Ivy and Tanner came from Alberta for their wedding in Lunenburg so I had never met them before the wedding day, but they are the type of couple who makes you feel like a part of the family right away. As soon as I walked into the bridal suite where Ivy and her girls were getting ready, I felt like I was photographing a group of friends, not clients. They had a gorgeous wedding whose focus was on God and their marriage, not just on their wedding day. I loved everything they planned for the day- the amazing reception location, decor and the beautiful ceremony.

They have an amazing engagement story and I want to share part of it here, written by Ivy and Tanner themselves:

We had a really fun day filled with roses, skating, swimming, Remedy cafe (my favorite), West Ed Sea Caverns with fish, reptiles, and penguins, dressed up for a fondue dinner (which Tanner prepared!) and then made some hot chocolate in order to end the day off with a walk along Connor’s Hill. So we are walking towards a projector for about 5 minutes that was set up on the hill overlooking the downtown, and me being oblivious didn’t even notice until I was right in front of it, at which time I screamed and asked what he was doing! My friends and family all having a part to play in the video Tanner made. It made me cry, of course, because of all the work he put into it, how thoughtful it was, and hearing the voices of people I miss a lot. So after that how could I say no? He proposed with the box upside down, and I said without any hesitation YESSS!!!!!!!!

The post ahead is HUGE! Sorry for posting so  many images… I just could not choose any less!

Ivy, you are stunning!

Ivy and Tanner folded all sorts of origami cranes and strung them in the trees surrounding the ceremony

Married!

The flower girl was the cutest! We finished taking pictures with her and she ran right over to this rope swing

I want to be friends with all of you!

Lunenburg is so gorgeous! No wonder its a UNESCO World Heritage Site!

I do love looking across the harbour at all the brightly colored buildings that make up the Historic City

Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!

St Mark’s Place, just outside of Lunenburg is a beautiful new venue that is in a renovated church. They spent a long time building onto it, and making it an amazing venue. It has the best sound system and a great lighting system too.

Ivy and Tanner made all of the table numbers with lace themselves and brought the delicious chocolates from Alberta… yum!

Congratulations Ivy and Tanner! I wish for you a lifetime of happiness and love!

Ceremony Site: Arbor View Inn

Reception Venue: St Mark’s Place

Flowers: Sea Side Flowers

Just a quick sneak peek from Chelsea and Anthony’s wedding at the Delta Hotel in Fredericton. It was a fabulous day and I can’t wait to show the rest of the images!

We are finally starting to make progress in finishing the studio! It has taken long enough but the carpet is down and my family is coming on the long weekend to help put on the trim, doors and lights. Lets hope for nice weather so that we can do all of the cutting of the trim outdoors and keep all the sawdust out of my house. I still need to put all of the gallery wrapped canvases up on the walls, decorate a bit, get curtains and a bit more furniture but I am inching along!

Just one for today from the beautiful wedding of Ivy and Tanner in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. It was such a gorgeous wedding day and I have so many beautiful images that I can’t wait to share.

Before moving in, I was hoping that I would have most of my house decorated by the end of summer but really, hardly any are finished. I have bits and pieces done in each room and I think I know what I am going to buy or order for a lot of the spaces but I have been slow the pull the trigger, worried that I may buy the wrong thing or change my mind. I need to just do it. I’ve been working out of Justin’s office/man room for the past couple of months, sharing a desk with his computer, vintage video games and boy stuff. Right now, I am working at putting together my office that I am sharing with the spare bedroom. We’re not letting pets into the studio and I want to be able to spend time with them while I am home all day working so that’s what we’ve decided to do. This is the inspiration board for my office side of the room just like I shared earlier in the week for my studio. I want everything in there to be bright, clean and classic.

I am sitting here typing this on the date of my third wedding anniversary. It is so hard to believe that Justin and I have spent three wonderful and amazing years together and it has just flown by so quickly! It feels like it was just yesterday that Justin and I started to become friends and set out on our adventure of life together. I just wanted to quickly post a photograph of us from August 15, 2009, taken by our fabulous photographer, Heather Wilkinson!

Justin, here is to many, many more amazing years together!

