Curly Hair

So with my new camera, I probably should have read the manual, but I thought today it might bbe good fun to test it! I curled my hair today, something I never seem to do anywhere but America (probably because we don't seem to walk anywhere) but I thought since it looked nice, I might as well take some photos! I love how easy it is to curl my hair, and for once, it actually seems to hold. Getting the mode on the camera right was a bit tricky, but the moveable LCD came in really handy! I did feel a bit like a 16 year old, taking photos of myself in the mirror, but it was still good fun!

Ruuuufie!!

We visited my dad's cousin Elaine and her family the other day. Their daughter Amanda has a lovely little dog called Rufus, who they call Rufie. He's part Yorkie I think, and very lovely and friendly. He jumps up and sits on your lap and is very sweet! I tried to get photos of his, but it wasn't easy - it seems most dogs don't like the lenses on my new camera!

Sunset at 55mph

On the way home, the sky was really beautiful. Michigan always has pretty sunsets and because of the weather, the sky is always very clear. We were driving along, and the sky was so vivid and orange, I tried to get some photos of the trees silhouetted against the pretty sky! Mummy was going fast and there wasn't any place to stop, but I still got some lovely photos!

Frankenmuth

Frankenmuth is a lovely little town, and we had a short little wander through the town, but it was pretty cold, so we got back in the car and did a quick drive through the town. When we were younger, we bought Shelby a little rag doll at the town's historical museum, which I got a photo of, decorated for Christmas. Most of the buildings went by too fast to get a photo, but I was lucky we stopped by a red light for this one!

Bavaria and Nutcrackers

Across the steet from Zenders, is the Bavarian Inn. It's full of people wearing Leiderhosen and traditional German outfits! It has beautiful wrought iron near the windows, and traditional German signs. They have massive nutcrackers outside, and tons of people were getting their photos taken with them! They really were massive! They must have been at least double my size! I really wish I had one at home! And at Christmas time, it was great to see everything decorated for the holidays. I really love it, it really is the centre of little Bavaria! The whole town is lovely at Christmas, everything is decorated with garland and lights!

Zenders

Frankenmuth is basically Little Bavaria, and they have tons of little restaurants serving chicken and other German themed foods. Zenders always has really good rosettes, so we popped in there to get some. I took some photos of their lovely red themed decorations, which they had hanging from the ceiling.

Horsies!

I do love horses, and Frankenmuth has some beautiful horses which pull beautiful white carriages. It was too cold (and probably too expensive) to take a ride in one, but I saw quite a few on the road, and I went up to the drivers while they were parked, and got to meet Fred, the lovely white horse.

Silent Night Memorial Church

At Bronner's they have a beautiful church called the Silent Night Memorial Chapel. It is really beautiful, with a path and lovely decorated lampposts. Along the sides it has 'Joy to the World' written in several languages, and they have speakers, so you can hear the song too. It was very cold, so it was a quick photo session, but it was good fun!

Lights

Since I got my camera, I have been having trouble getting any interesting photos of Christmas lights. Bronner's has a whole section just for indoor and outdoor Christmas lights. I experimented a bit with the manual focusing (or lack of) with some of the lights to get a pretty cool fuzzy effect. Some of the light balls were lovely combinations of pink lights, giving a great blur ball!

Christmas 365 days a year

The town of Frankenmuth is home to Bronner's Winter Wonderland - the largest Christmas shop in the world! It is open all year round, with Christmas music, Christmas decorations, and all things Christmas. With my lovve of Christmas,it is the perfect place to be! We visited it today, and it was lovely! They had Christmas music playing, and Christmas bulbs everywhere. I made sure to take photos of all the cool ornaments, espcially my favourite, the gingerbread men! They have ornaments from everywhere, made mostly in Europe, I loved these Turkish ornaments. They have ones for all themes, even flamingoes! They had space themed ornaments, skating ones, even little computer ones. The entire store is dedcorated everywhere with Christmas figures, statues and lights - I got a great photo of Mummy with the snowman near the entrance! I love it, and you can't help but be happy there!

Shelby's Birthday

Boxing Day is Shelby's birthday, so for her birthday, I bought her a jumper and a cute pink necklace which she loved. Every year we go to the same restaurant, Outback Steakhouse, which is an Aussie style place, for steak and Mac and Cheese! It was a lovely night out, and I even convinced her to have a photo with me!

Copper, Sun and Snow

I figured I needed to take some non Christmas photos, just to test my camera outside, and it was lovely light outside about 4.30, so I figured I might brave the cold! I didn't stay out long, it was really really cold! But I did get some interesting photos of the copper windchimes, with the sun bouncing off them and the snow! I got to mess around with the focus, which was great, experimenting with what looked best! The Sun was really low in the sky, glinting off the copper just right!

Little Baby Jackson

Jackson is my grand parents lovely Schnauzer, who is about a year old now, and just as lovely as when he was a puppy. He isn't so keen on my camera, or the flash, but I got him to go out in the snow to take some photos of him! He much prefers my cousin Amy, and I got a cute photo of them together!

Christmas Tree Collection

With my new camera, I thought it would be fun to take photos, but what of? Grammie has a beautiful tree, with lots of lovely classical ornaments, she likes the lovely glass old world ornaments and Santa ornaments best!

Present Time!

