, Mom & I were the wusses that stood off to the side of the house & held our  breath everytime Kadin chimed in to help with the fireworks.

But, we had some really really beautiful fireworks! I've had little time to actually work on many of my firework pics, but a couple faves were:

New meaning to lit up the sky!

Sparklers with my Sasa! 

Mom & I went to Hurricane Mills on Saturday to see the Loretta Lynn show again - this time to see the Conway Twitty tribute. It was a great trip & a pretty great day with Mom. Since the bestie was handling things after her mother's sad passing that week, she didn't get to come with us this time around. So weird to be there without her, and given the circumstances, I certainly appreciated time with my mom a little more. 

Happy Tuesday--- can this week fly by now? Because I actually have a free weekend to do NOTHING, or even go hang out with my friends! Not only do I have this weekend, I gave myself THREE WEEKENDS in a row! Go me!

Weekend Ramblings...

The weekend is here! The sis is out of town - for once getting to go on a vacation on her own to Florida! So, in an effort to A) make sure my nephew is properly taken care of in his fathers care, hahah and B) give the nephew and BIL a break from each other, tomorrow I'm picking up Short Stuff to go do some stuff. Not surprisingly, he picked a movie to go see. Surprisingly, he picked a movie from the $2.00 theater and lunch beforehand. What's that, a trip to the movies where Aunt Nicole isn't paying $70+ for everything he wants? Score!

The rest of my weekend will be spent editing, making a few things for myself, and.....planning some trips. Because lets face it, traveling is my life.

So this is what I'm considering now. There's this AMAZING new Con in April in Paris. (And sweet Jesus, it's at a Disneyland Hotel. Is there EVER a con that's screamed my name more??!) And I saw it and toyed with the idea, thinking "Let me see what cast members they get first". But then some of my friends decided they are going, and I should go and we can all have a blast in Paris together.

And what can I say, I'm slowly giving into peer pressure ;-) This week I started looking into it more...and then the official "Paris" pinterest board was created. I guess I'm considering this more seriously than I thought! 

But for now, Paris planning has to wait, because a 12 year old boy is waiting on me to take him to see the Muppets! 

Happy weekend!

enter fangirl mode...

While it feels like my life lately has been a ton of fangirl squealing, I actually HAVE been super busy doing sessions & editing!

But today....today, the fangirl in me came out again today. I have zero shame for the fangirling I do for my show. Which is why I was pretty stoked to run into Colin O'Donoghue today in Nashville! He's in Nashville filming a movie before Once Upon a Time goes back into production - lucky us! So yes, I took today off to get my picture with Captain Hook.

Such a sweetheart he was, immediately signing our stuff (and now that I've got my S2 DVD signed, I need the rest of the cast to sign it!), engaging in a quick conversation about how different he looks (because let's face it: he looks so baby faced without the scruff and guy-liner!) & taking photos with us!

Since we didn't expect to actually get him until our Vancouver trip to the set of the show, we were super excited to see him today!

/endfangirlmode

Moving on, little man & I went to see Maleficent! I have been SO EXCITED for months that they were making a movie about Maleficent. I was less than thrilled when Jolie got cast for the part, but....considering she's one of the greatest Disney Villains of all time, I sucked it up!

Ever since he was little, I've had the tradition of taking Kadin's pic in front of the movie poster we're going to see. Thank goodness he still lets me do it!

SIGH. This falls in the "Aunt Nicole is such a sucker" category. I let him get churros, a large popcorn and a large drink all before we had dinner.

I was so captivated by Maleficent. I kept hearing they changed the ending, and wasn't sure what I would think, but I loved it! And I love that Kadin watched Sleeping Beauty the night before we went so he could compare the two - love this kid! They really did a fabulous job on the story - on Maleficent's back story, and bringing the whole Sleeping Beauty story back in the spotlight. 

And I probably never saw myself saying this, but...Angelina was actually the perfect casting for the role.

After letting Kadin digest all that ridiculous junk, I took him to Johnny Rockets. Is it any surprise he wasn't very hungry & barely ate any of his dinner?? The perks of being the awesome aunt. (Plus the little runt talked me into buying him another wrestling set. These kids will kill my credit card!)

I could sit at their booths all day -- I love the nostalgia! I wish the jukeboxes worked....

Back to photo editing I go....Happy Mid-week!

Full Circle...

