Pictures With Santa and Other Weekend Fun

I observed another Christmas tradition this weekend. I made my way up to the booming metropolis of Waxahachie, TX and nosed around some townspeoples' houses with my friends.

That is, we bought tickets for a Christmas home tour that some of the girls have been going to for 8 straight years now. I don't get to go every year, but it's sooo fun! We eat lunch somewhere girly:



Maybe shop a little, and then head to the first of four houses that we'll get to wander all over for the day. Some of the homeowners spend months decking their halls, and all the decorations are different. Some homes are new, some (my favorites) are historic.

One of the homes this year featured nativity scenes. They had nativities from all over the world - some were pretty much what you would expect:



And some were a little less traditional, like this one where Joseph is playing with baby Jesus:



The middle two houses were new homes. One had this beautiful kitchen, which Kate really does a great job of showing off:



The other one was a little odd - it was a custom built home with some details that didn't really go together - BUT, it was on the lake and had...wait for it...a lazy river!! Instead of a swimming pool they installed a lazy freakin' river! Just like at Schlitterbahn. I just thought that was the smartest thing ever.



We saved the historic home for last. It was really pretty, and there were some little boys selling hot chocolate outside. (Their poster said half their profits would go to their church. I thought that was a pretty generous tithe. Or a clever marketing ploy. Either way, I bought some.)



Parts of this house seemed like they could be original to the house. They had one of those miniature Christmas villages. Those are always fun.





I like making miniature things look like they're regular-sized in pictures.

Also, Kate's mom's hairdresser was there taking tickets, and he was fascinated by Vanessa's dreds. (I don't know if that's how you spell that.)



Kate knew someone at every house that we went to, I think. I miss that about small towns.

This house was funny because parts of it had been preserved pretty carefully, but you could tell they updated about half of it in the seventies. Bet you wouldn't have expected these to be inside the house pictured above:



But, really, what else could you put with that wallpaper?

Oh yeah! And we got to see Santa Clause. He was passing out apple cider at the house with the lazy river. The owner happened to be a professional photographer, so we enlisted her to take our picture with skinny St. Nick.



What cute girls I spent my weekend with!

Tradition!! Austin Style

Christmas trees, candy canes, elves and South Congress! That's what Austin Christmases are made of.

Michael and I have only been married for four years, so we don't have many traditions, but we're trying some Christmas traditions out. Our first Christmas, in the apartment in the '44, we had a fake tree and Elf happened to be playing back to back on TBS. I don't know why, but it took two showings of Elf for us to get done decorating. It's the best Christmas movie, so watching Elf while we decorate became our first tradition.

Then the next year, we were in our house and we bought a real tree. We've bought it every year since at the same tree lot around the corner.




Yeah, we're wearing t-shirts. It was, like, almost 80 degrees. That's what you get in Texas.

It's a cute lot and they helped us tie our tree to the top of our car. But we get about half way home, and just about lost our tree! It started sliding and we pulled over and tried to get it a little more secure, but I held the rope the rest of the way to the house just in case. We made it there with no further incident.

Then came South Congress! It was very different than your normal Christmas shopping. We didn't actually find what we were looking for, but we did find Big Top.




We got some really good Italian Sodas. The place was crowded, so we didn't hang out very long, but it's sooo cute! I'd go back.

And then...well we were already sooo close to Allen's, Michael found a spot to sit while I tried on cowgirl boots. I found some that I love, but visiting them will probably become a Christmas tradition, since I'm fairly certain I will not be getting them any time soon. I have expensive taste in boots, apparently.

Michael took this picture:



Then home to decorate the tree! We watched Elf and wrapped lights and hung ornaments.





It's a good tradtion.

Now it is December...

...and it's okay that I'm listening to Christmas music! No one can judge me now! I won't tell you how long before Thanksgiving I started listening to it, though.

Another fun thing about it being December is that you can actually send out your Christmas cards! Our friends, the Hoggs, are all over it! They've already had their photos taken and chosen their card design.



My goodness but that photo and card design work well together! Don't you wish your Christmas card looked like that? It can!! Just enlist Jenni Roberts Photography to take your photo and then choose your card design from lnzart.etsy.com . Lindsay is a graphic designer who sells her stuff in her hometown and (thankfully) also on etsy. (Etsy is like...Amazon for handmade-ish stuff.)

