CLIENT SHOOTS: Decorating with Mrs. Claus

It's getting close to the Christmas season once again and that means the Women's Christmas Showcase of South Simcoe is coming up!  I'll be there again, along with Mrs. Claus (aka Shelley Barlow), Ginette Stone and Benjamin Piellusch, taking photos with Mrs. Claus for donations to "My Sister's Place" in Alliston.  The minimum donation is $5.

Here is a copy of the show poster.  I hope to see some of you there on November 28th!

I had the pleasure of spending some time with Mrs. Claus this week, doing our pre-show photo shoot.  This year, I found her decorating the Christmas tree.  So many decisions to make when decorating the tree.  What ornaments to use, what should take the special place at the top of the tree.

One thing there was no question about, and that was her favourite ornament.  Can you see it?  It's Frosty the Snowman.  He's very cute.  :)

I can't wait until it's show time!  :)  I hope to see you there.

(Remember, if you click on the picture, you will be able to view it larger.)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #10 - Comfort from a friend

Whenever Ben isn't feeling well, Maggie is right there with him.  She does wait until we put a blanket on the couch before she jumps up though.  ;)

For week 10, it was a toss up between this photo and one of Ben sitting at the hair salon getting his highlights.  I figured this one was a safer one to post.  heehee  Plus....you can see his highlights in this photo too.  But the one with him sitting under the hair dryer is pretty priceless.  LOL

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #9 - Fun on the lake!

I'm still catching up with posting my Photos of the week.  I like that I'm still in August since this morning it was quite chilly outside.  (-5 celcius first thing with a wind chill of -8....or some crazy thing like that).

We have an annual event up at a friend's cottage in Gravenhurst.  Ben always LOVES going there because he gets to ride in a fast boat, be flung around in a tube behind the boat, swim, float, etc. etc. etc. This year there was a new activity to try out.  He didn't even fall off!

Thanks to everyone who was there that weekend for all the fun times and great memories.  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #8 - All Star Game

Since the weather wasn't the greatest during the Help The Kids Ball Tournament in July, the two Leagues decided to play the cancelled All-Star game during a tournament in August.

It was a great game as always, between the Tottenham Old Timers and the Men's League.

Here is a shot showing some of the close action that fans were fortunate enough to witness.  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #7 - Harvest Share Box

This is our second year getting the Harvest Share Box from Carron Farms.  I take a picture of the box every week.  My intention is to do one blog post with all of the pictures.  It's 20 weeks of produce boxes though....that would be a big post.  haha  We'll see.  I might pick and choose my favourite weeks.

This was a yummy box!  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

LIMITED TIME OFFERING - Special Fall Family Session Package

As a thank you to everyone for being patient and understanding during my unscheduled out of town trip the past couple of weeks, I wanted to offer a special Fall Family Portrait Session package.

If you're not sure if we'd be a good fit to create your family portraits together, contact me for a complementary consultation meeting.  There is no obligation to book a session.

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #6 - Summer Sunrise

I LOVE sunrises.  LOVE them.

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #5 - Shredded

I'm finally catching up with my posting!  I have several Photo of the Week posts to catch up on.  Here's the first.

This was taken on our way up North, along Hwy 400 with the camera on my phone.

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PERSONAL - First Day of School!

I can't believe how fast the summer went by this year.  I need more time!  And I'm so behind with blog posts and newsletters.

Since today marks the first day of school, I'm planning on getting back into some sort of routine again so I can catch up with posting photos of the week, client sessions and newsletters.  I have so much I want to do in the next few months!  Let's get at it!! :)

But for now, I will enjoy this first day of school.  No yelling or funny noises while he's playing his video games.  Nobody to forget to feed during the day and nobody complaining about having to take the dog for a walk in the afternoon.

It's amazing how much difference a year makes.  Here is his first day of school from last year....