I've blogged so many times about how easy it is to get photographer burnout. The struggle is real when I overbook myself on sessions, or when I take on more weddings than I really should. I've often been grateful I chose to take the design route in college for work, and opt for running my photography on the side - because it always helped me enjoy shooting more. Eventually, I'm going to fully learn how to not spread myself thin during the busy seasons of the year.

Editing today, I was reminded why I love doing what I do. Over the weekend, I was so happy to meet sweet week & a half old baby Lucian. I've been looking forward to meeting this little guy for months.

Lucian's parents were referred to me 2 1/2 years ago when they got engaged, when we did their engagement session:

It wasn't long after we struck up a great friendship - these two are just precious and the most perfect couple for each other. It wasn't long after, these two crazy kids got married at the gorgeous, gorgeous Belle Meade Plantation.

It was a "I will never let anyone else take our photos" relationship, or as Angela repeatedly told me at her wedding, "You're my girl, no one else is allowed to take our pictures! You're my girl!" And although she was slightly intoxicated, I knew I really would be the only one to do their photos ;-)

Which brings us to a few months after the wedding, when we did their first family session at home, after the "newlywed" phase was over.

And then in September, I got the news Little L was on his way! When they found out the sex in December, she immediately text me (bursting in excitement, mainly because she just had to spill the beans to someone the sex of the baby) to set up a gender reveal session so they could announce to the family. 

A few ideas tossed around, and we decided the best way to announce the gender was with some Cowboy Boots! Nothing describes these two quite like "Country", with their cozy little barn in the middle of nowhere. So Grandma bought brown boots and pink boots....and anxiously awaited for me to upload a photo on Facebook to announce to their friends which pair of boots Little L would be wearing....

But their sessions (obviously) don't end there, because we squeeze just one more in before little man decided to make his arrival...

And that brings us to this now, where Little Lucian comes in. I couldn't think of a better way to spend my Sunday than doing a session with this little lovebug and snuggling and smooching him after. I'm super fortunate to do what I do - not only for the incredible memories I get to create, but for the cases like this where I also make  some incredible friendships.

I've been dying to get this shot, but no newborns lately have gone into such a deep sleep to let me get them situated. Lucian crashed right at the end of his session & I wanted to get a shot of him sleeping with his Woody from Toy Story doll -- and that sweet baby slept so well that I decided to jump on my book shot! 

Welcome to the world sweet baby Lucian, I can't wait to watch you grow up! 

Once Upon a Time....

I know I love to throw out “Best weekend ever!” quite often, but I soooo whole heartedly mean it for this past weekend.  Here I go, entering total fangirl mode:

Somehow, in my years of being a total TV nerd, I’d never hit a con before. While I loved the idea of doing something like Comic Con since most of the time my “Once Upon a Time” peeps are there – it’s so incredibly large and intense! So when OUAT peeps got added to Spooky Empire, it seemed like a great opportunity. And when Lana Parrilla got added – there was no way around skipping this con. This con is typically a Horror convention (Robert Englund typically appears to be the most popular there each year), and this was their first year branching out a little bit. It was a massive success, as the crowd Lana attracted was INSANE. Even after years of fan fair, I’ve never seen anything like her lines.  Clearly, the Evil Queen is QUITE loved.

Fortunately, we were VIP Pass holders. VIP passes got to get in the doors an hour earlier, and then we also got to jump the auto and photo lines.

I flew out of Nashville Friday  to Orlando with an old friend Robin. Immediately we got off the plane and saw this Snow White figure sitting outside the Disney World shop. So obviously I did what any Evil Queen fan would do—I choked Snow White so I could tweet it to Lana. Starting the trip off right.

Spooky is a GREAT con, although slightly unorganized in some aspects. We picked up our VIP passes and immediately rushed to the photo op table so we could purchase a photo op with Lana for the weekend. Instead of letting us buy an op for a specific day (she had a scheduled photo op for Saturday and then for Sunday) – the photographer gave us our passes and said to use it either day. Yikes! That meant they had NO IDEA how many people would be at the Saturday op and Sunday op. We had planned on Saturday, but it seemed like a horrible idea to tell people they could use it whenever when Lana attracts such a crazy, intense crowd & was on a tight schedule. But we breathed a huge sigh of relief when we had our passes in hand.