She has instructions on her etsy page about how buying a card design works. She's been great to work with - quick turnaround and good communication and etcetera. Plus you can look and see that her designs are great and will stand out in the stacks of Christmas cards being mailed out.

A couple other cute designs:




Go check her out! And you can email me at jenni@jennirobertsphotography.com to book a session.

*Photo on last card is not by Jenni Roberts Photography.

Sisters

I took these pictures a few weeks ago of my friend's (hopefully) new daughters. Shauna and Anthony are fostering these girls and hoping that they get to adopt them soon. It's a little bit of a long process, but the girls are theirs for now at least. They are soooo cute! Tanaya (the older one) was kind-of uninterested in pictures until I started taking pictures of Emily. Then she got very interested.


Their outfits, by the way, are GREAT examples of how to dress your kids for portraits. They compliment each other, but they're not perfectly matched. Emily's little ruffle is so cute and I looove the print on Tanaya's dress.

Miss Emily:


Miss Tanaya:


Sisters!

Ernest...errrr...Brandi Makes a Pie

Brandi and I both decided we wanted to make a pie for Thanksgiving this year. We've never really made pies before, so I thought I should take pictures. My instincts were correct.

Brandi made the Pioneer Woman's creamy apple pie.

She started out trying to peel apples.
Mom peeled 4 apples before Brandi had finished one.

This is not just a regular apple pie, so there was some other stuff to mix the apples with for the filling.

Then we rolled out the crust. Well, Brandi rolled out the crust while I laughed and took pictures.

If you'll notice, this crust is not shaped like a pie yet. I don't know if it was the crust or the..uh..the piemaker, but it took some finagling.

It was unclear at this point whether any amount of finagling was going to help this attempt at a pie.


She just mushed it around until it filled the dish. It worked out okay.


But ya know what? For all trouble she had getting it made, that pie was DELICIOUS!

In fact, Daddy just got into some leftovers and said, "I wish I could have some more of that salad." Mom said, "What salad?" Daddy, "Apple pie."

It's clear that Daddy is not used to sugar anymore. He's like a 4 year old that ate 3 bowls of Fruit Loops for breakfast.

We ended up with 4 pies! Brandi's apple pie, my chocolate pecan pie, Momma's sugar-free pecan pie (for Daddy), and the pumpkin pie that Michael requested (that one was frozen).


This picture makes me wish I had a big enough windowsill to cool a pie on.

Merry Little Memories

I'm completely ready for Christmas! I bought the very first of my gifts today. I can't tell you what it is because it's for Brandi and she reads this. But it's good!

I think what got me in the Christmas-y mood was this photo shoot last weekend. We invited our friends to come take their Christmas card photos and all the proceeds went to Family Link (http://familylinkkids.com/), which is the adoption agency that our friends Shauna and Anthony are going through to (hopefully!) adopt the two little girls they are fostering right now. Here's a little of what we got out of it:






We had a lot of fun! It's not too late to take your own Christmas photos! You can email me at jenni.m.roberts@gmail.com to set up a session.

See My Boots?

Well, they're not my boots yet. But I live in Austin. I need cowgirl boots. Even though I'm not a cowgirl and the last time I rode a horse, I limped around like I'd been on a cattle drive for days afterward.

None of the boots I've picked out are going to fool anyone into thinking I'm a cowgirl anyway. Also the way I'm a little bit ascared of horses is a giveaway as well. They are HUGE!!

So here are the boots I have picked out in my daydreaming internet shopping for the evening.

I think these are the simplest ones that I picked out. I like how the toe on Old Gringo boots turns up just a little bit. And the heel is nice and high.

Apparently it's not only little kids that like red boots.


I kind of love these, but if I was going to spend this much money on boots, I would probably not pick embroidered ones. I feel like it would fray.


I would however pick these. They've got red on them, but they're not totally red. I like them. But I do already have some red shoes.

And my favorite (and I think the most expensive, go figure!)


The Turquoise Villa boot. I think they're perfect. Of course, if I did buy these, I would also need some boot cut jeans. And some kind of top that goes with boots. I don't know what that would be. I think a Western top would just end up looking like a costume on me. Plus I don't want to wear one. Plus Michael would laugh at me. Plus Michael is laughing at me right now while he's reading this over my shoulder. Plus I'm sleepy. Good Night!