So of course we got to open these lovely presents, I got some lovely lovely gifts! I got a fabulous new Canon 60D digital SLR camera, so I will be going photo crazy! Shelby got me the cutest black Jack Wills Gilet, which I have wanted for ages! We bought Mummy a funny singing toy, which was hillarious, but she loved! I really liked getting to take photos of everyone opening their presents, especially Papa, who loves posing for photos just like me! Here he is with his reused Victoria Secret's box.

Santa Presents!

I get majorly excited about SANTA! I'm always the first one up, wanting to open presents, and this year was no exception! I was up slightly later (8am!) and ready to open presents! Shelby and I get special paper, and this year, I got Santa paper and Shelby got peppermint candies paper! I couldn't seem to get Shelby up early enough for my liking, but eventually I did and we were able to open all of our lovely gifts! I am determined to find penguin paper for next year! Christmas is a big deal here, with lots of presents, under the BIG BIG tree!

Moyer Christmas Party

The Moyers (Daddy's side) celebrated Christmas a few days before actual Christmas, and so we drove down to Lansing to be with them. We used to meet at Grandma Moyer's house, but now we meet at a restaurant, have dinner and socialise, and it's much easier on everyone. I had a nice time chatting with all my cousins, and we bought Grandma and Grandpa a new hoover, which they loved! Here is a photo of Shelby and I with my cousin Allie.

More of the Dingle

The Dingle has 4 gates, so I walked around and took photos in all directions. I really loved how picturesque it was, all covered in snow. You couldn't see all the flowers through the snow, they probably were all dead! I wish it had been open, it was such a shame, but I'm sure it would have been very icy and slippy!

A little Red Robin

Because the Dingle was closed, I happily took photos through the gates. While I was shooting, I was trying to photograph a bench, but there was a little red robin perched on top too! He was so cute, and sat there for ages! He wasn't even scared with me being so close. I didn't have my telephoto lens, which would have been mighty useful, but I blew up the picture to show how cute the little birdie was! It was the perfect Christmas photo!

Playing in the park

Also in the quarry is a playground. Usually there's tons of kids and their parents in it, but today it was totally deserted! I figured all the kids would be out sledding, but I only saw two or three families out with sleds, maybe the quarry isn't a steep enough hill? Probably the parents didn't want to go out in the snow either! I thought it was really nice how the snow on the slides and swings hadn't been disturbed at all!

The Bridge

This is the bridge near our new house. Since we moved, we can walk into town via this bridge and through the Quarry and we are there. Tada! It's only a foot bridge, but if you are quite heavy footed, it bounces up and down a lot! When we were kids, it used to scare us, but it's good fun making the bridge wobble. I love taking photos of bridges, mainly because we have such an awsome bridge in Clifton, but I though this one actually had an interesting structure. Shrewsbury has tons and tons and tons of bridges, but really this is the only one I ever seem to use, so I figured it was photo worthy!

Down by the snowy river

The river running through Shrewsbury isn't frozen over, not many in England every do. I really never come down to the riverbanks, generally I just pass over them on bridges, but today I figured it would be nice to get some photos of the trees overhanging the river, with it's snowy branches.

Hercules

When I am home, sometimes I go running in the Quarry, and usually I'm so out of breath that I only make it to the Statue of Hercules, which is placed along the river just south of the bandstand. It's been there as long as I can remember and is always something to talk about when people walk along the river. I have no clue why we have a statue of a Greek God, in a place like Shrewsbury,but I thought it was nice to see some classical architecture in such a pretty place. I thought it looked mighty cool, and mighty cold! It was all covered in snow, like everything else!

The Bandstand

This is one of the places that really reminds me of Mike, from when we came to Shrewsbury in the summer. We went on a his and hers photographing trip, and I remember trying to get some good photos and Mike teaching me how to use a camera properly (which I promptly forgot!) But I love this place, I've never seen a band in it, but it's a great point to look at the river from!

The Dingle once again

For some reason, noone came to open the Dingle this morning, which is the flower garden inside the Quarry Park. In Summer Mike and I came to photograph it, and I had hoped to get some great comparison photos. I thought it might open during my time I was there, but to no avail. There are locked gates, which I was able to take some photos through, and it looked just beautiful! It was so lovely, with the pond frozen over, and the trees and bushes all covered in snow!

In the Quarry

The Quarry is just a massive park, and usually is a big expanse of grass, but in the snow, it was all beautiful. It was great fun wandering around with Shelby's camera again. I love signposts and benches, and so was really excited to get some snowy photos of them! I wandered around for about and hour in the 6 inches of snow, up to the tops of my UGGS! I tried to get photos of as much as possible, sadly white on white isn't all that interesting! But there were lots of unused benches and the gates to the Dingle were locked, so I had to settle with photos from the outside! I had such fun taking photos everywhere!

At the gates

I figured that the Quarry was a great place to start taking photos, as the snow hadn't been disrupted at all, and there were only a few people about. I love the gates of the Quarry, they are very bright blue and I thought it looked great against the snow! I was able to get some shots with St. Chads in the background too!

St Chads

We got more snow in Shrewsbury over night. It really is more snow than we ever had in Bristol, and since I was up early, I figured it would be good to go out and take photos of all the prettiness in town before everyone trampled all over and ruined the snow! I started at the top of the Quarry with St Chads, the church up near our friend Gail's house.