Merry Christmas!

I just want to wish all my friends, family and all those who visit my blog a wonderful Christmas and all the best for the new year!

I feel very blessed to have a terrific family and thank them for all their love and support. I also am blessed with wonderful friends and a very kind and supportive community. I'm not great at expressing my feelings, especially in writing, which is one of the reasons I love capturing special moments with my camera.

Here's a few from our Christmas card this year.

ps - I am continuing to post Nutcracker photos!

Last of the Christmas portraits

Here is the last family I photographed for Christmas. The weather didn't cooperate for outdoors, but their beautiful home made a great background. The kids are adorable and the family was very relaxed and easy-going. The big challenge were the gorgeous dogs who didn't want to be in the pictures!

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I've added to the Nutcracker photos the Candy canes and Arabian. More to come later tonight and throught the week.

Also - my Christmas post coming up this weekend!

Nutcracker Preview

I am starting to post photos from this past weekends' 3 Nutcracker performances.

The shows were terrific and all the girls were talented and beautiful. My little one had a great time. It is really amazing how the production can be so professional and yet really enjoyable for the little ones. The older girls really make an effort to encourage the younger ones and help them to feel special!

Congratulations for a terrific weekend to all who contributed!

I am posting the photos by dance and the direct link is http://www.loriejohnson.photoreflect.com/.

The first dance to be posted is Snow and here are a few. I'll post back here on my blog when the photos are finished.

Gap boys and Gap girls

These were taken for Christmas cards.

As I went through the photos of the boys, I kept thinking it looked like a Gap ad and then their mom mentioned that's where she got the scarves. They are stunning young boys, full of personality and charm.

The girls had coordinating outfits that worked so well for their photo. They all have beautiful eyes and smiles and are also charmers!

My new gift certificates

I just ordered these gift certificates. They can be in any amount over $25 and can be used toward portrait sessions, reprints, event photos, etc.

If you are interested, feel free to contact me by phone or email for more info.

Last Nutcracker Dress Rehearsal post

Here is the final post from the Nutcracker dress rehearsal. For those ballet lovers, I will post some from the show and will provide some info on the Nutcracker books soon.

Nutcracker Dress Rehearsal - 2

Here are some more from the dress rehearsal. I'll probably do one more post of these photos and then I still have some Christmas portrait photos to share.

These are mostly the younger girls, who are so cute and remarkably brave!

In the last photo - do you think my daughter saw me taking the photo (she's looking right at the camera and is wearing a white hair band around her bun)?!

Also, stay tuned for a preview of my new gift certificates, info on the Nutcracker books for this year and my Christmas greeting.

Nutcracker Dress Rehearsal - 1

I will do several posts of photos from the Nutcracker dress rehearsals. Performances are this weekend and we are very excited. The girls are all beautiful and so incredibly talented!

Extended Family

This is a preview of portraits I took recently of a very nice extended family. We took quite a few groupings and everyone was pretty relaxed!

The kids were adorable and were a big help in doing test shots. The family photo was the most challenging!

Scarves

This was a group of cousins and one of the moms bought some bright colored scarves. They also had santa hats and Christmas headbands - which looked very cool! They did a great job getting some photos for their grandmother and looked terrific.

The last picture was them having a little fun!

Christmas rush

I took Christmas photos of these two cuties last year as well. They were very sweet and we got some classic portraits, but also some fun ones! They liked the props from their neighbor and my black tape.

The little boy seemed so happy about being a big brother. They cracked me up because they were quite agreeable to having their pictures taken, but were very specific about what they wanted to do and where they would sit!

3 sisters

Beautiful girls who were a little shy in the beginning but warmed up and were lots of fun!