class of 2010: revisited

I recently had the privilege to photograph the lovely Miss Caitlin Mason for her senior photos and had a really great time.  The Mason family attends Scotts Hill Baptist Church where I do, and Caitlin happens to be best friends with Jessica Warren, whose senior photos I had the privilege of taking last year, if you'll recall this post.

Caitlin and her mom did a lot of research before her photoshoot last week so they were prepared!  Caitlin is a fan of 'the gates' in downtown Wilmington so a lot of our shoot was spent walking/riding around downtown and stopping for photos here and there.  It was a beautiful day; perfect for strolling.

Of course, we hit the beach, too, because it IS just so close!  :)

I'm not quite finished editing the photos but here is a sneak peek at some of my faves from the day:

Jefferys wedding

This past weekend we attended a wedding for one of the couples within our Connect Group.  It was an absolutely gorgeous day for a wedding -- sunny skies and temps in the mid-70s.  Just beautiful.

This was the first wedding we've gone to since I've had my new camera so I was looking forward to seeing what it could do in this kind of setting.  Of course, I didn't take any photos during the ceremony, which was just lovely, by the way.  But I shot to my heart's content during the reception which was held in downtown Wilmington at St. Thomas Preservation Hall -- what a great place to have a reception!

The following photos are without edit, meaning I haven't done a thing to the photos.  This is just how they came out with my Nikon.  I'm so pleased with them!

[photo credit: Jeff Wenzel]

[photo credit: Emily Ondish]

cora beth on the river*WALK*

We had my brother and his family here to visit for a few days this past week and had a great time with them. Cora Beth is 13 1/2 months now and she is walking, peeps! And she is so cute doing it. :) We went walking around in downtown Wilmington one day (while we waited for the sun to appear so we could go to the beach) and I got some pretty cute photos of Cora Beth on the riverwalk (for those who don't know, this is a really nice walkway that was recently built along the Cape Fear River).

Look at her! She looks like such a big girl walking...

She had the best time just sitting there on that slight curb, getting up and sitting down, getting back up and sitting back down, looking over the side at the grass and back over on the deck. She's so entertaining to watch. :)

I'm still editing photos of their visit, specifically Cora Beth's first real time on the beach so those are soon to be posted here. Check back soon!

rivenbark wedding

Jeff and I went to a wedding last Saturday...the last one we'll go to for awhile, I guess. All the rest of our peeps are married. A couple in our Sunday School class at church, Adam & Whitney, got married and it was just lovely. We haven't known them that long but we've come to love them just the same. We're so glad we were able to be a part of their special day.

It was during their reception at the fabulous Hilton Riverside in downtown Wilmington that I learned something very important about my camera. Jeff actually mentioned it , and while it was something I'd read about in the manual when I first got my camera, I had forgotten about it. I have a button on the top of my camera that looks like a little flower and you want to use that feature when taking close-up shots of anything. Here's what happens when you take advantage of your camera's features:

Isn't that a really cool shot? It was really dim inside the reception hall so most of the photos I took didn't turn out that great because of that. But this one turned out pretty cool because I could use flash and that cool "flower feature". I love how the tag on the top of the box is really clear & crisp and everything from there out just sort of blurs out. Thanks, babe, for that.

Thought I'd throw this photo in, too, of me and Whitney. I did a little bit of color editing to this one. I played around with filters and blending options, too, but just didn't get any kind of effect that I really liked. We don't really need any editing, do we? :)

wanna get away?

Back in November, our sweet Sunday School class threw us a "surprise!-you've-been-teaching-for-5+years!" party. It was completely unexpected and so very, very thoughtful of them. They had a photo slideshow going the entire time with past class events and kind words of encouragement that some of them had written. Everyone brought all kinds of good food and we just had a sweet time of fellowship & good fun. AND THEN, as if the party wasn't enough, they presented us with a night's stay in a bed & breakfast downtown and 2 movie tickets! We were speechless.

We still have the movie tickets to use, but we used the bed & breakfast gift certificate this past Thursday night and had a great time. We arrived at the Front Street Inn around 7pm and got settled into our room, the Pearl Buck suite. We then walked the block down to The Little Dipper for dinner reservations at 7:45pm. I have been to the Little Dipper once for a "ladies night out" type thing but Jeff had never been. What I experienced at the "ladies night out" was nothing like what we had that night! So it was kind of a new experience for both us. It was fantastic!

Around 9:30pm we headed back up to the FSI to use the nice jacuzzi hot tub in our room! It was so relaxing; we had bubble bath and just really enjoyed spending time together, talking over things going on in our lives.

The next morning they served a complimentary breakfast that included everything from bagels, to cereal, fruit, muffins, banana bread, 2 kinds of quiche/casserole...oh, it was all soo good! The coffee was the FSI's own special blend, too. Very tasty. We checked out around 10:30am and emerged to a beautiful, sunshine-y Good Friday.

I've included some of the photos from the "getaway" below -- a thousand thank yous to our fantastic Sunday School class, our "family"...we are so blessed to have each one of you in our lives!

[first course was cheese fondue -- we chose Baja Cheddar and got misc veggies & tortilla chips to dip in...next course was a salad but I didn't include a photo of those (a salad's a salad, right? but their ranch is fantastic!)]

[next course after the salads was our entree -- we chose Surf & Turf which included filet mignon, shrimp, lobster & cheese-filled ravioli and misc veggies with 4 dipping sauces (we chose marinara, creamy dill (my fave!), drawn butter & honey dijon)]

[this is the pot our entree cooked in -- steaming vegetable broth with rosemary; we got a "cheat sheet" of sorts that told us how long to leave our food in for]

[and then of course, there was DESSERT -- we chose milk chocolate & peanut butter fondue and got the following to dip in it...]

[H-E-A-V-E-N]