Today is the first day of Spring, which I am so excited for, yet we are having a huge snowstorm to replace all the snow that we had melt already. Spring-like weather will come eventually, once its ready. As quite a few people know, I love Spring- the flowers popping up, the fresh smell in the air, watching the daily progress of buds opening on trees. What is there not to love about it? This  past Sunday, Justin was feeling under the weather with a cold so but I managed to convince him to bundle up and go for a little walk out to the maple woods. I remember as a child going to a family members sugar shack and we decided that it was time to go again. The closest one to us here in Moncton was only about a 10 minute drive and a few minutes walk into the woods. Its a bit magical walking on a trail and suddenly seeing buckets hanging all over the trees. We sampled quite a few maple goodies while on the walk…

I love seeing the buckets! Only one of the camps still uses buckets, the rest use pipes to bring in the sap to be boiled.

This is at the Trites Family Camp, where we spent most of our time. They also have a pancake house if anyone is interested! We were going to get some but the line was quite long! I am sure they would be worth waiting for though..

Inside the Taffy House is where all the magic happens. On the left they are boiling maple sap to around 235 degrees to pour into the snow and make maple taffy. On the right is where they put giant tubs of sap and boil it until about 230 degrees to make maple candies. Yum!!

Here are blocks of maple candy (its almost like fudge but with no other ingredients) and the next picture is of mini ice cream cones that they fill with maple candy. Such a sweet treat!

Are you going to check out a maple sugar camp this year? Have you  been to one in the past?

Yesterday I decided to get a few images of Hunter in the studio. All he did was lay on the floor and act silly! I can’t wait for warmer weather so I can get outdoors for more pictures of him!

It’s so hard to believe that it’s Christmas Eve already! We are spending the evening with our parents, playing board games and just hanging out. I just want to wish everyone a very merry Christmas! I will be signing off for the next few days and can’t wait to be back on here logging a wedding and a few other things too!

One of my favorite things about winter time is Christmas! I love Christmas for the time I get to spend with friends and family, the pretty lights on almost every house, and the Christmas decor that I get to put all throughout my house. Its so hard for me to believe that Christmas is only 18 days away!! I have a little bit of shopping to do, still have to mail gifts to Ontario and haven’t even started wrapping yet, but that’s ok because those are the things that I love to do. Tomorrow, I have 9 ladies from my mom’s side of the family coming to my house to spend the day shopping, go to the Living Christmas Tree performance, go out to eat a nice dinner and then spend the night. I can’t wait! I put all the finishing touches on our house this past week getting ready for them to come.

I thought I would share a few pictures that I took of our Christmas decorations! Our tree is stuffed this year with all our ornaments! I’ve been collecting ones that I love over the past few years from different places like Crate & Barrel, Canadian Tire and Super Store. I think that next year I need a bigger tree!

I made those cone trees last year from felt and Styrofoam cones. It took forever to cut out all the circles but I love them so much!

This is the first year that I’ve ever forced paper whites for Christmas. I Think I may have started mine a little late to enjoy for the 25th but that means they will be perfectly in  bloom for when we get back to Moncton from visiting our families.

Have you started decorating yet? Do you like to keep it simple or go all out?

I thought, going into this that it would be easy for us to get an image of Justin and I with Hunter and Maverick to send out with our Christmas cards. Well, was I ever wrong. I never thought that Hunter would think Maverick’s hat was his toy and that he would try to get it off his head, that it would be so hard to get Maverick to stay with us. At least we get a few smiles out of these images!

When we started, it looked like we would be able to have a moderate amount of success

and went down hill from there…

I love my family!

We may have gotten one image that will work for our cards, I post it here once the cards are sent it we end up using it.

I’ve been so lucky over the past few weeks to go to Halifax a couple of times. The first time, it was for the wedding of two adorable friends, which I will do a post about soon. The other time, Justin had to go for work, so I went with him and spent the day visiting with friends. For supper, we went to Kristin and Jad’s house, which has so full of warmth and love. We were there about a week after my birthday and a few days before Kristin’s so we had a little birthday celebration. Sometimes all you need is a day spent with dear friends to make your heart feel full and content.

