Santa Fe, New Mexico

For our 25th Wedding Anniversary my hubby and I booked a trip to Santa Fe!

This was our first visit to New Mexico, so we were both very excited.

I think it turned out to be more of my vacation than his... We do both love art galleries, but after 4 days of it, he was a little done and I could have kept going and going, like the energizer bunny. Yes, I love art galleries. I also loved the architect of Santa Fe.

Any one that knows me very well, knows that I LOVE purses. We were walking by and, of course, this window display caught my eye. All the purses in the window are made from gum wrappers. The store had very unusual purses and I couldn't resist the martini shaped purse on the end of the middle shelf :) It's a Sono Purse. For those other purse lovers out there.








The number one tourist attraction, besides the art galleries, is the Lorretto Church built in 1873. Here is a picture of the Miraculous staircase. Per it's website: Two mysteries surround the spiral staircase in the Loretto Chapel: the identity of its builder and the physics of its construction. The staircase has two 360 degree turns and has no visible means of support. Also, it is said that the staircase was built without nails—only wooden pegs. Here is the link for more info: http://www.lorettochapel.com/


We also came across this store that displayed old dinosaur fossils. We must have spent 30 minutes looking around with our mouths wide open in awe. They had quite a selection of amazing fossils still in tact. Very, very cool.

I know you can't read it, but it states under the fossil, 30 million years old with a price tag of $1195.



We were drinking our coffee in Starbucks and my sweetie looked so handsome with the natural window light that I secretly pulled out my camera and caught this image. I wouldn't stop photographing him after that. Poor guy, it's hard to be married to a photographer! lol He is such a great husband, he never once said a word as I was stopping every couple of minutes to photograph something! Like the chili peppers hanging!

We had a wonderful time. I love long weekend getaways. Four days was plenty of time. On our last day we left early and drove through old town Albuquerque. I told Russell that we would do whatever he would like, since the whole trip turned out to by my vacation. He chose the Atomic Museum. It was really quite interesting.

AA's Last Minute Getaways!

FYI:

Just so you know. We booked our trip to Santa Fe using AA.com with their last minute getaways and we found out the hard way that it is actually - Travelocity!

If you have any problems the only number to call is a call center in India for Travelocity. Let's just say we did have quite a few problems with the condo that we booked and got no help!

Always check out your accommodations online on one of the review sites. Learn from our mistakes!

Luckily, we still had a lot of fun after we booked our own hotel.

ps - this is just a pic I took of a building in Santa Fe that I thought reflected the adobe style and I liked it very much.

Happy Anniversary!

Holli was asking for help on what to give her boyfriend for their one year anniversary, I answered her with a great idea! One year anniversary is paper. He would love sexy images of his girl.


She was a great model and these
are the amazing images that she
can give to her boyfriend.

Happy Anniversary!

Deep Ellum

I've been trying to get to Deep Ellum for a while now to photograph
the area and see what is available for different locations.
Remember, I'm a native Californian.


I brought my husband and two kids with me to model. They were really good, considering it was a Friday night.

I love the "artistic" feel of the area and all the beautiful wall art (graffiti)! We didn't spend too much time in any one area because we were losing light and there was so much to see.

These are some of my favorite images. How observant how you? Did you notice that I put Conner in the reflection of the window and me too, only because I'm the mom!

Just as we were almost done, in front of the Sunshine Store we met the owner, Ms. Ruth a sweet older women who makes her own jewelry and sells other artist's work. She was trying to photograph her jewelry with a film camera and no meter! I was glad to help her out and photograph her jewelry for her.

And, then we met one of the other artists, Michael Crone, and his company's name is "nuttkace ltd". Got to love the name. Well, my daughter feel in love with his painting. We had to have it for her room, which she just painted dark purple! It's so her.

Went out to dinner afterwards and we ended up having a lot of fun together! :)

Go check out the Sunshine store at 2714 Elm Street if you are looking for something funky and fun!