Merry Christmas!

Christmas certainly was hectic - but wonderful - this year. Between the massive snow storm and having to work on Christmas Eve, it felt like we just ran from event to event. But it was really nice to spend Christmas Eve night with Mike's dad's family, then Christmas early afternoon with his mom's family, and finally Christmas late afternoon with his stepdad's family. Then today we ran all over doing some retail therapy. :) It's been great so far, and I'm looking forward to spending New Year's weekend with my parents!

Here are some highlighted Christmas gifts for me:

Mike got me this amazing, ginormous Le Creuset. It's pretty incredible. I made a HUGE vat of French Onion soup in it this afternoon. Have I mentioned how awesome it is?


From Mike's dad and stepmom, I got an amazing, fancy crockpot. I'm super excited to try it out this week!

(photo pending)

From Mike's mom and stepdad as well as from my sister-in-law Anne, I got gift certificates toward the fancy new lens I've been eyeing for MONTHS! It's a fixed 35mm lens (so it doesn't zoom at all), but the lens itself is super high-quality, and the aperture opens to 1.8!! For comparison's sake, here are two series of photos I took.

Here, the top photo is with the aperture at f/5 (which was basically the smallest I could get my kit lens when at 35mm). Then the bottom photo is with the aperture at f/1.8. (See how much tighter the focus is?)


Similarly, here are some photos I took in the car, right after I got the lens. The first photo is with the aperture at f/8, then the middle is f/4, and the bottom is f/1.8. Not only can you see how much tighter the focus is (as that white SUV blurs out more), but you can also see how the lights in the mirror change in quality (there's that nice bokeh effect).



I'm excited to play around with portraiture, but so far Mike has been so busy playing with his own Christmas toys that he has refused to let me mess around with taking his picture. Thus I resorted to photos of the cats, as always. I like this this one of Mac...


...and this one of him mid-yawn cracks me up. (Caught while I was trying to focus, obviously!) It reminds of the mid-yawn photos of Lucy I got back in April.

Lucy is now hiding downstairs with Mike. (Spoilsports!)


Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope Santa was also generous with all of you, and that - more importantly - you got to spend good quality time with family and/or friends!