We spent our Friday after that in the rest of the Once Cast room - getting our favorite guy – Sean Maguire. Swoon, Swoon, Swoon. Love this guy, and aside from being ridiculously hot,  he’s one of the sweetest ever and crazy talented. No really, I love this guy. Once is my jam, and I’ve been in love with Josh Dallas since I started watching it, but….Sean took his place super quick.

I was so "I need to look nice for Sean, I will meet him when I look nice!" and then we walked in and I was like oh sweet Jesus. But oh well - I was at least wearing my Evil Queen tee. 

We had our “hooray, we survived getting Lana Parrilla photo passes!” celebration at this awesome place at Universal Citywalk. Seriously, our hotel could not have been in a more awesome location – directly across the street was Universal Studios, so it took us about 6 minutes to get back in the actual park area of Universal and boom, we’re overwhelmed with places to eat.

Saturday marked the arrival of the Queen, and when I say it was crazy, I mean IT WAS CRAZY. Even the staff said “I’ve never seen anything like this!”  They weren’t really prepared for her crowd, as evidenced by a bit of a mess the lines for her were. There are only 200 VIP passes, but I swear 90% of those people got in Lana’s line. We were in the first few folks in Lana’s line,  surrounded by so many great folks. The most awesome part about Once’s fan base is there was SUCH a variety of people there. Everyone aging from 2 years to 15 to 20 to 40 to 80, women with friends, husbands tagging along with some – it was just such a great variety of people. And when she walked in the room, people went crazy. There was something heartwarming about seeing the 65 year old woman in line with us screaming for the Evil Queen.

I’ve met so many celebrities in my time, and I make no exaggerations when I say that Lana Parrilla is hands down THE absolute nicest one I’ve ever met in my life. This is zero exaggeration. It’s quite rare – especially when it’s someone THIS popular that had lines snaking all the way down the hotel outside – for someone to want to know your name, hold fans hands as they talk to her, intently listening, commenting on their stories – and flat out CRYING with some fans.  No one was rushed through – while it looked like you might be, she wasn’t having any of that. Some of us spent 5 minutes asking questions, telling her what we thought about the show, current storyline – or in my case, asking a specific question about an episode. And that split second I said I wanted to ask about this episode, she stopped what she was doing to intently listen. I was so so impressed. Impressed enough that we went through Lana’s lines multiple times, giving us a total of 5 meetings with her. Cons are quite expensive, especially when you start adding up the cost of meeting some of the higher priced ones like her (especially since we had to pay for our photo op separately…you don’t even want to know what we spent on autographs and photos on top of everything else this trip!), but man it’s worth every penny. Everything I got signed I got exactly what I wanted – down to my favorite line of hers on the show. This people, is how you treat your fans. Pure class.

It’s hard to believe it got even better Saturday night with the VIP party, but it did. More time with the swoon worthy Sean, and grabbing some time with a few of the other cast members. (Who knew we’d love Rebecca Mader as much as we did when we hated her character all season!? And Lee Arenburg is a total sweetheart!)  It was a “is this real life?” moment.  And bless Sean’s heart for trying to get us an Outlaw Queen pic we wanted so desperately. It didn’t work with the mob, but man I love this guy.

Have I mentioned how much I love this man!?

The Wicked Witch is actually a MASSIVE sweetheart! 

And Lee Arenburg is far from Grumpy!

The cast panel was Sunday morning, and not only was it a FABULOUS panel (probably one of my favorites, but I’m an Outlaw Queen nerd, so having the two of them together on the panel for the first time probably has something to do with that), Sean made sure we got the gold we’d been wanting all weekend!

Part of the cast panel.

and our beloved Outlaw Queen!

and then the gold! Sean and Lana totally played everything up and we got exactly what we wanted.

We loved the last one so much we had to have it printed & make Lana sign it before we left – which almost made us late catching our flight home! (No seriously, we were massive panicking in Lana’s line Sunday, but we refused to leave. Once they said she was running late, we played the “Okay, she gets 30 more minutes. Okay, we can give her 30 MORE minutes if we have to. Okay….maybe we’re getting a little panicked.”) But alas, something in the Universe wanted us to get it signed, and we not only made it to the airport in time, MCO put us in the expedited security line so we’d get to our gate even quicker.

Seriously, best weekend ever. I’m such a tv junkie.  I’m so sad it’s over. We’ll be heading to Vancouver soon to visit the set and that can’t get here quick enough. But first…..we’ll hit Dragon Con so we can see our Sean again!