Happy Holidays from the Glass World!

We bought a Christmas tree yesterday afternoon. We had been going to get it on Saturday, but like so many others, we lost our power in Friday's big ice storm and didn't get it back on for 36 hours. We stayed with my cousin and her family because they got their power back early on. So many people are still waiting to get their electricity back on that I felt a little badly being so comfortable and cozy as we decorated our cute little tree last night.

We let Maya do most of the work, really. After I put up the lights, she got out all the ornaments and showed us her favorites (like the one above, in particular, which dates back to World War II, and is seriously just a glass ball with a mouldering yellow stripe painted around it. It has a cardboard insert in the neck and is hung with a piece of white cooking twine, because it was bought during the time when people were donating everything metal that they owned to the war cause. It's our family favorite and has been since I was a child. It was Grammy Seger's.) Here's Jon, below, enjoying watching Maya hard at work:

The pictures aren't too great because I didn't want to use the flash and ruin the moody Christmas-lit ambiance, so I used ISO 1000 and a wide-open aperture to capture these cute shots of Maya having a blast, decorating. Happy Holidays to you all!

The day before that, Saturday, we went to Augusta, to meet my father, who is kindly loaning me his Pentax K20D, to do a couple of upcoming photo shoots. One is Merry Madness, which is a fun shopping night in the Old Port that starts with an opening ceremony at the Eastland Hotel on High Street this Thursday the 18th of December at 5 pm. You buy either a mug or a wine glass and then go all around the Old Port, shopping from 5-10 pm, where you can get a nice glass of wine or a mug of cocoa or coffee, depending on your preferences. The other will be even more fun: On Saturday the 20th of December, I am going to be riding on the lead tugboat in the Parade of Lights in Portland Harbor, to take photos of all the boats, lighted for the holiday and parading around the harbor several times. And finally, this week, I'll be going to somewhere between 5 and 8 restaurants to take photos of their signature seafood dishes for Portland Magazine's upcoming February/March issue. I am really excited about that assignment, because food photography is near and dear to my heart.

Anyhow, on the way home from meeting Dad for lunch at the Olive Garden in Augusta, we stopped by the Capital Building in Augusta Central (right.) The light was low and warm and I'd never taken pictures of it, so I thought I'd try my hand. In the picture above, you can sort of see the thick coating of ice on all the trees. And on the left below the capitol building dome, is the front of the building, a perspective I liked because it looks like government, frowning down upon the peons!

Finally, I'll leave you with a shot I took on the highway on the way home--the sun setting through some ice-covered trees. It really looked like a glass world for about 48 hours here in Southern Maine. Thanks for reading as always! Cindy