Christmas Light Bokeh

Now that we got our Christmas decorations and lights out, I thought I would play around with taking portraits with Christmas lights bokeh.

I set two bar stools at the top of our stairs and draped a tablecloth then Christmas lights from them. I placed Daniel a few feet from the background and use my widest aperture (f/1.8) to get the nice bokeh. For the lighting, I opened up the front door, which lets lots of natural light on the staircase.

Christmas Link-up: Christmas Decor

Thanksgiving is over and today starts the first week of A Very Merry Christmas Link-up! 

Week 1 - Christmas Decor
I love pulling out all of our Christmas decorations each year and placing them all over the house, with Christmas music playing in the background. Lots of fun!


Every year at on Black Friday, JCPenny's gives away these fun little Mickey Mouse snow globes. I've been collecting them since 2002, but a couple of them have broken over the years, and last year we were too late to get them.

<center><a href="http://sereinasphotography.blogspot.com/search/label/VMCL%202011" target="_blank"><img alt="Very Merry Christmas Link-up" src="http://i992.photobucket.com/albums/af49/sereinalovesvintage/Blog/VMCL2011Button.png"/></a></center>

Make sure to add the button to you post, then link up below. Then go ahead and blog hop a bit, and check out some of the other entries and leave some comments. The linky will be open till the end of the month and you can submit as many times as you'd like, just remember to follow the guidelines.

At the end of the week, I'll feature some of my favorite entries from that week. So go ahead, and enter you best Christmas decor photo(s)!

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is here. Soon we'll be putting the turkey in the oven and just hanging with my family. I'm looking forward to some yummy mashed potatoes. They're my favorite. :)

Sunday afternoon we had a big Thanksgiving dinner with my mom's side of the family, so this year we get to celebrate twice. We had a great time visiting with our family from out of state that we hadn't seen in two years. There was lots of laughter, card games, hide and seek, and awesome games of Ultimate Ninja. 

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!

Project 52: Week 45

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Golden leaves in our front yard.

Announcing A Christmas Link-up

It's only a week till Thanksgiving, which means the Christmas season is just about here. Last year I hosted a link-up, which was tons of fun, and I shall be hosting it again this year!

Heres how it'll work:
Every Sunday for the next month, I will be posting a linky. You'll write up your post with picture(s) that fit in the category for that week, include the "A Very Merry Christmas Link Up" button that I've included at the bottom of this post, and come back here to link up your post. Then blog hop around a bit and check out every one else's photos. You can enter just one or two of the weeks, or all of them, whichever you prefer. At the end of each week, I'll choose a few of my favorites to share.

All the linky's will be open trough the end of December. Feel free to link up as many photos/posts as you'd like for each category.


The Categories:
Week 1 (Nov. 27th) - Christmas Decor
Every year I love geting out the Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving. Pulling out the Christmas mugs and dishes, stockings, snow globes, nativities sets, and everything else. 


Week 2 (Dec. 4th) - Christmas Lights
Anything from on a Christmas tree, on a house, or anywhere else you can find some decorative lights. They don't have to be in focus, either. Some cool bokeh shots would count as well.


Week 3 (Dec. 11th) - Christmas Foods & Tasty Treats
There are so many tasty things made this time of year: cookies, gingerbread houses, candy canes, and my personal favorite, eggnog. Mmmm, my mouth is watering! If you bake something yourself, you could share the recipe as well!
Anything that is edible will work for this weeks theme. And remember, composition is an important key to getting a great food shot.


Week 4 (Dec. 18th) - With a Face(s)
From a portrait of one friend, or a whole group of you doing something fun. Just make sure its still Christmas-y.

<center><a href="http://sereinasphotography.blogspot.com/search/label/VMCL%202011" target="_blank"><img alt="Very Merry Christmas Link-up" src="http://i992.photobucket.com/albums/af49/sereinalovesvintage/Blog/VMCL2011Button.png"/></a></center>

If your interested, I'd love it if you'd spread the word by posting about it on you blog, adding the button to you sidebar, etc. And if you have any questions, just let me know!

I Heart Faces - Autumn Splendor

Fall = lots of colorful leaves on the ground all over the place.

Carving and Painting

For the last few years, instead of carving my pumpkin, I've painted it instead. I enjoy painting them more, and I like all the color it adds. Usually the rest of my siblings carve their's, but this year Alina and my mom painted their's as well.

Alina drew about a dozen or so faces on a piece of paper before deciding on this silly face.

Tiana chose to carve like usual, and picked out a horse and rider pattern that she found online.

My mom painted her's and used a picture of goofy that she traced onto the pumpkin before painting.

Daniel came up with a dead pumpkin face.

I'm a big Muppets fan, so I decided to paint Kermit the Frog this year. I traced him freehand on the pumpkin before painting him.

I Heart Faces - Black

The I Heart Faces theme is really simple this week: the photo just has to have black in it somewhere. I don't have to many photos that happen to fit that theme, but then I remembered this shot of my siblings that I took last month. I love the soft lighting that was in our backyard morning, so it was perfect for pictures.

Project 52: Week 43

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We didn't end up carving and painting our pumpkins till the 31st. All of us kids and my mom had a fun time choosing what to make and painting or carving them. I'll be posting more about them this week.

Gilligan and Star Trek

Some of our friends invited us to a costume party, which was last Friday night. We all had fun coming up with our costumes for the party and putting them together. I was little red riding hood and made a red cape with some pretty red fabric. My sister Tiana was a princess in a pretty purple dress she found at the Goodwill Outlet. Alina was the guy with the red shirt from Star Trek who dies in the first episode he's in (for those of you who haven't seen Star Trek, whenever a landing party goes down to the planet, you pretty much know that whoever is wearing red shirt isn't going to make it back). And Daniel was Gilligan from Gilligan's Island.

I wanted to get pictures of everyone, but it started to rain after I took Daniel's and Alina's photos. I might have to do some self-portraits in my cape, though.

Daniel already had a perfect Gilligan hat, so the rest of the costume was really easy to put toghether.

I wasn't able to get a good full body shot, since it started raining, so this is angle I have. My mom added the black collar to the shirt, sewed the Star Fleet insignia, added the rank (gold ribbon) to the sleeves, and made a belt for her phaser.

Oatmeal Cookies

Although I've baked snickerdoodle, chocolate snowballs, and chocolate chip cookies many, many times, I rarely make oatmeal cookies. I love anything with oats in it, though, and I really love oatmeal cookies. 

I don't like to add any thing like nuts or raisins in them. For me, plain is the way to go!

I used the recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It's a great, simple oatmeal cookie recipe, which is just what I like. And as usual, I substituted the all-purpose flower for whole wheat flower.