As of this afternoon, I am officially on winter break. To fully relax and enjoy time with my family, all emails and calls that come in over the holiday will receive a response after I return to work January 5. In the meantime, I hope that everyone enjoys the holidays! Don't get too caught up in the shopping, traffic and cooking. Instead, take time to see the beauty around you and be thankful for the little things that make life so amazing.



The downturn in the economy is really taking a toll on a lot of good people. Don't forget to help out those you can this season.

I love petal tosses. There's something very jubilant and carefree about them. The wedding day is the one day when a girl can dress up like a princess in a frilly dress complete with a long veil and then act like a child and throw flowers in the air. Why not live it up and take full advantage of the opportunity?

Unfortunately, some brides think that tosses are only done during the couple's exit from the wedding. This just isn't true. When they are having the ceremony and reception in two different locations, couples often do a toss as they leave the first location. Some even do a toss as they leave the church and then sparklers or bubbles after the reception. However, when you are staying at one venue and have a reception that goes into the night, having a petal toss in the dark may not be the best idea. One idea that I really like is to have a toss during the recessional at the end of the ceremony. Everyone's excited, and what better way to celebrate than to shower the newlyweds with colorful petals (or bubbles if you prefer)?

As much as I like this idea, it doesn't always seem to work out as well as I would like because the guests just forget to participate. Jill and Chris addressed the problem at their fall wedding by attaching a cute little note to the petal cones that hung on the chairs.



Even then, guests are sometimes a little shocked by the end of the ceremony and may still forget to pick up the petals and throw them. I've thought that there must be a good way for the officiant to give instructions at the end of the ceremony, and I just read one way to do it on the peonies and polaroids blog. Peonies are my favorite flower so I was curious when I stumbled on this blog. The writer is self described as "a girl collecting ideas and inspirations for a wedding and for life", and if you're planning a wedding or are just inspired by art and beauty then you ought to check it out.

Anyway, Peony (as the writer calls herself) has shared some of her own wedding photos along with parts of her ceremony, and it is really beautiful. At the very end are these words

Now if you would like to throw a little luck and love Peonies and The Boy’s way, please find your little bag of confetti to shower them as they walk back down the aisle...

Perfect!

I snapped a few photographs today of two albums waiting to be picked up. The first is a 9x13 digital storybook with photo paper pages and embossed names on a leather cover. The second is a 10x10 art book with matte pages.

Whether you spent some quality time with friends and family, ate too much turkey, did all your Christmas shopping, or just sat around relaxing in front of the tv, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving!
 
I'm not a big sports fan, but I love watching movies. Of course it follows that I would rather go to the theater than sit in front of the tv on Thanksgiving Day. The challenge is in deciding what to see, and 2008 hasn't been my favorite year for movies. The Dark Knight was good, and I really enjoyed Atonement (I loved the book). Iron Man was surprisingly better than expected, but overall the movies this year just haven't gotten me very excited. The most recent Indiana Jones and Bond movies were even a bit disappointing. For Thanksgiving, we decided to check out Nicole Kidman's new "epic saga" Australia, and I just have to say that I really, really like this movie. I'm a little sad to see that it didn't do better at the box office this weekend, but I guess it's hard to compete with the fans of Bond, Twilight, and Vince Vaughn.

I just hope that this movie doesn't get overlooked because it is very good, and Fox doesn't seem to be doing a great job promoting it. With many emotional highs and lows, I'll admit that it had me crying a couple of times. The little aboriginal boy in the film is just so cute and really steals the screen from Kidman and Hugh Jackman. The movie is long (2 hours and 45 minutes) so it is the perfect sort of movie for a holiday when you have a full stomach and hours of free time. It has action, romance, drama and an adorable kid. Yes it can be a bit melodramatic, and if you're the sort that gets annoyed with cute kids or gets bored with long movies or just doesn't enjoy epic, mixed-genre movies then you might as well stay home. If you enjoy epic movies like Pearl Harbor, Gladiator, Troy, and Braveheart then you'll probably love this movie too.

If you do see it then I hope you'll come back and let me know what you think.

I got a new phone today! The new number is 865-360-4567.

It's going to be a real pain to update my number all over the internet, but at least now I have an excuse to get new business cards.