Thanks for looking and I hope everyone has a safe and fun first day of school!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #4 - My Little Assistant

Thank you to Ben for helping me out during the Tottenham Minor Softball photo nights and also for helping on a few portrait sessions.  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #3 - A Surprise

During week 3, I was walking over to a neighbour's and saw that someone had left me a little surprise by my sign at the end of the driveway.  Luckily, I pretty much always have my phone with me, even when just walking in the neighbourhood.  ;)

Thanks Sami for the flower.  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #2 - Lights in the Sky

Ben will be turning 10 this year, and the poor kid had never seen live fireworks up close.  Every time it's fireworks time, we've usually been camping.  There aren't any fireworks allowed at Provincial Campgrounds.  No fireworks for Ben.

Well....this year, with Canada Day being on a Monday and Tottenham having fireworks at the Conservation Area, Ben finally got to experience them!!

He had a great time and it was a fabulous show.  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #1 - Stare into the Fire

No, that's not a mistake in the title.  It is actually 'Week #1' AGAIN!  I'm starting a new year with my 'Photo of the Week' project.  I'm really still surprised that I've taken a picture each week for the past 4 years.  I haven't been as diligent at posting them in a timely manner lately though.  I have to get better at that.

This year, we were camping again during 'week 1'.  The bugs were surprisingly absent for the most part, which meant I was able to sit out and enjoy the fire a bit.

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #52 - My little ball hockey player

Wow.  So crazy that this is the last Photo of the Week for year 4.  Four years!  I'm just shocked that I've remembered to take at least one photo each week for that long!!  There were a couple weeks this past year that I thought I had forgotten, and then I found something on my phone.  :)

I haven't been as good at posting them in a timely manner though.  Hopefully I'll be a bit better at that for year 5.

So here is the final Photo of the Week image for Year 4.

My little ball hockey player.  Number 87.  I'm not sure he's going to play next year.  He always waivers back and forth.  I was actually surprised he changed his mind at the last minute this year and decided to play again.

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #51 - A Ride on Father's Day

On Father's Day, Ben wanted to take Daddy for a ride.  So here they are....riding on the lawn tractor along the side path.  He only bumped into one or two things.........  ;)

I had so much fun following the two of them around on Father's Day.  :)  (More to come on that project...)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PERSONAL - Happy Father's Day!

I hope all of you special men out there are enjoying a fabulous Father's Day today.  :)

Here is a message from my Ben.

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #50 - Hanging out at Coventry

This time of year you can always see the turtles over at Coventry.  Usually they are beside or crossing the road up to the ball diamonds.  On the way to the car, we stopped to get a picture with this one.  Those things are big!!

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #49 - "Are we winning?"

Our older cat is really getting old.  He's about 17 1/2 years old now.  We can tell that he's getting tired.  I love seeing the two of them hanging out together.  It doesn't happen often.

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #48 - Jump!!

I can't believe how behind I have gotten in posting 'Photo of the Week' posts!!!!  Thankfully, I have remembered to take at least one picture each week.

I also can't believe how close it is to the end of the 4th year of this personal project.  The first week of July always marks the start of a new year of 'Photo of the Week' images.

For week #48, I had to take a couple of quick pictures of Ben jumping rope.  He's doing the Heart and Stroke Jump for Heart.  We posted a couple of these pictures on his sponsorship page online.  It's a terrible picture from a technical standpoint (oh so many things wrong with it!!), but it was the one that showed him jumping the most.  And I'm always proud of him when he does things like this, so it HAS to be documented photographically.  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

CLIENT SHOOTS - Welcome Jack!

Oh baby Jack!  I'm so glad your Mommy brought you to the studio!  What a cutie he was.  Here are highlights from his session.

This is my signature 'Faces, Feet and Fingers' Collage for little Jack.

This was the first time I used Mommy's hands in this type of shot.  Daddy wasn't able to the session.

Ooooh, I love this one.  heehee

So precious....

Thank you Rachelle for sharing baby Jack with me.  :)


Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #47 - Let's Go Fishing!

I'm quite late at posting this one.  For week #48, the photo is from our first camping trip of the year.  If there's camping, there has to be fishing!  He is sooooooo white the light just glares off his body.  ;)

This fish is small, but he was still excited to catch it....finally!

Thanks for looking!!