I was hardly on the beach and didn’t even start digging my first clam before I fell and ended up in the muddy shores of the Fundy coast. By the time we finished digging over 200 clams, I had fallen a few more times and was covered head to toe in the salty, brown mud. I had fun my first time clamming, although I earned a new respect for those who do the back breaking work with each tide for a living. After hosing myself completely off, Hunter down and only Justin’s rubber boots off, we feasted on the clams. Justin’s coworker Marcia and her husband Doug invited us to come for a night and take a little vacation. They may have a hard time getting rid of us if we venture down to Five Islands again. There is something about being next to the ocean, breathing in the damp, salty air that I just love. I can’t imagine ever living a long ways from the ocean.

In the background of this picture, you can see the five islands, which is what the town is named after. Such a pretty view!

The center island has a hole in it, which these binoculars point directly at as well as a set of stairs that you can climb to the top.

If you can believe it, Hunter jumped off this cliff to get to the ocean faster. We were admiring the view and all of the sudden, he was over the edge and trying to figure a way back up. He seems to be super dog when it comes to jumping off decks, cliffs, etc. We will have to have him on a leash next time we are near something he could jump off of. The beach looks very different at low tide when you are able to dig the clams.

And I had to include one of Hunter swimming and oh-so-happy!

Chelsea and Anthony booked me over Skype for their wedding so I had never met them before their engagement session. It always makes me a bit nervous to photograph another photographer but my fears melted away as soon as I met them. These two are the sweetest, most genuine couple and I just adored photographing them. They met in Labrador while Anthony was stationed there with the RCMP and when he got transferred, she gladly followed him to New Brunswick. They have the most wonderful wedding planned for the end of August in Frederiction- I can’t wait!

Love, love this!

Chelsea and Anthony, you two can bring it!

I love it when clients bring their puppies! So much fun! All I had to do was say the word treat and I had her full attention..

The golden light was so perfect!

I’ve been working hard for the last little bit to gather all off the decor and furniture needed to decorate my new studio. I’m just waiting for the flooring to go down so that I can start to actually decorate in there. Justin and I have spent hours and hours painting the ceiling and the walls a nice, bright white so that all the light in there can be reflected and bounce around. There are a couple of a couple of separate areas that I will be decorating: an area next to the window for photographing all of the sessions, a sitting area for client meetings to take place and parents to hang out while I photograph their little one and a storage and display area to hold all of my props, and all the little things I need in my studio out of sight. This is what I have been thinking so far, although there is no guarantee that it will turn out exactly like this in the end.

I will be sure to post pictures here on the blog as soon as the studio is finished!

Another whole month has passed since my last acronym post and we are up for another today! Summer months do not have many letters but they have been hard ones to use like u and y, which July has both of! Here is to next months acronym having neither and more letters to use!

Just not enough time with Granny. Granny was in Woodstock for a couple of weeks (she lives in Mississauga) visiting Justin’s mom so we squeezed in a few quick trips to Woodstock to see her as much as we could. We celebrated her birthday while there and got to take a few images of her. The last ones I have of her I think were taken at our wedding 3 years ago. Hunter loved Granny and kept cuddling up beside her!

Us at the beach! We loved our last year at Bocabec! As I wrote in a previous post, this was the last year of Bocabec due to the house going on the market. It has been the highlight of our summers my entire life and will be dearly missed come next year! We did have a fantastic time there this year though, playing games, relaxing, going into St Andrews By The Sea to shop and look around. Anne (my sister) took this one photo of Justin and I at the beach the last night there. I may end up printing it out and putting in my office.

Learning to sew a little bit better. For Christmas I asked for a sewing machine after seeing all sorts of crafty projects, many of which require sewing on Pinterest. You can check out my craft board on Pinterest here. Last month, my sister-in-law spent a night with us and we went fabric shopping to get a pretty, colourful fabric that I can turn into a dog bed. We decided that one dog bed simply wasn’t enough for our Hunter so we decided to make a second to save us having to lug his up and down the stairs all of the time. Yes, he does appear to  be spoiled… I spent about an hour ironing and sewing to get this:

It turned out pretty well in my opinion and Hunter seems to like it as well. I like that it brings some colour into our builder beige home with the fun turquoise pattern.

Yea, my heirloom tomatoes will soon be ready to harvest! I feel like my tomatoes are the last ones in the world to be ripe- some have finally started to ripen up to their red, orange, yellow and blue (yes, blue!!) hues. I love watching all the fruit laden branches start to bend lower under the weight of all the fruit and new flowers turn into little tiny baby tomatoes. Now to be patient enough to wait for them to ripen before eating the first one..