Anyway, I have a TON of sessions to post. I think over 20? I might need to combine things. I’m almost done with the holiday season, the last orders of the year go out the door this weekend! So that means lots of time to blog. Or read blogs. Or visit Pinterest. But I’ll try to blog. Promise.

Since I am a rebel and a rule-breaker (I’m not at all), I’m not even going to post a session for this post. It’s just going to be about a fun little thing that’s going around my neighbourhood. We were ‘Elfed’, which is exactly like when we were ‘Boo’ed/Ghosted’ last year at Halloween. Except maybe a bit cuter and with more fun presents.

Here’s the link to the most adorable printables that I found: http://andersruff.blogspot.com/2010/11/free-printable-youve-been-elfed-door.html

The girls and I had a great time running around leaving presents on doorsteps. As Charlotte put it: ‘Is this where we ring the doorbell and run away? I LOVE that game!’

I met Kate and Ryan at their home a few weeks ago. They are such a COOL couple, their style is so fun and I immediately fell in love with both of them.
They are expecting their first baby, affectionately nicknamed ‘Squish’. Kate has the cutest little belly and was really up for anything. I cannot WAIT to go back and meet Squish in person.

It’s that time of year!

This year I’m doing something a little different. As some of you know, one of my very dear friends was diagnosed with ovarian cancer just under two weeks ago. I took a trip to Portland this past week to be with her during surgery and I plan to go back several times to help her through chemo.
Jen is a fellow photographer, and as you can imagine, this will put her out of work for several months. I would like to donate the session fees from both days of mini sessions to her and her two boys to help ease the financial burden just a bit.

Her blog is http://www.amistillagirl.com/ and it’s been a very real and emotional journey.

If you are interested in booking a mini session, please just email me at info@freshsugar.ca and let me know your preferred date and time and we’ll set you up. Because newsletter subscribers and previous clients get first crack at things like this, I’m very pleased to say that we only have 2 spots left this Saturday and 5 left in October, so please email me right away if you’d like a session!

Mini sessions are $250 and include a 20 minute session and 10-15 images in your gallery. You will also receive one digital image to use as you choose! The sessions are on Saturday, September 17th and October 1st. 10am-4pm.
Thanks so much and I can’t wait to see you all again this year!

-Brandy

Sorry about the large post, there were a LOT of kids this year!

I get to spend the day meeting real kids who have spent a lot of time within the walls of the hospital. As a parent, the thought frightens me to death, but to see these children have such sunny personalities and a resilience that is truly amazing, it makes me realize just how important this hospital is to Calgary.

Last month I spent another full day meeting these incredible children, but before I blog those images, I wanted to show you a few of last year’s photos.

Pinterest though, has created a monster. I’m constantly pinning food, just to look at it. So when we decided to have an end of summer party – I decided to give some of my favorite pins a whirl.

The most involved recipe was Fancy Pink Lemonade Jello Shots. Mine turned out a tad messy, but they were still super fun and my friends were suitably impressed.

Another big hit was watermelon cubes with a balsamic reduction. See how fancy I am? This one was really, really yummy. The balsamic really adds something awesome to the watermelon.

I also made personal 5 layer dip cups, personal veggie dips, salsa cream cheese wraps and lemon pudding for dessert. There was some BBQ’ed meat and other things that the men did too. But it wasn’t as cute as my stuff so I didn’t take photos.

The kids played a bunch of games; sponge water fight, water balloon toss, egg races, trampolining, etc.
Even the grown ups got involved. Hee.

At the end of the night, the kids watched a movie in the playroom and the grown ups had some great conversations using Table Topics, which features some really cool conversation starters.

I know there are a probably a lot of you out there having your own End of Summer parties this coming long weekend, maybe some of these ideas will help!

When I was little, I stole a packet of jam from a restaurant and it exploded in the pocket of my new winter coat. I had sticky, jammy things in there for months. You will NEVER catch me taking jam, peanut butter or honey (which is my personal favorite and I would love to steal some honey) because I was quickly informed by the retribution squad that you are not supposed to do that.

On a recent flight, I decided to forgo wearing undergarments because I have had some friends (I know a lot of weirdos) tell me they do it and it’s wonderful and MY JEANS WILL FIT BETTER. And also because I packed all my clean stuff. I have a lot of reasons why I prefer wearing underwear, a large one is that I constantly think –

‘What would my mom say?’

So what happens when I arrive at my destination? It’s burning hot, I’m in heavy, dark clothes and want to change into a dress and some freaking UNDERWEAR but as you may have guessed – my luggage is nowhere to be found.
The universe went as far as to steal my luggage to tell me to get my act together and slap some underpants on.

Another time, I had just received the worst haircut of my life. IT WAS REALLY BAD, YO. The girl who had done it was super sweet though, and it was her first day and her dad even came down to take her picture at work. Awwwww. So of course I say I love it and pay and smile and do all the fakey, fakey things to make her feel good. Except then I went into the bathroom and practically cried and talked smack about my hair for a good 10 minutes. Never noticing that the stylist had come in and heard everything. UGH.

Which brings me to yesterday. I did something that women keep doing, over and over again. I have learned my lesson on this, multiple times. It really should be one of the commandments.

THOU SHALT NOT CUT THY OWN BANGS.

And I know better. I really do. From my mom cutting my bangs when I was little, to being drunk in the bathroom with my equally drunk friend with scissors, to cutting my own right off – I KNOW BETTER.

Yet, this didn’t stop me yesterday when I was looking at my too-long bangs and thinking I didn’t want to go make the trip to see my stylist just for bangs.

“How hard could it be?”

“It’s only a little bit of hair. It’s easy!”

and the worst one of all:

“I will look so cute in Vegas this weekend!”

Well let use this time to remind myself and all of you that it is, in fact, not easy. My bangs look vaguely ridiculous now, and they are much shorter than I expected because I kept cutting every time I made a mistake.
And while I don’t have any desire to show you what they look like today, I will show you some of the bang disasters throughout my years. Oddly, all the truly terrible photographs have disappeared though. Weird.

This is me in kindergarden. My mom did those bangs herself.

I think I was 21 in this photo. I cut my own bangs, didn’t like it, so decided to swoop them to the side. Do you see what depravities you resort to when you trim your own bangs? Actually, now that I think about it, this is kind of what my bangs look like today.

27. This is Halloween and actually a wig, but I have cut my bangs this short. I did it myself because of course no stylist would let me do this. (My costume is Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction and I had a syringe sticking out of my chest but you can’t see it. Trust me that it was awesome.)

This is just a few months ago and I didn’t cut them myself. I just included it because I think Charlotte’s face is hilarious and more importantly, I look kind of cute, even with all the beer in front of me.