Ode to Autumn. I have spoken about how much  I love the change in seasons because of the leaves changing colour, warmer blankets on the bed, the return of pumpkin spice latte’s and the nice, crisp feel to the air.

Cooked a few new dishes thanks to an amazing cook book that I bought! Justin and I have eaten gluten free for the month of October and thanks to La Tartine Gourmande, it was fairly easy! Its not only meant for gluten free cooking, it is a super cookbook that is based on French cuisine, which everyone knows I love! So far I have tried the Gorgonzola and Pear Risotto, Hazelnut Molten Lava Chocolate Cakes, as well as a couple others. I would highly recommend this book!

Time with family for Thanksgiving. I wish I had taken pictures of my family over Thanksgiving weekend… I only ended up taking a few images of the leaves, the fall decor and a few of Hunter. I will do better next time that I am home!

B00! Halloween.. I missed almost all the kids coming to our house since I was away for an engagement session but that doesn’t mean that I forgot to decorate! I didn’t dress up this year but I plan to next year! Winners had some pretty cute Halloween decorations this year, including the sparkley owl snow globe pictured here.

Engagement session in Fredericton. I love that scheduling the engagement session worked out so well that it made it so I could turn it into a little day trip so that I got to see my mom too!

Really unsure if I should admit that I already started listening to Michael Bublé singing some Christmas music… Maybe its a bit early to start listening to it, maybe not. But I love it and the Christmas season!

What I am looking forward to in November: Christmas decorating and music (especially Michael Bublé’s Christmas album!!), visits with family, my birthday, spending time to finish unpacking our basement!

Sitting here in my office today, I have been editing a few different photo sessions and once I started to edit these photographs of the gorgeous, colourful leaves, I knew I couldn’t resist doing another post on them! I just LOVE how pretty they are. My only wish is that fall would last just a little bit longer and we wouldn’t have such a long, cold Winter after. I really want to go Apple picking… its the epitome of the season to me! I hope that Justin and I are able to get out this weekend before all the apples are gone.

Being close to the end of October also means that Halloween is near and I have done nothing to get our costumes ready yet! I need to go buy some treats (which I have been putting off as long as possible so I can resist eating them before the kids come) and decorate our front porch with pumpkins. While I was out on a walk a few days ago with Hunter, a couple of girls in my neighborhood suggested that we dress Hunter up like a bunny for Halloween since he already has a bunny tail and all he would need is a set of bunny ears. Kids can be so clever!

I am just loving all the fall colour that we have this time of year! I am so excited to post a few engagement sessions and family photo sessions that I have coming up very soon! The leaf colours and the fall light make for such beautiful images! I took Hunter outside a few days ago to get a few pictures of him with the pretty colours and took a few of Maverick too since he does not seem to make it on the blog here very often anymore.

Maverick’s favourite place is laying on the end of our bed with the sun streaming in through our windows onto him.

Hunter is starting to desperately need a trim, his shadow on the sidewalk makes it look like I walk a shaggy wolf! I love the row of burning bush that my neighbour planted along our property line! It is so pretty and makes me wish it was ours!

Ahh, we are back to the comfy cozy weather of fall. Lots of blankets, ugg boots, pumpkin spice everything and gorgeous leaves on the trees and blanketing the ground. While Justin and I were away for the Thanksgiving weekend, my mom and I went for a walk on one of her favorite trails through the woods behind my parents house. She walks it in nice weather and snowshoe’s the trail in snowy weather. Who can blame her with the view you have at the top of the hill! One of the paths through the woods always reminds us of the Haunted Woods Trail from the  Anne of Green Gables movies. I took a few pictures of the gorgeous fall colours for you to enjoy with me!

I love how far we can see in this picture! In the right, foreground of the picture, you can see a church steeple peeking out of the trees. My parents house is right behind that.

Haunted looking?

And of course, one of Hunter who LOVED the walk! He ran the whole thing off the leash with a stick in his mouth and had the time of his life!