Glamour Shots (featuring Antoine & Gui)

I don't know about you, but whenever I have a long holiday weekend off from work it either goes one of two ways: 1.) I waste most of the weekend doing nothing relaxing and the weekend feels like it flies by or 2.) I am super productive and get a lot done/do a lot of fun stuff and the weekend seems like it's actually 4 days long...until the last day when I say to myself, "Where did the weekend go!?".  This past weekend was definitely the later.  We celebrated Thanksgiving, did way too much shopping, saw Horrible Bosses 2 (hilarious!), went to Crafty Supermarket, participated in Small Business Saturday, watched What If (I highly recommend it), and went for a walk in French Park.  I also made the best gravy I've ever made, baked 3 pies, and edited some photos!  That's a pretty productive and fun holiday weekend for me!

One other feat that I accomplished this weekend was to order our holiday cards.  Every year we do the sappy/corny/ lame, etc. holiday cards with pictures of us and usually pictures of our fur-kids.  We've been doing it for about 4 years now.  This year for the card I had a perfect picture of Cheese and I (that Antoine took this summer), but no good pictures of Gui.  I decided what would be absolutely perfect is if I could get a picture of Antoine and Gui together.  So, on Friday I forced Antoine into what can best be described as Jessica's Glamour Shots and Fun!  I got several cut shots and then a lot of silly ones and outtakes.  Enjoy!

 Awe!  I think this one is my favorite.

 Gui loves the chin rubs.  Antoine looks absolutely adorable in this one!

Now for the silly shots and outtakes...

There were quite a few like this.

 The "grumpy" shot.

 The "like father, like son" shot.

 The "sad" shot?

 The "what do I do with my hands?" shot.

 The "why I oughta" shot.

 The "wild beast" shot.

 The "Gui has had enough!" shot.

I'm so lucky Antoine puts up with my shenanigans...and in cases like this, makes them even more fun with antics of his own!  

Reformatory Outtakes

Now for some outtakes, which I really should have titled "Aaron, the Creepy Ghost"!  It all started when we got near the end of first half of the building...there was a room will all the lights turned out and a creepy chair sitting in the middle of it.  Amanda and I were too scared to venture into the room, and rightly so, but Aaron, her boyfriend, just walked right in!  We made him turn on the light on his phone so we could see in the room and this happened...

 "Aaron, the Creepy Ghost" with two shadows!!  Sorry it's so blurry and out of focus, it was so dark and I might have been laughing pretty hard...so yeah.

That began a pattern of Aaron wandering in to dark rooms and making weird/silly/creepy faces!  Like this one...

Oh, and then there was the time Aaron the creepy ghost decided to go to the bathroom...

...and make a strange, sinister face in a very tiny room with a very tiny door...

Oh, but there was another ghost sighting!  We'll call her, "Amanda, the Blurry Ghost"...

Ha!

I miraculously have one more post for you this week before A and I head off to go camping with some of our favorite people.  But until then, happy Wednesday everyone!

Summer in Spring Grove

Alternate title, the time I twisted/sprained my ankle walking around the pond.  But that's what I get when I'm not looking where I'm walking because I'm so focused on the enormous fish in the pond!  Seriously, have you ever seen them?!  They are like the size of baby sharks!  Somehow, in all the times I've been to Spring Grove I've never seen them before.  I guess I was always just too focused on the turtles to notice the fish.  Anyway, luckily when I stepped in the hole and my ankle went "crunch!" no one was around to see it and I just sat on the ground for a while until I could put some weight on it.  I have really weak ankles and have twisted and sprained my ankles more times than I can count (but only one fracture, so far, though)!  This felt worse than a twisted ankle but not as bad as any of my other sprains (which have all been pretty bad and involved falling down stairs onto concrete)...so I chalked it up to a very mild sprain and didn't bother going to the doctor.  Don't do what I do kids, it's dumb!  And you better believe that next time I go to Spring Grove I'll be wearing my very supportive hiking boots, even if it's just for a leisure walk to take some pictures.

Anyway, here's what I shot before I fell (and on the way to my car).  Still experimenting shooting in manual which is fun, but I definitely still have a lot of learning to do!

It might have just been me, but there seemed to be a ton of dragonflies out and about the weekend of the July 4th.

The reason I originally went to Spring Grove that day was to take pictures of the Southern magnolias.  However, most of the flowers were either fried or not open yet, so I didn't get as many photos as I was hoping for and then I didn't care for most of the ones I took.

This guy was following me around as I walked along the pond, it was quite adorable.  (This was pre-falling!)

Sorry I've been AWOL for a week or so!  I was distracted and kind of forgot to post.  I'm now caught up with my July 4th weekend photos (I know, I'm so behind!).  Anyway, happy Wednesday!  I can't believe it's Wednesday already.  The week seems to be flying by, which is rather nice.  

Happy Friday!

I'm still working my way through editing all our Hawaii photos, but I'm almost done!  I plan to finish next week.  In the meantime, since it's Friday I thought I'd share this silly gif of my sister and brother-in-law from our recent family reunion...

I love the look on my sisters face!

Any great weekend plans in the works?  I'm not entirely sure what we're up to but I'm hoping to get some baking and some photo editing done...and of course, take some photos!  Have a good weekend everyone!

Our Elopement

Last night we finally received the photos of our elopement from our photographer, Karen Loudon!  We had eagerly been awaiting their arrival for the past month or so and we were nervous about how they would turn out...mainly because we were both major goofballs when we were having our photos taken, so we were pretty sure we ruined everything!  We're super positive people, can't you tell?  But, fortunately, the photos turned out amazing and we are beyond happy with them!  And we are so grateful to Karen, who was able to capture these images despite the fact that Antoine and I have no clue on how to pose for pictures...

 A detail from the Waipio Rim B&B.

 Me, pretending to get ready.

 At the start of the ceremony, before we got really sweaty!

 I like this one because I'm stealing a glance at Antoine while his eyes are closed!

 One of my personal favorites!

 This is what happens when we try to "pose"...goofballs!  But it's still pretty cute, right!?

 Another personal favorite.

 

 This was such an uncomfortable position for me, but it was totally worth it because I love this photo!

Now for the outtakes, which are definitely on my list of favorites because they are totally "us"!

 Wiping the sweat off Antoine after "the big kiss"!  It was so flipping hot since we were standing right in the sun!!  We would actually take little pauses throughout the ceremony just to wipe the sweat off our faces.

 I think this was the "what?! we're married?!" realization!

After the ceremony one of the first series of photos we took were the ones where I was on the swing by the tree.  When Karen said, "how about you get on the swing and we'll take some photos there?" I'm pretty sure I gave here my umm-WTF?-face!  I was so terrified to get on the swing and then, near the end of that series of photos, Antoine decided to push the swing and I FREAKED OUT!  But the resulting images are kind of hilarious, even though at the time I wanted to punch him...

This is such a bad/funny picture of me, but I love the look on A's face!

Details: 

location : Waipio Rim B&B
photographer: Karen Loudon
officiant: Chery Pascual
dress:  Modcloth
earrings (which you can't really see): Shlomit Ofir

*Please do not copy/use these photos they are for my personal use only and are copyright Karen Loudon Photography.