Earlier this week, Leandra and I celebrated our own Christmas. We went out to dinner at an old mansion in town, ate our pasta by the roaring fire, listened to the accordionist play “That’s Amore,” and had a wonderful chocolatey dessert. We relaxed and stayed late. We went back to our place, put on sweats, and sat in the glow of our Christmas tree and watched It’s a Wonderful Life (which was my first time seeing it!). And yes, it was wonderful.

Christmas is family and bustle and big meals and parties and ugly sweaters and blinking lights, but it’s also quiet, peaceful evenings, and to me, each is more enjoyable when you have both!

Here’s a few pictures of the tree we left behind in Grand Rapids (that hopefully hasn’t shed all it’s needles yet!) while we’re bustling around Indiana and Pennsylvania:

I think Leandra would have her coffee in a holiday cup all year long, which is why we thought it deserved to be immortalized in porcelain on our tree.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I (Leandra) spent my years between age 10 and 16 living in Europe with my family. We lived in a beautiful house in a village outside of Bratislava, Slovakia. I loved so much of it: the language, the bread, the bike paths that meandered from town to town, and my wonderful circle of expatriate friends. One of my favorite times of year there was Christmastime. It’s when I miss Europe the most. Shopping at the local mall just doesn’t compare with the open-air Christmas market in the Old Town sector of Bratislava. And while I do love my holiday Starbucks drink (tall peppermint mocha all the way!), it’s not quite the same as ducking into a cafe to warm up with some thick hot chocolate.

This year Grant and I determined to take more time for the holidays, to close the laptops once in a while and enjoy the Christmas season. We may not have made a trip back to Europe, but we did buy our first live tree this year! I also dug out an old Slovak recipe for medovníky (honey cookies). These cookies are the epitome of Christmas, so full of cloves and honey and cinnamon. I thought I’d share the recipe!

Medovníky

• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup honey
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• a pinch of anise

Directions: beat the eggs lightly in a large bowl. Add the honey, sugar, and butter and mix together. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and spices together. Add the dry to the wet ingredients. Set the dough in the refrigerator for at least two hours to cool. Roll the dough out to 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick and cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Place onto a grased baking sheet. Bake for 5-7 minutes at 400°F. Once they come out of the oven, brush them quickly, while they are still very hot, with an egg wash (egg yolk thinned with water). Decorate them with icing when they are cool.

Icing

• 1 egg white
• approx. 1/2 cup powdered sugar

No special baking tools necessary for the icing… Just spoon your it into a sandwich bag, twist the bag tightly to force the icing into one corner, and then cut a very small hole at the corner.

We discovered that Grant has far more patience and skill with icing design than I do. Hey, at least I provided the recipe, right?

We hope you are all having a wonderful holiday so far. Christmas is only a week away!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Okay, we love pumpkin cheesecake, but frankly, the best part about Thanksgiving for Leandra and me isn’t the turkey (Leandra’s a vegetarian) or the shopping–it’s the fact that we can legitimately listen to Christmas music, buy Christmas-y things, and decorate for the holidays!  (Even though we did sneak a small Christmas tree into our bedroom already, and we have been playing Christmas music when no one’s listening.) We love Thanksgiving  because it’s the kickoff to the holidays, when we can string the lights and trim the tree and fill the house with smells of peppermint and cinnamon!

In all seriousness though, we’re so thankful for so many things: being able to work together, having a job that allows us to be creative, meeting so many wonderful people, and spending our weekends photographing people in love! We might say “no thanks” to seconds (or firsts) on turkey, but we ARE thankful for you, our readers and couples and brides and grooms and mothers and fathers…  whose wonderful feedback and communication makes it all worth it!

Just a few reminders: tomorrow is the start of our print sale (which continues through December 31st)! We will donate all  of the proceeds from orders received between noon (12 pm EST) tomorrow and noon on Saturday to the Cape of Good Hope School in Mawotto, Uganda, where Leandra spent six weeks volunteering in 2005. We’re really excited about this, and hope you choose to buy your prints tomorrow, so we can pass more on to her friend Godfrey, the founder, and his school!

We’ll continue to donate 10% of the proceeds through December, and are passing some savings on to you– you can read about the discounts on this post. We decided to extend the all-of-the-proceeds donation window until Saturday because we want to donate as much as possible!

Secondly, although we’ll be running specials through the month, the deadline to receive any print orders in time for Christmas is noon on December 13th.

Enjoy your holiday, and do plenty of thinking, decorating, shopping, and singing about the NEXT one! (Can you tell we’re Christmas buffs?) To close, a picture of two of our favorite things in one:

Although we do not want anyone sleeping outside on our porch, waiting with the same people they’ll trample when the “doors open,” we will be having a sale on Friday! Well, we’ll be starting a sale on Friday. Everyone’s proofs from this year will be reactivated on our proofing site for the rest of the year to give you a chance to order any prints you’d like (even if it’s just for yourself–we won’t tell).

Here’s the Black Friday rundown: for every $25 you spend, we’ll send you a $5 dollar discount code to use on your next purchase. If you spend $50, you’ll get a $10 discount code (duh!), but if you spend $100, you’ll get $25!

But (you guessed it!) there’s more! (I’m REALLY not trying to sound like the Sham-Wow guy.) Beginning after Thanksgiving, we’ll have a different promotion for each week through December. The first week (starting Black Friday and running until the next weekend begins) you’ll receive $5 off all 8×10’s!

Okay, there’s one more thing–the reason we’re doing this, really. This Friday–Black Friday–from noon (12pm EST) to noon the next day (Saturday) we’ll be donating ALL the proceeds from any print sales we receive. You’ll hear more this week about where we’ll be making the donations. We’re excited to be able to do this! What better way to start the holiday season? If you miss the boat on Friday because you slept on the sidewalk outside Best Buy or have turkey hangover, don’t worry, because we’ll still be donating 10% of all proceeds from print sales throughout the month of December.

We were actually planning on JUST doing the donations, but we thought we’d provide some incentive to you (besides the warm fuzzies that you feel when you put your change in the Salvation Army bucket), which is why we came up with the sale.

So, in case you were wondering–here’s the scoop on how to get the most AND give the most! This Friday–order whatever your heart desires. You’ll get $5 off any 8×10’s, but that doesn’t mean you can’t order any other sizes! On top of that, once you complete your order, you’ll receive a discount code from us for 5, 10, or 25 dollars based on how much you spend. AND every penny we earn from any purchases on Friday, we’ll donate. You’ll only get a discount code for purchases made on Friday, but the 8×10 special will run until the following week’s mini-sale (beginning December 4th). Again, for all print sales through December, we will be donating 10% of the profits. So order up on Black Friday and then use up those discount codes to get more AND get us to give more!