A Holiday Tradition

For the last three years we have made it a tradition to go to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square (about 20 min away) to view the amazing holiday light display.  I'm always in awe of how it never looks the same.This is so inviting, like you could just walk across the path of poinsettias, reminds me of the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz.

Longwood Gardens works with the schools in our area and has the children decorate a themed tree for display.  Such a great public relations move!  What parent wouldn't want to come to the gardens to see the decoration their child has on display here?
The second grade teacher in me LOVES this tree!











The tree topper is too precious!

I call this the cabbage patch tree. So clever!

I wish I was skilled at taking night pictures.  These were taken with my Nikon D40 and I've since upgraded to the D5000 which I've found takes much better night photos and of outdoor lights.  A  few that weren't too bad though.This is the Pierre DuPont house.




The fountain show was wonderful too!

I wish that I could tell you that the following picture was of my dining room at home, but no.
It's the magic of Longwood Gardens again!

 





Joyous New Year to all!  Cheers!

Not H1N1 but MD 20/20

My dear friend Becky rarely drinks.  So rarely, in fact, that when she went to a party on Saturday night, without eating anything she had no idea of what could happen.

 

When she walked in the door someone handed her a glass of champagne.  She sipped, talked, and somehow through all this talking and sipping, her glass stayed magically full!?

I called her on Sunday to confirm some plans we had made for Monday. (This was before I knew of her party the night before) Her son answered, and when I asked for Becky he said she wasn't feeling very well and he handed the phone off.  Becky's snuffly, scratchy voice said hello.  I immediately thought she had the flu. 
"You sound awful, Sweetie!" I said in my most supportive sympathetic best friend voice with just the perfect amount of disappointment at the fact that I realized that we wouldn't be getting together the next day.  She had just had her Swine flu shot a few days before and was worried about coming down with it as the next day she had woken up with the snifflies.

"I'm not sick," she said, "I"m just hungover, ugh."  I could hear the embarrassment in her voice as she told me the story of going to the party, not eating and drinking wine.  (Which she has vowed to never drink again)

So I'm happy to report that Becky didn't have the swine flu but wine flu, which, unfortunately, there is no current vaccine.  Luckily the recovery time for wine flu is about 24 hrs so we were able to go on our shopping adventure. 

And they all lived soberly ever after. 

The End.

Baby's got a new beau

It's officially not official. Right now they are just dating, NOT boyfriend and girlfriend, she made that very clear. They are taking it slow.  Got that Mom?

The just dating first date involved a private moving screening of "The Princess and the Frog" with a candlelight dinner set up in the back of the theater with sparkling cider and a waiter a.k.a. the beau's friend dressed as a waiter.  The food was Olive Garden take out.  And, a dozen red roses. Nice!

He took her to Longwood Gardens the Monday before Christmas to see the light display.

Yesterday he picked her up with a bouquet in his hand.

Love the colors!

Here is the lovely non-couple now. 

We were teasing her that in this picture she looks like a young Valerie Bertinelli in her "One Day at a Time" days and he looks like a young Davy Jones.  She had no idea of that point of reference. ha!

This is not a very good picture.  I was trying to be quick about it so he wouldn't be freaked out about the fact that his non-girlfriend's mother was sticking a camera in his face 30 min after meeting her.

Which reminds me...how do you people manage to get such good candid shots that look so casual?  Are they few and far between?  I really want to capture more unposed candid moments.  Something like this one that I took of Tony and Joy last summer: