hello beautiful blog readers!  a quick post on some ever-so-lovely christmas decor…inspire co has a kit for making bon-bons for your christmas tree…how cute for a little tree in the kitchen!  and dub & sam has an awesome template for making cute 3D stars…these could be a great size to attach to packages!!  can’t wait to put some cute patterned paper i have to good use!  -m-

p.s.i’ll be taking a posting hiatus until january 10th…just want a little extra end-of-the-year time (but i’ll miss you dearly) :)  so mark it on your calendar & check back then!  have the most merry of holidays!!! 

susan is brilliant – not only is she an amazing artist, she somehow manages to keep me (and i’d imagine her other friends) in the loop about great music, local happenings and all the cool stuff in tv land that i’d never know about without her.  well, or i would but it would be a year too late.  really.  no joke.   here’s how the conversation would go: 

melanie: "susan!!  have you seen top design on bravo…the one with todd oldham and jonathan adler? it’s way better than project runway"
susan: "yeah, didn’t you get that email i sent you when it premiered"

life without ‘with it’ friends would be no bueno.

she’s the pop-culture/fun stuff/new item at fredflare/tv series i’ll love hook up…so courtesy of susan, via my email from last week, set those tivos to record top design premiering in january :) -m-

aren’t these super cute?  i like their baby stuff best but they’ve got some good wedding invites, too! 2 art directors from Martha Stewart started it…and I could be mistaken but I think i remember one of them from her featured wedding in MSW a few years ago and we were married in the very same church in Town & Country, MO.   -m-

recently, a lot of photographers have written letting me know they read this blog so here’s a little something for you guys :)  i’ve been looking for gloves i could photograph in forever and haven’t been able to find a THING that still lets me adjust camera controls.  well, take that back, there have been a couple but they’ve been hideous and I’d rather have my hands freeze!  so i’ve had ‘popsicle’ hands forever. 

fast forward to a few days ago: we had a family day recently where we were exploring the cute shops in midway and i stopped in a little boutique at the end of the street and found these gloves in their gardening section.  they feel great and the little grips are very low-key (much less visible than in this photo if you buy black) so if you’re hands freeze in the fall/winter like mine when you’re photographing outside, pick em up :) -m-

my specs: crow black   size: m

this session was AWESOME…one family with three AMAZING girls.  i don’t know if AMAZING even covers it.  man alive, they were so with it.  i could go on and on about these wonder-girls! (they’ve lived in africa, play all sorts of instruments…)

dad was incredibly polite & gracious but i’m sure he was ‘doing the family portrait’ thing because he loved his family…not a big fan of being photographed (so common!).  i think i heard it had been a number of years since they’d done this and i was really grateful that they chose me.  i’m keeping my fingers crossed that he’ll be up for this again!  loved that krisann asked for a photo of the two of them…some people DO just photograph well and I think krisann is stunning! -m-