It's been a long time coming, but we finally have the beautiful photos that Hudson Valley portrait photographer Melissa MacDonald took of us when we were back in upstate NY over the summer. I really love this one.
It was pouring rain, but we had such fun that day, you'd never know it!
Aren't they wonderful?
Q with her LaoLao.
Just look at that face.

We'll be treasuring these for years to come.
This is Q's "excited face". Heh!

Yup, I had to revisit this series again, because...I mean....
...she is just too much.

Too much in a way that makes it nearly impossible not to burst into her room in the middle of naptime just to wake her up and squeeze her.

Too much in a way that makes you walk around with a dopey grin plastered all over your face whenever she's around.

Thanks to my wonderful mother, who well understands the appeal of a ranch (we lived on a cattle ranch for many beautiful seasons of my childhood) my husband and I were married at the 4 Eagle Ranch in Wolcott, CO in the late summer of 2006. We had not been back to revisit that spot since bringing home our daughter in 2008. Our first day in Vail dawned grey, but cleared into a stunner of a highcountry winter's day - warm, clear and dry. The very best of Colorado weather.
So we decided it was high time we introduce Q to the ranch.
4 Eagle's homesteader cabins date back to the 1880s. The larger ones are used for events, while the smaller ones are fitted out homesteader-style so that when you step inside, you can imagine yourself in another time.
In one of those small cabins, fitted with a small Christmas tree for the holidays, Q found a tin heart with a little cowboy hand-painted in it. Now, the Q has very definite ideas about what things in life she wants, and which she can do without. She had picked up various small objects in that cabin - a beaded star, a horseshoe, a couple of decorative coathangers, but put all of them back except for the heart, which she clutched possessively to her chest.
In turn, she pressed the heart to daddy's chest, and then to mine, before running across the snow holding it high over her head to see its shadow. Sometimes, you can buy some of the artifacts that you find scattered around the ranch buildings, so we set off to track down one of the ranch owners and ask if we might purchase this little tin heart for Q. Not only did she let us, but after hearing that we'd been married there, she decided that it would be a gift.







Out back of the ranch buildings, we found a rabbit hutch and a pair of Pygmy goats to nibble at our fingers. I don't know about you, but I love having my fingertips nibbled by goats. I indulge in it every chance I get (which isn't, let's face it, all that often).


I may have mentioned before, while I may be partial to goats, the Q is a bit of a rabbit afficionado. We had to physically carry her away from the rabbit hutch.

Inside the dancing tent, where the dance floor is strewn with fresh straw, and the doors made from layered Indian blankets strung on jute rope.

What a beautiful spot. It's lovely to revisit good memories and build new ones on top of them.

Since my office was looking so new and clean and freshly-organized, I decided to light it up a bit for the holidays. For the occasion, Q donned her new VDJ frock and a freshly-painted kohl mustache.OK, well, we all wore kohl mustaches for the occasion. Much to Q's delight!
Then she entertained us by decorating herself with my garland of lights.
Like everything else, she wears it with her own inimitable style.
Daddy's mustache was a bit different in style from Q's, and it looked rather dashing on him, don't you think?
Kohl-mustache artistry by me ;) as well as Q's arm tattoo. She likes to wear kohl "tattoos" on her arms to be like mommy and daddy. Good or bad? I don't know. In any case, her daddy and I got our own tattoos long before we ever dreamed of starting a family. My guess is, when it comes to raising human beings, tattoos are among the last things we need to worry about. Raising a good, solid, stable, confident, caring, productive, intelligent citizen of the human race? Now that's worth a few furrows in the parental brow.

At this point, as you can see, she had managed to unclothe herself. I suppose it's the age...she just prefers to be naked whenever she can get away with it these days.
Then she did a little mugging with her beautiful, starry mimimouse scarf.

All in all, it was a festive evening. These are the small, spontaneous moments that make the holidays memorable, don't you think?

We've been in the mountains for a couple of days, using some of my husband's unused "vacation days" (under orders from the management) before the new year kicks in. My husband never takes sick days (the one and ONLY sick day I've seen him take in almost eight years was when we all three had swine flu at once), and rarely uses a vacation day, so this is not the first time we've been ordered to take time off. That's a man with a serious work ethic (can you tell I'm proud of him?)

It was a short trip, but the weather was exceptionally beautiful...and just to take advantage, we decided to pay a mid-winter visit to the place where we were married in early September of 2006. That's just to give you a hint of the wonderful pictures I have in store!... once I'm able to settle back in and do some editing, that is.

Corner View: Books


When I read Kenza's corner view for this week's topic, I realized that she had really said it all.
Her post is so beautiful, so simple and so eloquent that I'm just going to link it here instead of posting one of my own.

Please go and read her post: Photo by Luke Powell (these photos are so stunning, worth a look in conjunction with this post).

See more corner views chéz Jane.

So, we took this set of photos on a sunny winter's afternoon with the intention of using them for our Holiday card this year.

Unfortunately, I have since realized that there is simply no way on this earth that I am going to manage to print, address and send holiday cards. I am still too new to the business of running a shop from home - and the "business" has been going well this Holiday season - so it's really all I can do to keep things running smoothly on that end!
Now that I have admitted to myself that cards are simply not going to happen this season, I realized I had better just put a few of these shots up on the blogs. After all, they're kind of sweet, don't you think?
The graffiti artists did a splendid job on this wall, and I have used it for photos before (back when the Q was much smaller) - but I've never had the chance to photograph the whole family here until this day.
So, here we are, wishing you all a beautiful, peaceful and love-filled Holiday season. Our apologies for that lack of cards, but...save a tree, right?

There are always a wealth of lovely holiday images to see out in the internet ether this time of year, but without contest my very favorite of all is this stunning set of photos by the amazing Alliot of Izakoo. Go look at the rest of the photo set - it is simply the most perfect and beautiful thing.

I've long been a fan of vintage round glasses, and these...I couldn't believe it when I saw them on Etsy. These are really the perfect example.
Vintage tortoiseshell frames at BackThennishVintage.