 -- Lisa P.

CLIENT SHOOTS - Baby Finn

I'm starting to do a little bit of catching up with my blogging.  Even though I do feature clients in my newsletter, I like to also include them in my blog as well.  This little cutie is Finn.  His parents are awesome and I loved having them in the studio.  Ooooh his little baby lips.  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #46 - Mother's Day Loot

Ben made me some awesome stuff for Mother's Day.  That thing underneath the SimCity game is a book of poems he made for me.  He told me that he "worked on the flowers and vase and the book of poems for THREE whole weeks!"

Well.....I loved it all.  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #45 - My Ride Warrior

Ben LOVES rides.  The faster and higher the better.  The fact that he always tells me he's afraid of heights makes absolutely no sense! LOL

We get Season's Passes to Canada's Wonderland and a couple of days before the park officially opens, they have a Season's Pass sneak preview night.  We went and Ben had the most amazing time.  In the first 40 minutes, he went on the Leviathan 7 times.  It was awesome for him.  At one point there was a teeny tiny line that had formed.  He said he didn't want to wait and wanted to move on.  I told him that this would be the one and only time where the lines would be this SHORT!!  (The one time he went on the Leviathan last summer, he waited in line for over 2 hours)

In total, he rode various rides at least 24 times that evening within a 4 hour period.  It was kind of crazy!  I'm so glad he had a fun time and didn't have to wait in long lines.  One time, he was even the only person riding the Drop Tower! :)

Here he is having a snack break.

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PERSONAL - HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!! :)

This post is for all of you super awesome women out there who are celebrating Mother's Day and/or remembering those special women who were so important in your lives.

Happy Mother's Day!

And this is a special message for my Mom.  Happy Mother's Day Mom.  We hope you liked the video we made of your surprise birthday party (check your email for the link!).  :)

Yes, she always wears a tiara, 'cause she's just super fancy like that.  heehee ;)

And a Happy Mother's Day to my Mother-in-law as well, from all of us over here in Tottenham.  :)

And here is a special Mother's Day message from Ben.....


Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #44 - Mooooooooose!! :)

So just over a week ago I went on my annual trip to Algonquin Park with friends and Ben to hopefully capture some cool nature images.  Of course, we always hope for a beautiful sunrise, but that didn't happen for us again this year.  But that's ok, because we still got some beautiful shots that day.  :)

And yes.....we did see Moooooooose!!  We also saw a wild turkey, but he ran away faster than we could get the cameras out.  (But we can see those in our backyard, so we weren't too sad that we missed him) I'm always worried that Ben will be disappointed if we don't see any moose, but so far we've been lucky enough.  We saw 3 this time.  In one spot we saw 2 together.  In another, we saw one who was quite happy to stand there enjoying his drink from the stream for a VERY long time.  People came and went and he/she was still drinking, sometimes pausing to look up to see if we were still there gawking.

And here's our moose model posing.  I just love those EARS!!

If you're interested in joining a group on a photo trip, check out Daytripper Photo.  I was first introduced to this type of trip when I joined Bryan and his group of instructors on his Algonquin Sunrise trip a few years back.  No driving and you receive instruction on the way there and back as well as during the trip.  Plus...you get to try out all kinds of lenses that you might not otherwise have the opportunity to try out 'in the field'.  It's a great trip and I highly recommend it.  Be warned that you have to get up VERY early so you can get up to Algonquin and set up in time for the sunrise.  But since you don't have to drive, you can snooze a bit on the way up.  ;)

Now that Ben is old enough to do things like this, it made more sense for me to gather together with a few friends who always enjoy Photography and make it an excuse to get together.  Plus, it's fun to do something photography related with Ben.  He had a blast and said it was his best day ever.  :)  (Although I think that might have now been trumped by the Canada's Wonderland season pass sneak preview night last Friday when he rode the Leviathan 12 (yes TWELVE) times, along with over another dozen times on his favourite rides in a 4 hour period.)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #43 - Birthday Cake

This isn't a great technical photo, and for most, it's not even that interesting..... really, it's just a cake.  But, it's here as a 'Photo of the Week' because I was so lucky to be able to take this in person at my Mom's 65th surprise birthday party in BC!!  :)  Woohoo! :)



You can see the little bags of cheezies and the scratch ticket that was at every seat.  Two of her favourite things.  I think she actually scooped my bag of cheezies!! ;)

It was a quick trip, but worth it for sure.

