Savannah and Cosette just celebrated their #4 and #2 birthdays and it was time for their annual portraits.
The girls arrived Wednesday morning with their parents sporting beautiful new Easter dresses, patent leather shoes and hair bows. Savannah was thrilled to return, as she remembered having fun last year. She entered the studio smiling and chattering excitedly about having her picture taken in her pretty new dress. Cosette, however, had the opposite reaction: she clung to her daddy and began crying whenever he tried to set her down on the backdrop. Despite pulling out all the tricks and happy little props designed to make little girls smile, she wouldn’t have any of it! She did become very attached to a Beanie Baby cat, which of course did not match her dress (darn! – why didn’t I have the white cat instead of the brown and black one out?! -BAD photographer!) She would not let go of it and I realized that, even if we did get her to stop crying, there would be a mismatched stuffed animal in every photo.
Well, these photos tell the story. Cosette will be making a return appearance soon, hopefully in a happier mood! And, her parents will come in coordinating outfits, in case the only shot I can take is of the entire family. AND I will only have tiny white stuffed animals on deck……
As I’ve explained about 2 and 3 year old flower girls in past stories, generally “you can’t bribe a child younger than 4 years old”!

Would you like to join my club? Yes, I know: if I hate winter so much, why do I live in Minnesota? Good question! When Mike graduated from Michigan State, he had two job offers: at Pillsbury in Minneapolis and at General Mills in Minneapolis! Truly, he tried to find a job in California or Arizona, but that didn’t happen. We even briefly moved away to Syracuse, NY for 3 years (warmer, yes – but WAY more snow) but then we were lured back to MN again. And now I have this big studio here, so…. here we stay. sigh
I can think of a FEW things that are good about winter: Michigan State basketball on the Big Ten network, the Winter Olympics, watching the Food Network and printing off recipes and making lots of comfort food, indoor tennis leagues, going someplace warm (Palm Springs or Arizona or Hawaii) and feeding and watching the birds. Seriously, I cannot add to this list!
Here are a list of BAD things about winter: NOT living in Palm Springs, Arizona, or Hawaii in the winter, always being freezing cold (in MN, you cannot practically set your thermostat above 68 degrees – it would never stop running), eating all the food I make from watching the Food Network and gaining 8 pounds every winter, the sun setting at 4:30 p.m. (hey – we are THAT far north!), winter driving, shoveling your roof,
ice dams (which happen if you DON’T shovel your roof), cold beds – brrrr, having your car always crusted with road salt, tracking road salt into your house, not being able to sit by my pond or stroll through my gardens, falling asleep at 8 p.m., winter tomatoes (bleghckk), cold feet. Well, you get the idea!
Do you want to add to this list?
We recently had back-to-back snowstorms that have added an additional 18 inches of snow on the ground. We neglected to rake our roof and are now dealing with replacing all the wet insulation in the attic and having a bedroom ceiling scraped and re-done by Thompsons Roofs. Experts from the company had to come out and spend 7 hours removing 20 feet of thick ice dam on one side of our house with a steamer. This occured on a day that the high temp was 2 degrees. See the photo below where our yard is encased in ice and all the eaves are full of icicles! This turned our snowbanks, which were considerable, into veritable icebergs! They are NEVER going to melt until May!
sigh….. And check out our mailbox: it was hit with a plow and embedded into the iceberg snowbank. I’m sure our mailman is NOT happy about trying to get mail into our box!
Well, there is one pretty thing about a MN winter: the sky appears to be so much bluer against the white snow. After a heavy snowfall, the temps always plunge, which make the snow appear to “glitter”. Here are some photos of our Ice Palace.

After an unseasonably warm September, October has been brutal: gloomy, COLD, windy, and SNOWY – yes, snowy! Today is the second out of three days where we’ve woken up to snow on the ground. We were warned yesterday that snow was on it’s way. So Jack and I spent the afternoon in the yard raking up and bagging all the green leaves that had completely fallen off our large ash trees. They didn’t even turn yellow this year: the freeze during the night simply made them all fall on the ground. The rest of the trees in the neighborhood are still green – there is a small bit of color, but the peak fall colors are still about two weeks away. So this is a weird sight indeed! I went out this morning and photographed the neighbor’s snow covered pumpkins – before they were completely covered in snow! As I write this, we have 3″ on the ground and it is still snowing steadily. We are supposed to get 4″ by afternoon. Happy Fall!