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I’m a member of a photography group that decided to do Secret Santa this year… We were limited to a few dollars, so we had to be creative. Facebook stalking to find out non-photography interests, googling for cool products, etc. Some people got memory card wallets, lenses hollowed out and turned into cups, mini camera-shaped thumb drives, etc… When I received a package that said “Warning: Stow-away-asaurus’ I was thoroughly confused… but when I opened it up confusion turned to happiness as I saw a set of camera-shaped cookie cutouts. I love sugar cookies, so this will give me more reason to make them. Traveling the better part of the past month, I just now got around to being able to actually use them…. Photography never tasted so good. (Then again, it doesn’t really ever taste… hrm…)
Oh, P.S. After I made these I had a little leftover dough… so I ate some raw (mmmm!) and made the rest into a nice big heart which I planned to surprise Colleen with in the morning (she had gone to bed). I proceeded to forget about in the oven for 45 minutes until Colleen awoke and yelled from the bedroom, “Is something burning?!?!”. Yea, I made a black, smoldering heart. 
And P.P.S. When making cutouts, you can’t put the doughy cookies as close together as I show in the photos of the cookie-sheet… they spread and make one BIG cookie. Stupid Joey.
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New Year, New born. Seemed appropriate.
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Fire Lake in downtown Minneapolis was the setting for the most intimate wedding we did in 2011, and perhaps the most intimate I’ve ever been at. Kim is the sister of Mark (from Mark and Alyssa’s wedding last year) and brother of Scott (from Scott and Kat’s engagement session…whose wedding is in Chicago next year) so it was a night made even more special (for me and Colleen) by the fact I knew most of the people there. Both families were so warm and welcoming — they really made us feel like we were just part of the family and happened to be taking photos. It was only a few hours, but it was still a very memorable night.
We started off at the W, with Kim and Adam and her son, and snaked through downtown in order to get a few of those ‘romantical’ images, and after about 45 minutes made our way to Fire Lake. Following the short ceremony was one of the most touching scenes we photographed in 2011: Adam got Kim’s son a surprise gift and told him how special he was and all that emotional stuff. Even I had to suck back a tear…
The night finished with heartfelt toasts all around the table, lots of great food, and maybe a drink or two… 
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A little appetizer… with the main course in a few days 
Baby
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Amelia got the best of both worlds this summer – she had some time in our home studio and got to go outdoors too. It made for a great variety of finished photos. I was super excited that Amelia brought her cute little raspberry hat to the session, just as our raspberries patch happened to peaking. So we plopped her down near the patch and proceeded with our usual high-pitched attention-getting banter behind the camera. We might have had a few neighbors peek their heads out their back doors to figure out what all the commotion was in our yard. But really, after our giant pumpkins, electric car, and 12 foot snowmen, I don’t think anything would surprise our neighbors any more…
Engagement Sessions
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Pat was actually the MoH of a wedding I did in ’09. You may remember Anna and Mark’s killer farm wedding photographs and photostation. Yeah, that’s when I first met Pat. I remembered her from then so I was super pumped when she decided to contact me about their June wedding at the Varsity in on the U of MN’s campus next year.
Anyway, their session was pretty memorable for reasons other than the photographs (though the photos are pretty sweet too, if I do say so myself) — not only did I leave one of my cameras inside Butler square while we were at Target Plaza (yeah, I’m not very smart sometimes) but we also ran across the Weinermobile as it sped through downtown Minneapolis. It is real, it actually exists… sadly, it’s exhaust did not make downtown smell of pork.
Wedding
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♪ In the Navy… ♫ In the Navy… ♪ Okay, I wanted to do that ever since I saw Curt in his whites. Feels good to get that off my chest.
For table assignment cards, Carrie and Curt hand-wrote personalized letters to each and every guest at their wedding. And not ‘personalized’ in mass produced way where all you change is one sentence… but truly personal comments, thank you’s, and insight for and about every single guest. This amazingly thoughtful gesture says so much about type of people they are. It was apparent that both Carrie and Curt have touched many people’s lives in positive ways as a large number of their guests went up to the microphone to tell both touching and silly storys about them during dinner (I would like to take this time to appologize to the people at our dinner table – we were horrible dinner guest having to get up every 30 seconds!) As it was, this wedding was filled with crack-up-style laughter and also lots of happy, sentimental tears. Gotta love that combo!
Congratulations to you two love-birds and best wishes as you begin your married life together in Japan! Hopefully we’ll see you back here sooner rather than later…
On a technical note — blog upgrade!! Back in the day, I started with 500 pixel wide images… Then I thought I was all fancy when I moved to 750. Boy, the 2007 version of me would be so embarrassed compared to the 920 pixels we’re going to be throwing out from here on forward. Onward and upward! (oh, and being wider means being taller too — so, uhm, this blog post is like 20,000 pixels long… hahah!!)
p.s. I also do not know why that kid isn’t wearing a shirt.
Engagement Sessions
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Scott is the brother of Mark – of “Mark and Alyssa” fame from last year. Scott and Kat are going a little further away and are getting married in Chicago next year; I got the call last spring and we met to finalize having me document the upcoming shindig roughly a month ago; I was super happy (though, of course, I tried to play it cool…) – I remembered them from the previous wedding and they seemed cool; and more importantly, they seemed to know how to have a great time. (though, apparently I don’t stand out enough at weddings because, other than the resulting photographs, they didn’t remember me being there… *tear*… hehe, actually, I take people not noticing me day-of as a sign of “job well done”.)
Anyway, I’m really looking forward to heading to the ‘Windy City’ for the big event… Appropriately, the day we scheduled their engagement session was one of the windiest days in the Twin Cities that I’ve seen in a long time – massive gusts and sustained winds of 22+mph and threatening rain. I inkled that it might be a good idea to postpone, but Scott and Kat were gung-ho, so we pulled up our bootstraps, grabbed their dog Gia, and fought the wind… and we won. (unlike when we fought the law, and the law won… )
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