Happy (almost/getting closer!) Fall Y'all!

I love summer. Always have. I love warmth, I love the pool, I love flip flops -- summer is just fun.

However, I also love love love fall. Not only is it fun, it smells amazing and it's gorgeous. I am so excited for fall decorations, pumpkins, apple cider and of course Pumpkin Spice Lattes! I am ITCHING to put out my adorable pumpkins I painted in UK blue last fall!

And of course, Halloween. I have my Halloween playlist ready and roaring to go. While normally I have fun at a Halloween party, this year I'll be in Atlanta at a Walking Dead convention...because the nerd in me can't not go & I need to see Norman Reedus in the flesh. Given how many people cosplay at cons....I'm sure I'll be surrounded by plenty of zombies on Halloween this year ;)

But lets be real... the two best things about fall are (well, okay, besides all my shows coming back!):

Bath & Body Works having Pumpkin Pecan Waffles in stock.

A friend of mine spotted the small candles in stores a couple weeks ago and immediately sent them to me. And now I'm the nerd who keeps going to stores every week to see when they plan on releasing the large three wick candles so I can stock up. Last winter I blew through so many of these candles that I resorted to eBay for more. 

And of course....

It's almost Hocus Pocus time! Fall & Christmas are the best times of the year because I can turn on my tv at any given time and find Hocus Pocus or Christmas Vacation. And even though I own both movies, watch both movies year round....I STILL get giddy finding them on tv!

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! 

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! 

A tale of two cousins....

It was partially a gross weekend in Nashville. While we had one beautiful day, we had rain & mud another which = Nicole being as lazy as humanly possible. So, over the weekend some, I've done a little work on something special I've been putting together for the Twin Cousin (also, no, Emily you do NOT get to see this until you get married, so....I get to be a total tease until August-ish!). What happens when you mix a creative mind with a design degree? A ton of freaking ideas.

And in working on this, "Something Borrowed" came on - one of the ultimate favorite movies. I suppose it's because I was working on this specific project, but the moment in the movie prior to the wedding, girls had their obnoxious dance off & curled up on the floor together in a Strawberry Shortcake blanket & discussed how they'd always been there for each other, my mind immediately went to us while watching.

Everyone that doesn't know us laughs when I use the phrase twin cousins, but...if they really knew us, they'd realize just how fitting the title is.

I'm completely rocking Fievel pajamas and Em is rocking pearls & pajamas. Don't hate how adorable this is. Also, fabulous hair has apparently always been a trait. 

As kids, we were always the two cousins that were always together. At a family reunion trying to hunt one of us down? Just ask where the other one was.....(although chances are we were found in the coat area hanging out, talking shit about people. We learned that pretty early on! Or maybe we were catching our siblings giving underage cousins liquor & telling our parents on them. God we were awesome together, even if our siblings wanted to kill us!) 

Or maybe we were on stage knocking down some tunes at karaoke, in our best party dresses with Emily's crimped hair? (Can we talk about how my mom didn't know how to do my hair as a child? If i needed it crimped or braided, one of my aunts had to do it!) 

no one has ever sang material girl quite like two small children at a family reunion. 

I've often said we were more like sisters than cousins - we knew how to fight with each other, we knew how to argue, we knew how to have the best time together, and we knew how to be ridiculous. And at the end of the day, we knew the other always had the others back. (Read: I can totally call her a bitch, but I will cut you if you attempt this!) 

this was a pretty infamous night. "we're running low on cranberry juice already?!'

It's funny that we're states away from each other, but it never feels that way because we spend so much of our time talking/texting/tweeting/fb-ing and have basic twin cousin telepathy brain sharing. 

I mean, who else can I send fabulous gems to like this?

don't hate on our love for Frozen. 

Who else can I be this dramatic with when my flat iron dies?

The answer to that is no one! Love this girl more than life. And I'm so excited to finish up what I'm working on for her! 

5 on Friday time...

Not sure how Friday crept up so quickly - although two days ago I was whining about how long it was taking to get here. I've got my vacation itch, and I just need time to fly by!

It's that time again...

one.

I am still compleeeeeetely bitter about my Once Upon a Time finale, as most of my friends know. Whyyyy must they make it so hard for my faves? And why must they make me want to punch Emma in the face on a regular basis?  Oh how the ending looked oh so happy for a brief shining moment...

I'll let my bitterness subside since two weeks from now, we meet those two (and of course by those two, I mean Lana and Sean)! Hooray for being a nerd, it means I love the shows that do all the good conventions! ;) 

two.

speaking of my shows, I was also totally gutted by Grey's Anatomy this week, but in a much better way. I couldn't have come up with a better send off to Cristina than that, and I ugly cried the entire last 20 minutes. Shonda Rhimes is such a genius. Cristina's "Don't let what he wants eclipse what you need. He's very dreamy but he's not the sun. You are." speech to Meredith was one of my favorite things she's ever said on the show. (And I burst into tears when they had to dance it out once last time!) I was a little sad she didn't have more of a goodbye with Owen, but....it was super fabulous to have an actual Farewell show without her dying! 

three.

the shopaholic in me isn't sure this is a great thing, but Middle TN is now about to have TWO H&M's! which will mean there's one 5 minutes from my house and one 5 minutes from my house. Is my paycheck prepared for this!? 

four.

a week from today we leave for the beach, so the book nerd in me started picking up a couple books I wanted to read while lounging on the beach...this year I really wanted something funny, so one of the books I picked up was "Dear Girls Above Me",  written from a guy's perspective when two ditzy girls moved into the apartment above him. 

five.

tomorrow is laundry day & crashing at my sisters for the night to hang out, which means tonight's my last weekend night at home trying to get stuff together. therefore...

Happy weekend! 

Deep breath...

I don't know how time has flown by & May has crept up on me like this.

In two weeks, it's the annual girls weekend at the beach with the bestie...where the long weekend will be spent staring at this:

(with bottles of wine in hand, of course. Here's to us being the obnoxious ones doing our Tammy and Loretta sing alongs!) This year we changed it from Pensacola Beach to Orange Beach, AL. PB has quite the...interesting...festival going on every Memorial Day Weekend, which also meant it was a hot mess getting anywhere in the town last year! 

We haul back to GA after the beach so Rita can go do a half day at work Tuesday....and then we're off to Knoxville so we can go see this concert:

I haven't seen Dolly in a few years, so I'm super excited -- and Rita hasn't ever seen a full Dolly show! So, our road trip playlist will be heavily on the Dolly side this year. Maybe our beach sing along will change this year? 

And then I get to haul ass home -- so I can re-pack and catch my flight to Orlando! 3 weeks away is Spooky Empire....where we'll finally get to meet these two:

There's other folks from Once Upon a Time there we might check out - probably at our VIP party - but our priority lies with these two. And of course, since the voice of Ursula is going to be there, I'd be super bummed if I didn't get to see her! 

I have two weeks to get ready. I have zero idea what I'm wearing to anything - which is soooo unusual for me. I do, however, have important priorities together - I have my nail polish picked out!