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #42 - Welcome Little Berkeley

It's so exciting to see my clients' families growing.  This sweet baby girl has a beautiful family that loves her to pieces and is going to have a wonderful life.  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PERSONAL - Happy 65th Birthday!!

So, she will probably want to kill me for posting this, but she's half ways across the country and can't hit me from there, so it's ok.  I'm safe!  ;)

Happy, Happy birthday to my Mom!  She turned 65 today.  :)

This photo is one of my favourites of her and Ben from back in 2006.  HAHA *RASPBERRY!!*

And this one is the most recent one I have of her with my brother, sister and Ben.  It was taken last summer when we went out to BC.

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #41 - Sushi anyone?

This is definitely not my best image of all time, and it was taken with my phone, but one that has meaning to me.  Of all the things Ben loves to eat, sushi is one of them.  His favourite is cucumber rolls, so on Easter Monday I made him some.  I added avocado and asparagus to some of them as well.  He wasn't too fond of the asparagus, but the avocado was ok.  It's nice when he likes something I like too.  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #40 - Easter Colouring

When I first asked him if he wanted to colour eggs for Easter this year, he sort of said 'no'.  But....when it came to the Saturday before Easter, he realized that if he didn't colour eggs, the Easter Bunny wouldn't have anything to hide and he wouldn't have any egg hunting to do on Sunday!

Yes, I could have brushed the hair out of his eyes before I took the photo.  Yes, I could have edited the sauce off of his face.  But no.  I didn't do those things.  That wouldn't be my Ben.

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

CLIENT SHOOTS - Another session with the Browns

The first quarter of this year was so much busier than I was expecting and I've gotten so behind in blogging and sharing images from sessions with my amazing clients.  So I will be trying to catch up over the next week or so.  There is a lot of catching up to do!

This session was the last of a few I was fortunate to shoot of the Brown Family near the end of 2012.  Here are some of my favourites and some 'outtakes'.

Family fun

Love those faces!

Waiting for everyone to get ready.

This stuff is scratchy.

Hey!  Were you touching my dress?!

The two littlest ones really stole the show at this session.  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #39 - Granola Bars

The long weekend messed up my sense of timing, so I'm VERY late posting the Photo of the Week photo that I was supposed to post last week.

I love granola bars and so does Ben, so I decided to try and make my own chewy bars.  This first batch turned out pretty good.  I followed a recipe pretty much bang on.  The second batch I made, with my modifications  turned out to be too dry.  I'm pretty sure I know what I did wrong, so I'll be making a new batch this week.

Thanks for looking!  And I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter weekend.  :)

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #38 - k2 Milling Ltd.

I can't believe I forgot to post the photo of the week from the week of March 11th!  Here it is, a photo taken after returning from a trip to my local flour Mill.  Love that place!  And yes....that's one big bag of oatmeal.  LOL  :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #37 - Diane

I had this lovely lady in the studio a couple of weeks ago.  :)  Her full blog post (as well as so many others I am behind on blogging) will be up soon!

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #36 - Peaceful Snowfall

This March Break thing is messing up my sense of time even more than normal!  This should have been posted on the weekend.

One thing about fresh snow is that it's so beautiful to look at.  Right now we're into the mucky, wet thaw.  That is definitely NOT beautiful to look at!  haha :)

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK #35 - Orientation at Procyon 2013

February 23rd was the annual Volunteer Orientation at Procyon Wildlife.  It was standing room only!

For those who don't know, I help them out with their web site.

This photo is of some of the attendees watching the presentation by Cynthia Post.

To learn more about what Procyon Wildlife does, or how you can help, visit www.procyonwildlife.com

Thanks for looking!

 -- Lisa P.